Misinformed

The Bible instructs us to pursue what is true - not only should we strive to always tell the truth, but we are to be guided by the truth we find in God's Word. Jesus said in John 16:
13 However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.
14 He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.
15 All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you.

Philippians 4 tells us how to think - and we're told to think on what is true. We live in an age where there is an abundance of information.  And, not all of it is true - some will be used of the enemy to deceive us.  If we're not careful, we will make life-altering decisions based on false or distorted information. We have the Holy Spirit who can help us to use discernment in those decisions, and we can be careful to deploy the power of our conscience within, trained by the Spirit and the Word, to be able to tell right from wrong.  

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We have to guard against buying into information that is not true and even runs counter to the truth of Scripture. 2nd Corinthians 11 reminds us:
12 But what I do, I will also continue to do, that I may cut off the opportunity from those who desire an opportunity to be regarded just as we are in the things of which they boast.
13 For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ.
14 And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.

In our world today, it is important that we are able to discern fact from fiction, that we know what is true and what is not, and to actually discern misinformation from accurate information.

There was an article released recently by the MIT Technology Review, detailing some findings from a 2019 report by a former Facebook employee contending that after the 2016 election, the social media giant was taken to task for the way it processed the information shared on its platform.  The article stated:

Facebook failed to prioritize fundamental changes to how its platform promotes and distributes information. The company instead pursued a whack-a-mole strategy that involved monitoring and quashing the activity of bad actors when they engaged in political discourse, and adding some guardrails that prevented “the worst of the worst.”

The article contends that leading up to the 2020 election:

Troll farms—professionalized groups that work in a coordinated fashion to post provocative content, often propaganda, to social networks—were still building massive audiences by running networks of Facebook pages. Their content was reaching 140 million US users per month—75% of whom had never followed any of the pages. They were seeing the content because Facebook’s content-recommendation system had pushed it into their news feeds.

These farms were found to be operating out of Eastern Europe and ultimately reached half of all Americans prior to the 2020 election. A Facebook spokesperson said that the platform had taken action against some of these so-called "bad actors," but the Technology Review said that "The report found that troll farms were reaching the same demographic groups singled out by the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency (IRA) during the 2016 election, which had targeted Christians, Black Americans, and Native Americans." 

The article treated the combined reach of these troll farms page as a single entity, and said that they comprised "the largest Christian American page on Facebook, 20 times larger than the next largest—reaching 75 million US users monthly, 95% of whom had never followed any of the pages."

In October 2019, the top sixteen Christian American pages on Facebook were all run by these troll farms.  Not until you get to Guideposts' page at #17 do you find a legitimate page.  The top 5, all originating from troll farms are: Be Happy Enjoy Life, Jesus is my Lord, You Can, Speak Loudly, and Purpose of Life.  And, it's likely that it was shared with so many news feeds because Facebook will push content to people that did not "like" the page; pages that were shared or commented on would gain extra coverage, it seems.

The author of the report said, “Our platform has given the largest voice in the Christian American community to a handful of bad actors, who, based on their media production practices, have never been to church,” adding, “Our platform has given the largest voice in the African American community to a handful of bad actors, who, based on their media production practices, have never had an interaction with an African American.”

This illustrates what I have been saying for a while now: be careful - vet your sources.  I think we have to make sure that we are making our decisions based on good information, and unfortunately, in this environment, we have to do our due diligence, making sure that the information sources we use have a proven track record of reliability.  We should be people who are absolutely committed to truth.

We should do the research and utilize a powerful force God has given to us: discernment.  We can rely on the power of the Holy Spirit, who governs our lives according to the truth we find in God's Word.  I believe there are times when certain statements or series of statements just don't feel right; we get a "check" in our spirit, as it's referred to - that could very well be God leading us away from deception.

Remember, we have an enemy who specializes in disinformation.  He will attempt to fill our minds with false narratives about God, ourselves, and the world around us.  We have the power to resist Him and pursue what is right and good.