{"id":601768,"date":"2021-07-24T10:36:27","date_gmt":"2021-07-24T14:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=601768"},"modified":"2021-07-24T10:36:41","modified_gmt":"2021-07-24T14:36:41","slug":"religious-leaders-call-out-facebook-for-new-prayer-feature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/religious-leaders-call-out-facebook-for-new-prayer-feature\/","title":{"rendered":"Religious leaders call out Facebook for new \u2018prayer\u2019 feature"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Freligious-leaders-call-out-facebook-for-new-prayer-feature%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=601768&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div id=\"attachment_2467298\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\">\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-2467298\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A picture shows logos of U.S. online social media and social networking service Facebook. (LOIC VENANCE\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h5>OAN Newsroom<br \/>UPDATED 7:30 AM PT \u2013 Saturday, July 24, 2021<\/h5>\n<p>Social media giant Facebook has received massive backlash from religious communities after launching its newest feature of a prayer button. On Friday, several members of various faith communities spoke against the new \u201cprayer\u201d feature by calling it a sick attempt at monetizing religion.<\/p>\n<p>Catholic writer Simcha Fisher went on to express, \u201cthe button was adding a layer of impersonality and a layer of artificiality, which just felt very foreign to what we were doing when we pray for each other.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The social media giant slowly began to roll out the feature back in May, which allows users to click and respond to prayer requests. Experts have warned the use of the new feature gave Big Tech access to sensitive user data and added it was ultimately about revenue for the social media company.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou are in one way or another providing more information to an organization that thrives on finding ways to monetize your information,\u201d cybersecurity expert Adam Levin stated. \u201cYou\u2019re essentially a product, but now you are a religious product as opposed to just a secular product.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">TIL\u2026 Facebook is testing a prayer posts feature for groups <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/H18SDIpui3\">pic.twitter.com\/H18SDIpui3<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MattNavarra\/status\/1400372011273162752?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 3, 2021<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Those in the religious community have expressed the new feature made them feel exploited by Facebook.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou have to assume that they\u2019re trying to exploit you in some way or the other, so I don\u2019t know any reason why this would be an exception and because it\u2019s about our spiritual life it seemed especially gross\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They also questioned what the social media giant hoped to gain from the new feature and what data would be gathered from it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDrilling down to the level of collecting information about the kind of things that people actually ask prayer for or if they\u2019re just collecting the kind of people who would be likely to be asking prayer and then targeting them for ads about spiritual things,\u201d Fisher explained. \u201cYou just always have to assume it\u2019s about money in one way or another.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to Facebook, faith groups are seen as a vital community in order to boost engagement on the social media platform.<\/p>\n<h4>MORE NEWS:&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/state-dept-calls-for-taliban-to-accept-peace-negotiations-amid-escalating-violence\/\">State Dept. Calls For Taliban To Accept Peace Negotiations Amid Escalating Violence<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A picture shows logos of U.S. online social media and social networking service Facebook. (LOIC VENANCE\/AFP via Getty Images) OAN NewsroomUPDATED 7:30 AM PT \u2013 Saturday, July 24, 2021 Social &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-601768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}