UOC warns of increased Internet attacks on the Church

The UOC warns of increased Internet attacks on the Church. A photo: facebook.com

On February 4, 2020, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church published information on its Facebook page information about a sharp increase in explicit threats against the UOC, its clergy, and believers on the Web.

“Recently, in comments on publications on this page, there has been a sharp increase in outright threats against the UOC, its clergy, and believers, inciting religious hatred, defiant and even blasphemous statements about Orthodox shrines.

We urge you to try not to enter into discussions under such comments since it is obvious that most of them are written by the so-called bots,” the UOC warns.

The clergy recall that a botroom (a set of artificial accounts (bots), programs for their creation and work, the people who manage them) for one or two thousand accounts can be managed by a small team – 20-40 people, and more than 100 such teams work in Ukraine today.

"An analysis of the content of negative posts on the UOC makes it possible to conclude that one of such teams is most likely to be working on the formation of offensive content about the Ukrainian Orthodox Church on Facebook," the UOC writes and emphasizes that a record number of negative reviews were left under the most popular publication last month – congratulations from orphans to His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry, which collected more than 400 thousand views, 14 thousand likes, and 2 thousand reposts.

Bots are especially actively “appearing” under publications about the Primate of the UOC, priests explain.

“It is often very difficult not to pay attention to outright slander and insults against His Beatitude. Therefore, how to deal with this phenomenon? There is no other way but to ban such bots, which are nothing more than a tool for informational struggle with the Church. We ask you to take part in the feasible fight against this negative phenomenon and send a complaint about such comments. This can be done by clicking on the three dots next to the comment and then on ‘send a complain’,” the UOC Information and Education Department calls.

As reported earlier, the Odessa sectarian began an information war against an Orthodox priest.

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