Religious leaders call out Facebook for new ‘prayer’ feature

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 7:30 AM PT – Saturday, July 24, 2021

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 “prayer” feature by calling it a sick attempt at monetizing religion.

Catholic writer Simcha Fisher went on to express, “the 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.”

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.

“You are in one way or another providing more information to an organization that thrives on finding ways to monetize your information,” cybersecurity expert Adam Levin stated. “You’re essentially a product, but now you are a religious product as opposed to just a secular product.”

TIL… Facebook is testing a prayer posts feature for groups pic.twitter.com/H18SDIpui3

— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) June 3, 2021

Those in the religious community have expressed the new feature made them feel exploited by Facebook.

“You have to assume that they’re trying to exploit you in some way or the other, so I don’t know any reason why this would be an exception and because it’s about our spiritual life it seemed especially gross”

They also questioned what the social media giant hoped to gain from the new feature and what data would be gathered from it.

“Drilling down to the level of collecting information about the kind of things that people actually ask prayer for or if they’re just collecting the kind of people who would be likely to be asking prayer and then targeting them for ads about spiritual things,” Fisher explained. “You just always have to assume it’s about money in one way or another.”

According to Facebook, faith groups are seen as a vital community in order to boost engagement on the social media platform.

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