Cults are particularly popular in times of crisis because they offer simple answers to complex topics and life contexts. Various extreme faiths take advantage of this and use social media to recruit people to their ideologies. They use very perfidious, actually very simple strategies. They lure people with superficial social media content. We explain exactly how this works in this article.

Warning about religious fundamentalist pages and groups on Facebook

Such Facebook GROUPS are usually connected to Facebook PAGES . These pages mostly have harmless names such as: “Grandma’s old recipes” or “Sayings and Greetings” .

Even if page names like “Grandma's old recipes” or “Sayings and greetings” seem harmless, in the end they are so-called “comment baiting” (you are encouraged to comment) by religious fundamentalist pages and groups on Facebook in order to attract new members advertise!

Facebook allows PAGE administrators to create related GROUPS. You can use Facebook in 3 different ways.

  1. As a profile: People create a Facebook account with their own name. You can become friends with other people.
  2. As a Page: A Page is intended for companies, organizations, brands, etc. So PROFILE you can follow such pages by marking them with “Like”.
  3. As a Facebook group: A Facebook group can be imagined as a small network in which people with common interests come together and exchange ideas.

What does this mean in this case? A PROFILE creates a PAGE and links it to a GROUP . It is not possible to determine who the creator of the PAGE is because they are not displayed on a PAGE. This PAGE creates an associated GROUP. The NAME of the PAGE can be different from that of the GROUP.

The specific process:

The Facebook GROUP is called: “ Sayings and Greetings ” (1)
The associated Facebook PAGE : “ In Search of God’s Traces ” (2)

Screenshot / Facebook group
Screenshot / Facebook group

If you look at the title of the page, in this case “ Sayings and Greetings ,” you don’t at first suspect that there is anything religious behind it.

At this point it should be mentioned that this is just one example of countless combinations of such pages and groups on Facebook!

Simple questions lure you into religious, fundamentalist groups!

Users in different groups are lured with trivial and simple sayings. For example, one question is: “What was your favorite perfume in the 80s” or “Which concert are you grateful for having experienced?” or “What would you never buy even if you were very rich?

Here is another example from the Sayings and Greetings in connection with the “Faith in God” . The question here : “Your next travel destination must begin with the same letter as your first name. Where are you going?”

Screenshot / Facebook group
Screenshot / Facebook group

These are questions that every user can quickly answer. It is not uncommon for such posts to have tens of thousands of likes and comments , as in this case over 25,000 comments .

From this screenshot you can also see that a simple question is usually asked first and then a religious status post. In this example it was the question “Which job should definitely pay better?” and then “If you don't say to the Lord: Thank you!, then you will never be successful.”

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The whole thing may seem harmless, but what really happens as a result?


  1. If you comment on something, your friends will also see it in most cases. But also vice versa! If a friend comments on something, this will also be displayed on your homepage. This happens through the Facebook algorithm in conjunction with “public groups”. Since these are very simple questions, everyone is happy to “play along” here.
  2. Since you comment on such status reports, Facebook now “thinks” that you find such posts, pages, and groups interesting and is bringing more and more pages and groups on this topic to your homepage/news stream and the reach of such posts is increasing.
  3. If you comment on such status posts, in most cases you will receive a PRIVATE MESSAGE. So did we after our research on this topic. This begins with “May God bless you and your family!” Tonight in the Facebook group there will be a sermon about faith and life and how to welcome the return of the Lord Jesus. I think if you join in, you'll get an answer you've never heard before. Would you like to take part?” and at the end “online” sermon times will be suggested!
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Screenshot / Facebook Messenger

In the end, social media users are confronted with religious fundamentalism and extremism through completely harmless-seeming and highly viral postings.

Conclusion


  1. WHO is behind these SITES and GROUPS cannot be said. Nor whether it is 100% a cult. The fact is that it is religious fundamentalism.
  2. Simple questions prompt users to comment and ultimately engage them in a conversation. The suspicion arises that members are to be recruited in this way!
  3. During our research we repeatedly came across the “Church of Almighty God”. But since these are so interconnected, we can only confirm this to a limited extent! This is a religious community from China that increasingly tried to proselytize among Christians in Germany in social networks in 2020 , as the Evangelical Alliance in Germany reported .
  4. NOTE: Religious communities become dangerous when they claim sole truth and aim to suppress the development of their members and force separation from the outside world.
  5. The “Evangelical Information Center for Churches – Sects – Religions” even addresses the topic of Facebook groups on its website and writes:The Church of Almighty God is very keen to recruit new members. It focuses on believing Christians, for example from the free church environment. In Facebook groups, the missionary pressure can be quite high. There have been several incidents attributed to the group by the Chinese government. These include a murder case, kidnappings of members of other Christian groups and the attack on a child who went blind as a result. The Church of Almighty God denies any connection with any of these events.”
  6. So if you see such “simple” questions on Facebook and they are also connected to religious groups or pages, then, even if it is tempting, you should NOT comment on them and certainly not share them, because you will get even more from these interactions Reach on Facebook. There are also sponsored posts from time to time. Why Facebook itself doesn't do anything about it, even though it is regularly pointed out or reported, is a mystery to us!

Sources:

Also read: Dubious posts in Facebook groups – what’s behind them?


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )