Intricate artistic renditions of Jesus, whether built with plastic bottles or carved out of sand, are among the most common images posted on Facebook. Jesus has recently taken on sea creature forms, mainly shrimp, crabs and sea horses.

Female flight attendants, many of whom are East Asian, are often depicted in unexpected scenarios. They are seen praying with Jesus, holding crosses, and even covered in mud. In a truly unexpected crossover event, some images show these flight attendants posing with shrimp Jesus.

Also particularly popular are images of young black children showing off masterly pieces of artwork they supposedly built, such as Jesus made of fruit, cars made of plastic bottles, and tigers made of tyre treads.

Most of the synthetic images posted on pages or in posts do not have any indication that they are AI-generated, despite Meta's requirement for users to label AI-generated content on its platforms. Meta is currently working on methods to automatically detect such content. Meta did not respond to a request for comment. Read more

Lowe serves both as the Catholic Bishop of Auckland and President of the New Zealand Bishops' Conference.

The fake social media accounts impersonating Lowe have surfaced on Meta's Facebook and Messenger platforms and, in responding to the data breach, Lowe wishes it to be known that he will not send friend requests or contact anyone through social media.

The NZCBC also warns that his email account may have been falsified.

Commenting on the NZCBC Facebook post, Bernard Liddington suggests the fake account was obvious as the gender was erroneously listed as female.

In another comment, Stephen Kennedy quipped "So he's not coming for tea tomorrow night? But I'm making my special potato bake just like he asked."

Mark Chang commented with a tongue-in-cheek remark, "All part of God's plan, surely?"

At the time of writing, another person linked the data breach with Satan.

The Bishops' Conference recently ran a campaign to help people stay safe online.

They suggested people learn more about Facebook privacy, do a Facebook privacy check-up and manage their Facebook privacy settings.

Facebook and its associated applications - Instagram, WhatsApp, and its most recent application, Threads (a Twitter clone) - are owned by the parent company, Meta.

These applications are free to use. However, Meta monetises user data to cover costs and provide shareholders with a healthy return.

Unfortunately, fake Facebook and Instagram accounts are common, and Meta has faced numerous privacy concerns stemming partly from its revenue model.

For example, Ireland's Data Protection Commission imposed a €1.2 billion fine last month against Facebook's parent, Meta, for failing to comply with Europe's General Data Protection Regulation laws.

According to one source, Meta profits by selling users' information and through targeting ads, attracting advertisers to its vast trove of data like vultures to carrion.

Donald Trump's successful use of Facebook data played a part in his election as President of the United States.

Facebook has always assured its users that their information is shared only with their consent and is anonymised before being sold to marketers. However, issues such as data breaches, platform vulnerabilities and the compromise of individual identities and private data regularly occur.

In response to escalating privacy concerns, some government agencies and groups with sensitive data on their work computers have prohibited the use of personal Meta accounts on work computers and mobile devices.

Tech journalist Leo Laporte describes Meta as "capricious". "If it's free, then you're the product" he often says when discussing Facebook's privacy issues.

Sources

• NZ Catholic Bishop's Conference Facebook
• Twit.tv
• Wikipedia
• How Facebook uses big data
• Washington Post
• Security Now - Steve Gibson

The destruction of the taonga appears to relate to a fringe fundamentalist Christian belief held by the two people in the video that the wearing of pounamu is idolatry.

Throughout the video, uploaded to Facebook by the account Ahi Wairua Tapu, the woman filming explains the taonga was gifted to the man by his father.

"[Pounamu] is not worth having in your homes," the woman says. "All it is is stone, nothing more and nothing less." Read more

Indeed, we can only love something insofar as we direct our pure, generous attention toward it—be that to God, to a neighbour or to ourselves.

And in a world that so hungrily demands it, we should examine where we spend this finite resource. One such place rests in our very pockets.

Today, social media is a staple of our personal—and even spiritual—lives.

Bible study groups on Facebook, inspirational Christian accounts on Instagram, evangelical dating sites and viral sermons on TikTok are modernizing our religious landscape.

The more optimistic tout "digital discipleship" as the next best tool for spreading the Gospel.

But Christians should occasionally step back to evaluate new technology in terms of biblical guidance.

Before adopting any cultural innovation, we must have the courage to ask: Is there, perhaps, a snake in this garden?

Christians should occasionally step back to evaluate new technology in terms of biblical guidance.

There is a snake, and it is particularly interested in our children.

On March 18, Facebook announced plans to launch Instagram Youth, a version of the popular photo-sharing app designed specifically for 8- to-12-year-olds.

Despite public outrage, Facebook is not backing down from this decision, offering us a ripe opportunity for spiritual discernment.

Jesus teaches that "every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit" (Mt 7:17), so let us examine the fruits of this tree.

Studies have linked the excessive use of social media, especially Instagram, to childhood depression, anxiety, suicide, eating disorders, cyberbullying, narcissism, attention disorders, obesity and vulnerability to sexual predators.

According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, Facebook's own researchers have acknowledged Instagram's harmful effects, admitting in a March 2020 presentation posted to an internal message board that "We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls."

But in their pursuit of profit, corporations such as Facebook ignore these known harms to children and the warnings of countless psychologists, lawmakers and doctors in their eagerness to ensnare new generations of consumers.

With a twisted root, how can we expect anything other than rotten fruit?

Materialistic consumption oils the cogs of the Instagram machine.

A recent study found that a startling 25 per cent of all Instagram posts were advertisements, and that statistic does not begin to include the abundance of corporate-funded "influencers" peddling exorbitant makeup routines, expensive clothing and superficially alluring lifestyles to children.

While radio, television and print media have long been funded by advertising, social media algorithms increase their potency by cleverly manipulating emotions; these algorithms promote feelings of constant inadequacy and addict users through Pavlovian dopamine hits that can come from sending and receiving "likes."

Even if Instagram Youth limits or excludes formal advertising, it would serve as a steppingstone to this harmful culture by normalizing image-based, materialistic values at a vulnerable age.

Corporations such as Facebook ignore these known harms to children and the warnings of countless psychologists, lawmakers and doctors in their eagerness to ensnare new generations of consumers.

The real possibilities of digital discipleship should not prevent Christians from engaging in honest conversations about the harms of technology. Continue reading

• Lucy Kidwell is a senior at Indiana University and co-chair of the Interfaith Work Group at Fairplay's Children's Screen Time Action Network, a grassroots group advocating for technology ethics.

The social media giant has rolled out a new prayer request feature, a tool embraced by some religious leaders as a cutting-edge way to engage the faithful online.

Others are eyeing it warily as they weigh its usefulness against the privacy and security concerns they have with Facebook.

In Facebook Groups employing the feature, members can use it to rally prayer power for upcoming job interviews, illnesses and other personal challenges big and small.

After they create a post, other users can tap an "I prayed" button, respond with a "like" or other reaction, leave a comment or send a direct message.

Facebook began testing it in the U.S. in December as part of an ongoing effort to support faith communities, according to a statement attributed to a company spokesperson.

"During the COVID-19 pandemic we've seen many faith and spirituality communities using our services to connect, so we're starting to explore new tools to support them," it said.

The Rev. Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas, a Southern Baptist megachurch, was among the pastors enthusiastically welcoming of the prayer feature.

"Facebook and other social media platforms continue to be tremendous tools to spread the Gospel of Christ and connect believers with one another — especially during this pandemic," he said.

"While any tool can be misused, I support any effort like this that encourages people to turn to the one true God in our time of need."

Adeel Zeb, a Muslim chaplain at The Claremont Colleges in California, also was upbeat.

"As long as these companies initiate proper precautions and protocols to ensure the safety of religiously marginalized communities, people of faith should jump on board supporting this vital initiative," he said.

Under its data policy, Facebook uses the information it gathers in a variety of ways, including to personalize advertisements. But the company says advertisers are not able to use a person's prayer posts to target ads.

The Rev. Bob Stec, pastor of St. Ambrose Catholic Parish in Brunswick, Ohio, said via email that on one hand, he sees the new feature as a positive affirmation of people's need for an "authentic community" of prayer, support and worship.

But "even while this is a ‘good thing,' it is not necessary the deeply authentic community that we need," he said.

"We need to join our voices and hands in prayer. We need to stand shoulder to shoulder with each other and walk through great moments and challenges together."

Stec also worried about privacy concerns surrounding the sharing of deeply personal traumas.

"Is it wise to post everything about everyone for the whole world to see?" he said.

"On a good day we would all be reflective and make wise choices. When we are under stress or distress or in a difficult moment, it's almost too easy to reach out on Facebook to everyone."

However, Jacki King, the minister to women at Second Baptist Conway, a Southern Baptist congregation in Conway, Arkansas, sees a potential benefit for people who are isolated amid the pandemic and struggling with mental health, finances and other issues.

"They're much more likely to get on and make a comment than they are to walk into a church right now," King said. "It opens a line of communication."

Bishop Paul Egensteiner of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Metropolitan New York Synod said he has been dismayed by some aspects of Facebook but welcomes the feature, which bears similarities to a digital prayer request already used by the synod's churches.

"I hope this is a genuine effort from Facebook to help religious organizations advance their mission," Egensteiner said.

"I also pray that Facebook will continue improving its practices to stop misinformation on social media, which is also affecting our religious communities and efforts."

The Rev. Thomas McKenzie, who leads Church of the Redeemer, an Anglican congregation in Nashville, Tennessee, said he wanted to hate the feature — he views Facebook as willing to exploit anything for money, even people's faith.

But he thinks it could be encouraging to those willing to use it: "Facebook's evil motivations might have actually provided a tool that can be for good."

His chief concern with any Internet technology, he added, is that it can encourage people to stay physically apart even when it is unnecessary.

"You cannot participate fully in the body of Christ online. It's not possible," McKenzie said. "But these tools may give people the impression that it's possible."

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union of Reform Judaism, said he understood why some people would view the initiative skeptically.

"But in the moment we're in, I don't know many people who don't have a big part of their prayer life online," he said. "We've all been using the chat function for something like this — sharing who we are praying for."

Crossroads Community Church, a nondenominational congregation in Vancouver, Washington, saw the function go live about 10 weeks ago in its Facebook Group, which has roughly 2,500 members.

About 20 to 30 prayer requests are posted each day, eliciting 30 to 40 responses apiece, according to Gabe Moreno, executive pastor of ministries. Each time someone responds, the initial poster gets a notification.

Deniece Flippen, a moderator for the group, turns off the alerts for her posts, knowing that when she checks back she will be greeted with a flood of support.

Flippen said that unlike with in-person group prayer, she doesn't feel the Holy Spirit or the physical manifestations she calls the "holy goosebumps." But the virtual experience is fulfilling nonetheless.

"It's comforting to see that they're always there for me and we're always there for each other," Flippen said.

Members are asked on Fridays to share which requests got answered, and some get shoutouts in the Sunday morning livestreamed services.

Moreno said he knows Facebook is not acting out of purely selfless motivation — it wants more user engagement with the platform. But his church's approach to it is theologically based, and they are trying to follow Jesus' example.

"We should go where the people are," Moreno said. "The people are on Facebook. So we're going to go there."

AP video journalist Emily Leshner contributed. Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

• Holly Meyer and David Crary are authors of RNS.
• First published by RNS. Republished with permission.

LifeSiteNews, an often faith-themed website that Snopes.com describes as "a known purveyor of misleading information," announced the Facebook ban on its own website May 4.

"Facebook has just permanently banned LifeSiteNews' Facebook page," the announcement read. "This apparently is not a temporary measure: It is gone for good."

The announcement quoted LifeSiteNews marketing director Rebekah Roberts, who framed Facebook's decision as "another case of Big Tech silencing free speech on their platform."

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the removal of LifeSiteNews' page to Religion News Service on Wednesday, saying, "we have removed this page for repeatedly violating our COVID-19 policies."

Read More

Facebook hired former American Civil Liberties Union executive Laura Murphy in May 2018 to assess its performance on vital social issues.

The final 100-page report said while the company has made progress on issues such as voter suppression and cracking down on hate groups, "those gains could be obscured by the vexing and heartbreaking decisions Facebook has made that represent significant setbacks for civil rights."

Here are five takeaways from the audit.

Election interference

Facebook has expanded its voter suppression policy since the audit began.

This includes banning posts about violence relating to voting, voter registration or the outcome of elections, as well as threats that voting will lead to law enforcement action (such as immigration agents arresting people, for instance). But the company needs a "stronger interpretation" of its policies against voter suppression, the audit said.

This includes prohibiting posts such as US President Donald Trump's in May that call into question the integrity of voting by mail.

Facebook's decision to leave up these posts - along with another one many saw as threatening violence against protesters - "have caused considerable alarm for the auditors and the civil rights community," the report said.

"These decisions exposed a major hole in Facebook's understanding and application of civil rights," the audit said, calling the decisions "devastating."

Organised hate

Facebook reported in May that in the first three months of 2020, it removed about 4.7 million posts connected to organised hate; an increase of more than 3 million from the end of 2019. But "while this is an impressive figure," the auditors said it's not clear if this means Facebook removed more material or there was more material from organised hate groups in the first place.

The company, the auditors said, has also not implemented their recommendation to prohibit veiled and not just explicit references to white nationalist or white separatist ideology.

The company also needs to invest more resources to address organised hate against Muslims, Jews and other targeted groups on the platform, the audit said. Continue reading

• The analysis or comments in this article do not necessarily reflect the view of CathNews.

Several countries, including the UK, have criticised China for imposing new security laws, which they say threaten the territory's long-standing autonomy.

Facebook said it would stop considering the requests, "pending further assessment" of the human rights issues.

No personal information about users in the region was held at or disclosed from its Hong Kong office, it added.

"We believe freedom of expression is a fundamental human right and support the right of people to express themselves without fear for their safety or other repercussions," Facebook said. Read more

No legislature, no law enforcement agency, no regulator.

The US Congress has failed.

The EU has failed.

When the Federal Trade Commission fined it a record $5bn for its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, its stock price actually went up.

Which is what makes this moment so interesting and, possibly, epochal.

If the boycott of Facebook by some of the world's biggest brands - Unilever, Coca-Cola, Starbucks - succeeds, it will be because it has targeted the only thing that Facebook understands: its bottom line.

And if it fails, that will be another sort of landmark.

Because this is a company that facilitated an attack on a US election by a foreign power, that live-streamed a massacre then broadcast it to millions around the world and helped incite a genocide.

I'll say that again. It helped incite a genocide.

A United Nations report says the use of Facebook played a "determining role" in inciting hate and violence against Myanmar's Rohingya, which has seen tens of thousands die and hundreds of thousands flee for their lives.

I often think about that report.

When I watch documentaries showing Facebook employees playing ping-pong inside their Menlo Park safe space.

When I took a jaunt to the suburban Silicon Valley town earlier this year and strolled down the "normal" street where Mark Zuckerberg lives his totally normal life as the sole decision-maker in a company the like of which the world has never seen before.

When I heard that Maria Ressa, the Filipino journalist who has done so much to warn of Facebook's harms, had been sentenced to jail.

When I read the Orwellian defence that our former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg wrote last week. "Platforms like Facebook hold a mirror up to society," he said.

Facebook is not a mirror. It's a gun. Unlicensed - it is not subject to laws or control - it is in the hands and homes of 2.6 billion people, infiltrated by covert agents acting for nation-states, a laboratory for groups who praise the cleansing effects of the Holocaust and believe 5G will fry our brainwaves in our sleep.

People sometimes say that if Facebook was a country, it would be bigger than China.

But this is the wrong analogy.

If Facebook was a country, it would be a rogue state.

It would be North Korea. And it isn't a gun. It's a nuclear weapon.

Because this isn't a company so much as an autocracy, a dictatorship, a global empire controlled by a single man. Who - even as the evidence of harm has become undeniable, indisputable, overwhelming - has simply chosen to ignore its critics across the world.

Instead, it has continued to pump out relentless, unbelievable, increasingly preposterous propaganda even as it controls the main news distribution channels.

And just as the citizens of North Korea are unable to operate outside the state, it feels almost impossible to be alive today and live a life untouched by Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.

The #StopHateForProfit campaign is focused on hate speech.

It's what has united six American civil rights organisations in the US to lobby advertisers to "pause" their ads for July, a campaign precipitated by Facebook's decision not to remove a post by Donald Trump threatening violence against Black Lives Matter protesters: "When the looting starts, the shooting starts."

But this is so much bigger than Facebook's problem with hate. Continue reading

He is also one of the many who are still trying to bring a sense of normality in these uncertain and scary times.

As we are not able to leave our homes, except to shop or go to work if you are a key worker, Paolo Longo, a priest at the Church of San Pietro and San Benedetto di Polla in Salerno province, has taken to social media to live stream Mass.

Unfortunately, when he attempted to conduct Mass online, he had some technical difficulties.

He accidentally turned on video filters during his live stream, giving everyone watching at home some much-needed amusement.

During the nearly 50-minute mass, Facebook altered reality (AR) filters activated and made Longo look as if he was wearing various animated outfits.

These included a futuristic helmet and a wizard hat.

"You made us laugh, but without malice only with great affection," a follower wrote in Italian.

The priest laughed off the error that went viral in Italy, later posting, "Even a laugh is good".+

Source

• New York Post
• Mirror
• Image: Euro Weekly News

Domenico Bettinelli, a pro-life activist from Massachusetts, immediately wrote a blog post about Facebook taking down the Divine Office passage.

Facebook had said it took it down because it violated Facebook's "Community Standards on hate speech".

The quote says:

"Let us never assume that if we live good lives we will be without sin; our lives should be praised only when we continue to beg for pardon.

"But men are hopeless creatures, and the less they concentrate on their own sins, the more interested they become in the sins of others.

"They seek to criticise, not to correct. Unable to excuse themselves, they are ready to accuse others."

Bettinelli likens the quote to the gospel of Matthew 7:3, in which Jesus talks about pulling the log out of your own eye before accusing someone else of having a splinter in theirs.

In his blog, he asked if the Gospel would also be "hate speech by Facebook's standards?"

Bettinelli also posted the quote on Facebook after he saw the social media giant had flagged it after two priests posted it.

The priests said they thought an algorithm rather than a person would flag the content.

After his post was also removed, Bettinelli asked for a human review appealing the decision.

His appeal was rejected.

"I still don't understand why this is hate speech," he wrote in his blog.

"It's a quote from a Catholic saint who expresses the opposite of hate speech. He is essentially restating the words of Jesus Christ in the Gospels to stop worrying about what the other guy is or isn't doing and worry about your own flaws.

"Is Facebook saying that the Gospel is hate speech?"

Bettinelli's blog continues: "But what's worse is that I have no more understanding now of what is a violation of your [Facebook's] community standards than I did before. I cannot for the life of me figure out why you label this hate speech."

A Facebook spokesperson has confirmed the post has been reviewed and said it was removed in error.

The post has now been restored.

Source

• Catholic Heralsd
• Image: Integrated Catholic Life

Source

On Monday, Edwards shared an email with the Ne Zealand Herald that he sent to a number of Facebook executives on Friday. Read more

Analysts and human rights groups in the region are pointing to a rise in online abuse, as Pacific communities grapple with translating their culture to the digital meeting house.

Online abuse is not easily detected when local languages are used.

Facebook would not disclose the number of staff per language or dialect but a spokesperson said it had the capacity to review content in over 50 languages, including Samoan.

Samoa's Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi last week said he had had enough.

He is frustrated by his inability to control relentless attacks against him on Facebook.

In an interview with TV1Samoa last week, Tuilaepa announced he had instructed the Attorney General's office to begin the extradition process for blogger Malele Paulo, also known as King Faipopo, who lives in Australia.

In a Facebook live video, which has since been viewed 110,000 times, Mr Paulo issued a response: "Come and get me."

Lani Wendt-Young is an outspoken advocate of LGBTQI rights and critic of child sexual abuse - both contentious issues in conservative Samoa. She said she has faced a torrent of abuse numbering the hundreds of pages since she was targeted by an anonymous Samoan blog with a sizeable Facebook presence.

After several unsuccessful attempts at reporting the comments to Facebook, Wendt-Young said the company relented only when she provided English translations for the abuse in Samoan.

Even if posts are written in English with an apparent Samoan translation below - a common sight in online Pacific communities - it's often not what it seems, she said.

"The abusers are actually quite crafty. They will write really, really extra-disgusting things in Samoan because they know that obviously people at Facebook aren't really good at translating.

"So, that's I think a reason why they are getting away with some of the things they do."

Source

• radionz.co.nz
• Image: resistanceinventerre.wordpress.com

Facebook said it has removed more than 5,000 ad-targeting categories to limit the ability of advertisers to exclude users based on ethnicity or religion.

Until now, when an advertiser created an ad for Facebook, a tab "to exclude persons who correspond more or less to the following criteria" allowed for the audience to be filtered based on terms such as "halal," "Islamic vocabulary" or "Shariah."

These terms have now been eliminated.

Advertisers will now have to go through a process of certification to educate them on the "difference between acceptable ad targeting and ad discrimination," Facebook wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.

Facebook France communications representative, Ben Puygrenier, says the religious aspect of the advertising targeting criteria was significant.

"Most targeting options allowed advertisers to identify and exclude ethnic and religious groups," he said.

"Hence, by blocking people interested in the Jewish feast of the Passover, an advertiser could prevent Jewish web surfers from seeing certain ads," he explained.

Facebook is popular among advertisers because it gives them access to an audience of 2.2 billion users and allows them to slice and dice that audience with precision, so they can reach the exact people they're looking for.

But offering such precise targeting to its advertising customers left Facebook exposed to various forms of manipulation, necessitating the current review of its policies and practices.

Source

• La Croix
• CNet
• Buzzfeed News
• Image: The Telegraph

The campaign aims to ensure a low turnout at planned events at the triennial World Meeting of Families.

So far over 1,000 people have clicked "attending" the protest and another 4,000 say they are "interested".

The protest campaign suggests people book and discard tickets for events planned for the papal visit. All the tickets are free of charge.

A Facebook posting on the Say Nope page says "you can book as many times as you like [to papal events] on the same email address."

The person writing the post says they'd booked 108 tickets, having logged in to make bookings for 12 people on nine occasions. The booking limit is 12 per family or group.

"They all have different booking references, so they are working," the post says.

Another person who says he will not be attending a Mass in Phoenix Park says he took 800 tickets when bookings opened on Monday.

Jonathan Keane says he used different names and email addresses to ensure each booking was made separately. He booked one batch under the name "Jesus Christ".

"What made me get involved, I suppose, is that I'm really interested in history, especially the history of and effects that the Catholic Church have in Ireland - and whether you go back 900 years ago, or a month ago, you can see it.

"It's all negative stuff, scandal after scandal, and I just thought the idea of a peaceful protest was a brilliant peaceful way of saying no to the Pope."

Keane says many people reported on Facebook that they'd secured 60 of the free tickets, which they won't be using.

In his opinion, it's likely that "easily thousands" of tickets had been booked by Facebook protesters.

By 5pm on Monday, just over half the 500,000 tickets for the Phoenix Park Mass had been booked.

In addition, all 45,000 tickets for Francis's visit to Knock shrine have been booked, as have the 70,000 tickets for a series of events at the Royal Dublin Society.

The Facebook page organisers have been criticised online for taking up tickets that other members of the public who want to attend the events might miss out on.

One wrote: "Actively stopping people attending this event is wrong.

"Go down there when it's on and try to have some respectful discourse with people entering if you want to make a real difference.

"Removing someone's choice because you disagree with them is wrong."

Source

• JOE
• Irish Mirror
• Irish Times
• Image: Flickr

At present voters are being asked to decide whether to repeal Ireland's constitutional ban on most abortions.

Google says protecting "election integrity" is behind their decision.

Advertisements on Google-owned companies AdWords and YouTube are included in the ban.

Facebook says its decision to veto ads in the abortion campaign respond to global concerns about online election meddling.

Although Ireland outlaws political donations from other countries, social media advertising is not illegal.

This loophole has allowed US-based anti-abortion groups to buy online ads in Ireland during the referendum campaign.

They have criticised Google and Facebook's decision, saying it is damaging efforts to preserve the Eighth Amendment to Ireland's constitution.

The Amendment recognised the unborn child's right to life.

Pat Leahy, who is the Irish Times' politics editor, is concerned about Facebook and Google's decision.

He says it "deprives anti-abortion campaigners of a key element of their strategy for the final two weeks of the campaign."

Pro-Life Campaign, Save the 8th and the Iona Institute have issed a joint statement on the technology giants' advertising ban.

"It is very clear that the Government, much of the establishment media and corporate Ireland have determined that anything that needs to be done to secure a ‘Yes' vote must be done.

"In this case, it means preventing campaigns that have done nothing illegal from campaigning in a perfectly legal manner."

They say mainstream media is dominated by pro-repeal voices.

This left online media as the only platform they could use to speak directly to voters on a large scale.

"That platform is now being undermined in order to prevent the public from hearing the message of one side," they say.

The role of internet ads being bought by foreign countries to sway voters is a global concern.

It is said Russian-backed Google and Facebook advertising during the 2016 US presidential campaign influenced voters.

The advertising messages aimed to confuse and disturb Americans on controversial topics.

Both Google and Facebook are trying to improve transparency before the US midterm elections in November.

These include tools to show the home country of advertisers.

Source

• New Zealand Herald
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: CNN Money

He said the video posted by BBC Scotland "is ridiculing and demeaning the faith of ordinary Catholics, especially at a time when Catholics are experiencing more and more abuse and prejudice in Scotland."

Created by Sean Lìonadh, "This is how homophobia feels in 2018" was posted on BBC's "The Social" Facebook page on 9 April. This page targets young people.

The video discusses reactions to a gay couple who are walking in a park.

The narrator says "normality is a crowd-sourced fantasy." It focuses on the moral failings of those who view homosexual acts as immoral.

"Jesus saved a lot of time when he died for our crimes, that he would've wasted teaching small minds that love is no sin," the narrator says.

A man and a pregnant woman are also depicted. The narrator says the woman's "normality" will be shattered when she suffers a miscarriage.

A street preacher is also shown, along with scenes of a Mass.

A priest elevates a cheese biscuit as a parody of a Host, and then distributes it to a kneeling woman, who makes the sign of the cross.

The narrator says during this, "See him, he thinks it's faith, but under all that din, it tastes like cardboard, and it smells like hate."

Keenan noted the video was posted "in a week when a Sunday Times poll found 20 percent of Catholics reported personally experiencing abuse or prejudice towards their faith."

Recent government figures show that 57 percent of religiously aggravated crime is directed at Catholics, an increase of 14 percent. "And we all wonder why," Keenan said.

Source

• Catholic Herald
• Crux
• Image: pinknews

He said the ad had been blocked erroneously and did not violate terms of service.

The ad, which featured a crucifix, was rejected over Easter on the grounds that its content was "excessively violent" and "sensational." Read more

Mark Zuckerberg might believe the world is better without privacy. He's wrong. It will be fantastically satisfying to see the boy genius flayed.

All the politicians—ironically, in search of a viral moment—will lash Mark Zuckerberg from across the hearing room.

They will corner Facebook's founding bro, seeking to pin all manner of sin on him. This will make for scrumptious spectacle, but spectacle is a vacuous substitute for policy.

As Facebook's scandals have unfolded, the backlash against Big Tech has accelerated at a dizzying pace.

Anger, however, has outpaced thinking.

The most fully drawn and enthusiastically backed proposal now circulating through Congress would regulate political ads that can appear on the platform, a law that hardly curbs the company's power or profits.

And, it should be said, a law that does nothing to attack the core of the problem: the absence of governmental protections for personal data.

The defining fact of digital life is that the web was created in the libertarian frenzy of the 1990s.

As we privatized the net, releasing it from the hands of the government agencies that cultivated it, we suspended our inherited civic instincts.

Instead of treating the web like the financial system or aviation or agriculture, we refrained from creating the robust rules that would ensure safety and enforce our constitutional values.

This weakness has long been apparent to activists toiling on the fringes of debate—and the dangers might even have been apparent to most users of Facebook.

But it's one thing to abstractly understand the rampant exploitation of data; it's another to graphically see how our data can be weaponized against us.

And that's the awakening occasioned by the rolling revelation of Facebook's complicity in the debacle of the last presidential campaign.

The fact that Facebook seems unwilling to fully own up to its role casts further suspicion on its motives and methods.

And in the course of watching the horrific reports, the public may soon arrive at the realization that it is the weakness of our laws that has provided the basis for Facebook's tremendous success.

If we step back, we can see it clearly: Facebook's business model is the evisceration of privacy.

That is, it aims to induce its users into sharing personal information—what the company has called "radical transparency"—and then aims to surveil users to generate the insights that will keep them "engaged" on its site and to precisely target them with ads.

Although Mark Zuckerberg will nod in the direction of privacy, he has been candid about his true feelings.

In 2010 he said, for instance, that privacy is no longer a "social norm." (Once upon a time, in a fit of juvenile triumphalism, he even called people "dumb fucks" for trusting him with their data.)

And executives in the company seem to understand the consequence of their apparatus.

When I recently sat on a panel with a representative of Facebook, he admitted that he hadn't used the site for years because he was concerned with protecting himself against invasive forces.

We need to constantly recall this ideological indifference to privacy, because there should be nothing shocking about the carelessness revealed in the Cambridge Analytica episode.

Facebook apparently had no qualms about handing over access to your data to the charlatans working on behalf Cambridge Analytica—expending nary a moment's time vetting them or worrying about whatever ulterior motives they might have had for collecting so much sensitive information.

This wasn't an isolated incident.

Facebook gave away access to data harvesters as part of a devil's bargain with third-party app developers.

The company needed relationships with these developers, because their applications lured users to spend ever more time on Facebook.

As my colleague Alexis Madrigal has written, Facebook maintained lax standards for the harvest of data, even in the face of critics who stridently voiced concerns.

Mark Zuckerberg might believe that world is better without privacy.

But we can finally see the costs of his vision.

Our intimate information was widely available to malicious individuals, who hope to manipulate our political opinions, our intellectual habits, and our patterns of consumption; it was easily available to the proprietors of Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook turned data—which amounts to an X-ray of the inner self—into a commodity traded without our knowledge. Continue reading

• Image: The Atlantic

Speaking to a two-day summit of Catholic and labour movement leaders at the Vatican last Friday, O'Grady said the world needs a new figure like Cardinal Manning.

(Manning was influential in setting the modern-day Catholic Church direction, advocated for social justice and helped settle the London dock strike of 1889.)

"He [Manning] didn't just make moral pronouncements but rolled up his sleeves and tried to bring about a fair settlement to the dockers' dispute," O'Grady continued.

She called on Catholics to challenge the titans of technology.

She named some of them as including tech giants Apple, Facebook and Google.

O'Grady went on to say these three tech giants negatively impact workers by not paying their fair share of taxes.

They are joined by Uber and Amazon, who exploit workers, O'Grady claimed.

She says they are "washing their hands" of the employer-employee relationship.

"When I speak to those young workers of Sports Direct, McDonalds or Amazon, they feel pretty alone in the world.

"They are facing employers that are far, far more powerful than the dockers' ones and need somebody to stand by their side and speak up for their rights.

"I would hope the Church can play a role."

The Vatican meeting O'Grady was addressing was organised by Cardinal Peter Turkston, who leads the Vatican's newly formed social action department.

The meeting's aim was to hear testimony of injustices suffered by working people and to consider how trade unions and the church can work together to achieve greater social justice.

In an advance press release, O'Grady said she would speak of young people she has met.

"This year I met the ‘McStrikers' - young fast-food workers at McDonald's, stuck on low pay and zero-hours contracts.

"Their demands are the same as the dockers nearly 130 years ago. They want a fair wage, guaranteed hours and recognition of their trade union...".

The press release continues:

"The church and the unions "share values of community, dignity and social solidarity … Together we can improve working lives and put dignity for working people ahead of market forces and freedom of capital.

"We can build a popular alliance for economic justice, in Britain and around the world."

Pope Francis has spoken against social injustice throughout his papacy.

In 2015 he denounced "the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature."

At that time, he called the unfettered pursuit of money "the dung of the devil".

Source

• The Tablet
• Catholic Herald
• The Irish Post
• The Guardian
• Image: Tarek Shelaby