Jump directly to the Content
Jump directly to the Content

Sermon Illustrations

Home > Sermon Illustrations

How Tech Utopia Fostered Tyranny

The rumors spread like wildfire: Muslims were secretly lacing a Sri Lankan village’s food with sterilization drugs. Soon, a video circulated that appeared to show a Muslim shopkeeper admitting to drugging his customers—he had misunderstood the question that was angrily put to him. Then over a several-day span, dozens of mosques and Muslim-owned shops and homes were burned down across multiple towns.

The rumors were spread via Facebook, whose newsfeed algorithm prioritized high-engagement content, especially videos. “Designed to maximize user time on site,” said a New York Times article. The algorithm “promotes whatever wins the most attention. Studies have found that posts that tap into negative, primal emotions like anger or fear produce the highest engagement.”

Similar cases of mob violence have taken place in India, Myanmar, Mexico, and elsewhere, with misinformation spread mainly through Facebook and the messaging tool WhatsApp.

This happened despite Facebook’s decision in January 2018 to tweak its algorithm, to prevent this kind of deception that leads to violence. But these changes may actually have made the problem worse. An article in the Columbia Journalism Review explained why: “misinformation is almost always more interesting than the truth.”

Related Sermon Illustrations

University Launches Campaign to Battle Disinformation

Two Clemson University researchers have extensively studied the phenomenon of foreign political disinformation campaigns via social media. To combat this growing problem, they decided ...

[Read More]

Facebook Rumor Stokes Fear of White Vans

Rumors spread through social media have become so ubiquitous, that even city officials have propagated them--despite a lack of actual corroborating evidence. Baltimore mayor Bernard ...

[Read More]