Meta’s Spiritual Reckoning

“That guy and this company are playing an unprecedented role in our lives.”

These words are spoken by investigative journalist Jeff Horwitz in reference to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The Social Reckoning, a companion piece and follow-up to the 2010 masterpiece The Social Network, dramatises the true story of how Horwitz exposed the malicious and manipulative practices at the heart of Facebook with help of whistleblower Frances Haugen. The drama takes place between 2019-2021, culminating in Zuckerberg reckoning with the real-world consequences of his practices in the January 6 insurrection.

The film has a lot to say about what these practices are, and Horwitz’s own reporting for The Wall Street Journal is comprehensive, but so much is still intentionally kept from the public. I cannot urge people enough to read Shoshana Zuboff’s 2019 book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. We cannot expect ourselves to be able to manage the ways in which Meta is influencing our lives if we do not understand what kind of influence they hold over us in the first place. Terms like “behavioural surplus” should be widely known, and yet I can only assume that you - yes, you - haven’t even come across it before. It is unprecedented.

I have felt an underlying uneasiness about the role Facebook plays in online faith development. When we compare the fruits of the Spirit to the values and practices of Facebook, it is impossible to square that circle. Our faith informs a practice of love, while Meta emboldens hate, isolation and division.

One of the most startling revelations in both Horwitz’s reporting and the film is the fact that Facebook doesn’t just allow extreme and hateful views to exist on their platform. It actively encourages them. The coding and algorithms at the heart of the company is specifically designed to supercharge and amplify these things. 64% of users who are members of Facebook Groups identified by the FBI as “extremist” or “dangerous” were directed there by Facebook’s algorithm.

Facebook’s algorithm doesn’t just allow or tolerate these views as some disingenuous advocation of free speech. It incentivises, rewards and monetises harmful material.

In most cases, when a product so popular is so at odds with the Christian faith, it is relatively straightforward to put together a robust response. Speak with your money, stop buying the product, and advocate for the better alternative. Are you uncomfortable with the teaching of a particular pastor or church? Don’t platform them. Is your favourite skincare product built on exploitation or practices that are destructive to the environment? Stop buying it.

In this case it isn’t as simple. It is naive to say that one can simply remove oneself from the Meta ecosystem, because that ecosystem is one of the infrastructure systems that huge portions of modern life are reliant upon. Facebook’s Civic Integrity Team were aware of the dangerous and harmful effects of their practices and algorithm, but under the leadership of Zuckerberg they decided to prioritise profit. They certainly didn’t share those findings with the public. To remove yourself from the Meta ecosystem is to attempt to escape the influence of a company with cameras in every home and in everyone’s pockets, a market capitalisation bigger than the GDP of over 100 countries, and control over the infrastructure of our working and social lives.

The church cannot plead ignorance. This is a tech subject on the surface, but it has massive implications on how we engage with our spirituality.

I have first hand experience with this. My previous role was in online ministry via podcasts. The goal of this ministry was to facilitate difficult but necessary conversations with a posture of civility and vulnerability, but the more I pursued this the more I realised that to be an almost impossible task.

The conversations and interactions I had in-person or one-on-one online were invariably lovely, robust, and constructive. 99% of the other engagement online was hostile, hateful, divisive and destructive. This is not an exaggeration. The vast majority of comments, DMs, and engagement on content specifically designed to prompt robust and constructive conversations about Christian faith was at best negative, at worst extremism.

Initially I took this as a reflection on the content. It mustn’t be effective, because this Instagram clip did nothing but conjure comments either calling myself Satan or suggesting my cohost had schizophrenia. Of course this isn’t true; all of the genuine human interaction online or in-person was proof of spiritual formation and discipleship. But when fed into the “free speech machine” of Meta, the content was distributed to those most likely to be outraged or infuriated by it. This always drew the biggest engagement.

This should prompt us to think seriously about the role of Meta in our spirituality and faith communities. In our churches, outliers are welcomed and treated with dignity. The Gospel is a conduit for flourishing life to the full. Meta’s practices repurpose it into rage-bait.

This isn’t acceptable. If you aren’t scared of what that leads to, you haven’t understood the scope of this problem and the effects it has on faith development. We need to talk about this, and we need to understand the stakes.

Meta can and does play a bigger role in the faith development of young people than your church council. Let that sink in, let it provoke big and uncomfortable feelings. Only then will we be able to take unprecedented action.