{"id":607296,"date":"2021-07-30T19:22:16","date_gmt":"2021-07-30T23:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=607296"},"modified":"2021-07-30T19:22:19","modified_gmt":"2021-07-30T23:22:19","slug":"facebook-coo-wants-platform-to-get-involved-with-religious-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/facebook-coo-wants-platform-to-get-involved-with-religious-services\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook COO Wants Platform To Get Involved With Religious Services"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/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%2Ffacebook-coo-wants-platform-to-get-involved-with-religious-services%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=607296&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><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/GettyImages-1234304906.jpg?w=1200&amp;h=800&amp;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Facebook Chief Operating Officer (COO) Sheryl Sandberg floated her desire for the social media giant to be the means by which faith-based communities stream their services and interact with each other.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSandberg made her intentions known during a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/faith\/videos\/777847366103030\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">recent virtual faith summit<\/a> with several religious groups in which she highlighted the critical role Facebook played when communities of faith were unable to gather as a result of the novel coronavirus pandemic,\u201d according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.christianpost.com\/news\/facebook-hopes-churches-will-one-day-host-vr-services-on-platform.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Christian Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs a person of faith myself, I know how important it is for my family to be able to stay connected with our Jewish community remotely. We\u2019ve been able to celebrate high holy days \u2026 from our home thanks to technology,\u201d Sandberg said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI sometimes reflect on how much harder the experience for the last year might have been if the pandemic had taken place just a few years earlier because it used to be you needed a TV studio to do what you can now do with your smartphone. Nothing has made me prouder than seeing the role Facebook apps have played in keeping people connected at a time when we all had to be apart,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know that faith organizations and social media are a natural fit because fundamentally, both are about connection. This was true long before the pandemic. Back in 2017, we changed our mission to give people the power to build community around the world closer together. We envisioned a world where our platform could help people build community by connecting with others who shared their interests. And we built a team within Facebook to help us better serve people of faith and houses of worship globally,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFour years later, we are gathering on Facebook to again affirming [sic] the value of connecting people to faith, hope, inspiration and love. Facebook can be a place where members of large denominations find common ground or where people from older or smaller religious tradition find each other no matter where they are in the world,\u201d she continued. \u201cOur hope is that one day people will host religious services in virtual reality spaces as well, or use augmented reality as an educational tool to teach their children the story of their faith.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Nora Jones, who is a pastor at Open Door Ministries in Gainesville, Florida, and serves as Facebook\u2019s director for global faith partnerships, said, \u201cFacebook is so much more than just a place to make people aware of your programs and events. It\u2019s a place where you can build [sic] authentic faith community.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When churches began moving online amid the pandemic, Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, made national headlines in April 2020 when Google suspended their app from the Google Play store after the tech giant deemed its content \u201cinsensitive.\u201d At the time, Pastor Ben Zornes worried about the potential consequences of Big Tech getting involved with faith-based institutions. As the Washington Examiner <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/this-is-censorship-google-suspends-evangelical-churchs-app-for-violating-coronavirus-sensitive-events-policy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">reported<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote readability=\"32.804444444444\">\n<p><em>The Christ Church app remains available to iPhone users in the Apple Store, and the church\u2019s channel is still up on YouTube, but as churches and synagogues move online and would-be worshipers are <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/nation\/2020\/04\/03\/funeral-coronavirus-violations\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">arrested<\/a> for congregating in person, some are concerned about the power tech companies could wield over religious institutions, even unwittingly.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The purpose of the suspended app was to provide their quarantined congregation with \u201csermons and a couple podcasts helping our people think biblically about the coronavirus,\u201d Zornes explained. \u201cWhat does the Bible have to say? How should we think about these things during this time, doing what we believe pastors and the church should be doing, which is helping people not live in fear and helping them to love their neighbor? And apparently, that was flagged somehow.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>[\u2026]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Regarding the possibility the app was flagged deliberately because of the theological content of their coronavirus-related podcasts and sermons, Zornes said, \u201cWe just don\u2019t know,\u201d but added, \u201cI think the thing that\u2019s of concern for us is what other topics could they suppress? Positions that the Church has held for years, and for millennia, derived from Scripture? If they just have a switch to kill our platform and to take away our microphone, it doesn\u2019t seem like they\u2019re very favorable for free speech.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Two days after the original publication of the Washington Examiner\u2019s story, Google reached out to Christ Church to inform them their app had been reinstated unconditionally.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Related<\/strong>: <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/idaho-churchgoers-sue-police-city-government-after-being-arrested-for-not-wearing-masks-outside\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Idaho Churchgoers Sue Police, City Government After Being Arrested For Not Wearing Masks Outs<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><i>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><i>member<\/i><\/a><i>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Facebook Chief Operating Officer (COO) Sheryl Sandberg floated her desire for the social media giant to be the means by which faith-based communities stream their services and interact with each &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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-607296","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\/607296","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607296\/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=607296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}