LDS Org has major investments in Alphabet which owns Facebook.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-64790111

"....teaches missionaries how to use social media to find people for conversion by creating targeted Instagram Reel videos and Facebook posts. And they're expected to send at least 50 social media messages per day to potential converts, based on who has engaged or interacted with their posts.

"It was a bit weird," Rebekah says. "You had to be very public about your life and you were trying to get interactions from people. Sometimes you do kind of feel like an influencer."

Just what social media needs: more scammers spreading half truths.

dagny Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Just what social media needs: more scammers
> spreading half truths.

The church makes money off Facebook and Instagram investments. I'm sure that's just coincidence!

It is just a coincidence. I’d be surprised if all the LDS missionary traffic combined constituted one hundredth of one percent of the total traffic on Facebook. And Facebook is increasingly the haunt of old people.

LDS Inc owns a major pulpwood farm used in making paper. That does not mean that they buy toilet paper because they make money off paper. They buy toilet paper because they need toilet paper.

They are using Facebook because they need Facebook. Tracting just doesn’t cut it anymore.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/02/2023 11:11AM by Brother Of Jerry.

I heard that the church is going to rehab their bathrooms with bidet devices. It will save them millions in tp each year.

Alphabet owns Google, you silly goose, not Facebook. And a 1-1.5% portfolio stake--that's what the LDS church has in Facebook--is not "major investments."

As for the rest of your post, you'll find an open thread on the topic of the new BBC documentary several entries down the page.

Yeah, the statement that Alphabet owns Facebook damages whatever credibility George may have had.

It takes about two sentences of text to identify our old friend. His writing style, topical obsessions, and creative reinterpretations of facts give him away in no time.

I should probably shut up, though, before he complains about me to Noam Chomsky.

[|] Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yeah, the statement that Alphabet owns Facebook
> damages whatever credibility George may have had.

For Alphabet read Meta.

It makes no odds to the argument. The LDS Org owns a number of shares in the company which runs Faecebook and Instagram. Both Meta and Alphabet are companies which aim to manipulate public discourse and destroy personal privacy, and have an unhealthy relationship with the state. They should both be given the same treatment Standard Oil once was... as should the LDS corporation.

Yeah, details matter. Google is not Facebook and a portfolio that broadly represents the market is the same thing as having an ETF of the market. Your argument about the church profiting from mind control is ridiculous.

As for using antitrust laws to break up the tech giants, I agree fully with that. One doesn't need paranoid delusions about Mormonism to understand that monopolies are illegal and entities that manipulate public opinion for profit must be controlled by the state.

"Force" ...?

When and where'd you serve your mission?

So the church is trying to create a culture of missionary influencers. That is really funny! From what I've read, being successful as an influencer is harder than it looks. It doesn't strike me as being the most spiritual endeavor. I have to wonder how many missionary shelves will crack by doing this.

It's bad enough they come invade your space at your own house. Now they want to invade your online space too. Where else can they try to set up missionaries to accost people? My list:

Gas station bathrooms

Your workplace lunchroom

Your online sites where you pay bills (before you confirm your payment, would you like to know more about the LDS church?)

Restaurants (instead of a mariachi band, they'll have roving missionaries going table to table)

DMV (while in line, the missionaries are strategically positioned)

Airports (missionaries roaming the departure areas)

Pet parks

Imagine the possibilities!

So I won't appear that I am picking on the poor church missionaries, I will share that my street is some sort of super contact area. Last Tuesday, the sisters were talking to my zombie neighbors when I arrived from work. Two weeks ago, I had the elders and their Nissan pickup in front of my house.

So they don't seem to care if 2 different sets of missionaries work the same street within the same month.

I didn't see an unknown vehicle so I have no idea where it may have been parked.

Maybe there is easy parking or favorite lunch spots near your neighborhood or something. That's giving stalker vibes.

dagny Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's bad enough they come invade your space at
> your own house. Now they want to invade your
> online space too. Where else can they try to set
> up missionaries to accost people? My list:
>
> Gas station bathrooms
>
> Your workplace lunchroom
>
> Your online sites where you pay bills (before you
> confirm your payment, would you like to know more
> about the LDS church?)
>
> Restaurants (instead of a mariachi band, they'll
> have roving missionaries going table to table)
>
> DMV (while in line, the missionaries are
> strategically positioned)
>
> Airports (missionaries roaming the departure
> areas)
>
> Pet parks
>
> Imagine the possibilities!

These are great!

I liked the one about paying bills online :)

I fully expect that the Church will institute a series of "Manifest Destiny" campgrounds across the US, staffed by "service missionaries". The purpose is to explain the westward expansion of America, as exemplified by the LDS westward trek.

Sharon, VT, Palmyra, NY, Harmony, PA, Kirtland, OH, Nauvoo, IL, Winter Quarters, NE, Pilot Butte, NE, Martin's Cove, WY, and SLC, UT. All roughly a short day's drive apart.

Perfect target audience, mostly retirees with enough disposable income to own a camper and probably politically conservative if they think Manifest Destiny is a good thing. By the time they visit all the sites, they will be impressed all to hell with how nice those nice young staff people/guides were. And of course they had to supply contact information to reserve campsites.

who had shown up at my door several years ago were in the local Chevron talking to people in line and offering to do some yard work or some other chore for them. I'd never seen that before.

I also had some missionaries stop me when I was walking my dogs on a Sunday during church. They begged me to allow them to do some yard work, anything, and they promised not to bring up the church, but I still said no.

"Would you like to hear a message about out lord and savior Jesus Christ?"

"What the-- why are you in my fridge?!"

It just their version of mining for gold. You dig up tons of earth, process it, and you get a yield of an valued element that is sold and generates wealth.

So LDS Corp. is just mining for suckers in mass, who produce 10% of their income, which gives LDS Corp. wealth. Missionaries are nothing but virtual miners, who work at their own expense, to produce added wealth to Ensign Peaks.

There have been some problems with online missionary work. Here is a video of an Elder Calvin
https://youtu.be/_QFgc1PWaek

They're looking for Sick Puppies, both as INVESTIGATORS and missionaries.