Internal documents recently leaked to MIT Technology Review revealed that 19 of the top 20 Facebook pages for Christians are run by foreign troll farms operating primarily out of Kosovo and Macedonia.
For those unaware, “troll farms” are “professionalized groups that work in a coordinated fashion to post provocative content, often propaganda, to social networks” via pre-established channels to an unsuspecting audience. Not to be confused with “click farms” (companies that span “clickbait” content to generate ad revenue via clicks), the motives of troll farms are often far more coordinated and nefarious.
These Christian-centric pages reached a massive audience — more than 75 million Facebook users per month — and their unassuming followers widely share their content. (For a list of the affected pages, check out this article from Relevant Magazine).
While this revelation can help — at least in part — explain some of the more troubling trends in American Evangelicalism we’ve experienced over the past couple of years, the leaked documents reveal a broader (and more troubling) picture of our fragile social institutions.
In the months before the 2020 Presidential Election, content produced by troll farms organically reached more than 140 million Americans — 75% of whom never followed any of the pages from which the…
