293
Evangelical app 'Bless Every Home' is mapping personal information of immigrants and non-Christians in a bid to conduct door-to-door religious conversions and “prayerwalking” rituals targeting them. (newrepublic.com)
submitted 6 months ago by ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to c/privacyguides@lemmy.one
63 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It puts a lot of features at the fingertips of the faithful, including the ability to filter whole neighborhoods by religion, ethnicity, “Hispanic country of origin,” “assimilation,” and whether there are children living in the household.

Its core function is to produce neighborhood maps and detailed tables of data about people from non-Anglo-European backgrounds, drawn from commercial sources typically used by marketing and data-harvesting firms.

training videos produced by users show the extent to which evangelical groups are using sophisticated ways to target non-Christian communities, with questionable safeguards around security and privacy.

In one instance, he points to the sharable note-taking function and suggests leaving information for each household, such as “Daughter left for college” and “Mother is in the hospital.”

increasingly popular among Christian supremacist groups, prayerwalking calls on believers to wage “violent prayer” (persistently and aggressively channeling emotions of hatred and anger against Satan), engage in “spiritual mapping” (identifying areas where evil is at work, such as the darkness ruling over an abortion clinic, or the “spirit of greed” ruling over Las Vegas), and conduct prayerwalking (roaming the streets in groups, “praying on-site with insight”).

newly arrived refugees might well find a knock on the door from strangers with knowledge of their personal circumstances distressing—and that’s before these surprise visitors even begin to attempt to convert them.

placing people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds on easy-to-access databases is a dangerous road to go down

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] FreakinSteve@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

I have NEVER heard of ANY christian group speaking out against evangelical attempts to control others. NEVER.

I have NEVER heard of ANY christian organization standing up to government officials to say NO WE DO NOT WANT TO FORCE OUR GOD OR IDEOLOGY ON OTHERS THROUGH GOVERNMENT FORCE. Which is weird because government force is proof that there is no god and/or he has no power of his own.

[-] Sotuanduso@lemm.ee 1 points 6 months ago

Try asking your nearest pastor. It's hard for real Christian statements to get around. Where are you going to hear it?

The news? They won't share it because it's not really news. They don't share much besides events, and news networks are biased towards negative events and crimes, which would generally be perpetrated by fake Christians (like christofascists.)

Social media? Christian statements don't trend because there are too many Christian-haters that downvote and argue. The closest you get is "look at these evil christofascists" kind of stuff like this.

Word of mouth and one-on-one conversations is by far the best way.

[-] FreakinSteve@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

But see that's the part you dont get: there is NO REASON for christian statements to get around. Yours is the only religion that demands that you be a fucking pest to everyone else. You dont know to stop once someone is saved; you switch immediately to cult grooming. It's a religion of evil, not good; a cult of death, not peace. The long term goals are the same as they have always been: scour the earth of infidels.

[-] Sotuanduso@lemm.ee 1 points 6 months ago

Not gonna lie, this sounds like:

"I've never heard of any Christian saying anything against being evil in this way."
"That's because you don't hear from Christians. Try asking one."
"There's no reason to hear from Christians, they're evil in that way."

Frankly, this sounds like it's going to be a long and tiring conversation. If you militantly believe that something so simple as telling a friend that Jesus loves them is an act of fascism, I don't think this is going to be productive or enjoyable for either of us.

[-] FreakinSteve@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

Another lie you told here: you mitigated it down to me speaking of one person.

[-] FreakinSteve@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

And right there you have committed your first lie. You know damn well that none of this is about "simply telling a friend that Jesus loves them". None of it.

This is why you are evil: blatant and shameless attempts to shame and manipulate.

[-] Sotuanduso@lemm.ee 1 points 6 months ago

You think I'm arguing in bad faith, I think you're arguing in bad faith. None of us is going to convince the other, so I'm dropping out here.

[-] FreakinSteve@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

Christianity is bad faith argument by definition.

this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
293 points (100.0% liked)

Privacy Guides

16263 readers
151 users here now

In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.

This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.

You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:

Learn more...

Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!

Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!

This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.

Moderation Rules:

  1. We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
  2. This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
  3. No soliciting engagement: Don't ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
  4. Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
  5. Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
  6. Don't repost topics which have already been covered here.
  7. News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
  8. Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
  9. No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don't abuse our community's willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
  10. No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
  11. Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
  12. General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.

Additional Resources:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
jonah@lemmy.one
dngray@lemmy.one
freddy@lemmy.one
ninchuka@lemmy.one
jonah@lemmy.jonaharagon.net