Churches allegedly use invasive phone-monitoring tech to discourage congregants’ ‘sinful’ behavior

Church phone monitoring overview: 

• Who: Churches reportedly use anti-porn applications such as Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You to keep tabs on their congregations’ online activity. 
• Why: The churches use the “accountability apps” to make sure their congregants don’t view online content that is immoral or unhealthy. 
• Where: The church phone monitoring reportedly occurs nationwide. 

Certain churches around the United States reportedly use anti-porn applications such as Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You to keep tabs on the online activities of their congregants. 

The “accountability apps” charge users a monthly fee to track and send the online activity of an individual to a third party, known as an “accountability partner,” WIRED reports. 

Evangelical Southern Baptist church Gracepoint, which focuses on serving college campuses, is known to engage in church phone monitoring by using Covenant Eyes software. 

Gracepoint is on record saying that the church signed up as many as 450 of its congregants to use the Covenant Eyes monitoring app in 2012, WIRED reports. 

Phone and online monitoring applications are not unknown to consumers; however, church phone monitoring is a lesser-known form of surveillance compared to software used to keep track of children’s activity.

Church phone monitoring ensures congregants do not view ‘unhealthy,’ ‘immoral’ content, WIRED reports

What differentiates church phone monitoring is that it specifically looks to keep tabs on whether an individual accesses or views online content that it deems to be unhealthy or immoral, WIRED reports. 

One app, which was developed by anti-pornography nonprofit Fight The New Drug and has over 100,000 downloads on the Google Play store, goes as far as to keep track of how often an individual masturbates. 

Google has determined that both Covenant Eyes, which purports to be able to differentiate between pornographic and non-pornographic images, and Accountable2You violate the tech company’s policies, WIRED reports. 

Covenant Eyes, meanwhile, reportedly says it is “concerned” about the possibility of “people being monitored without proper consent” and declared that the surveillance works best when it is done in a relationship where there is not an imbalance of power. 

In addition to the monitoring service, Covenant Eyes is also known to organize conferences in which the company tries to educate individuals about the dangers of pornography and how its product can be a much-needed solution, WIRED reports. 

In related news, a group of adult performers filed complaints against Meta Platforms and OnlyFans last month over claims the latter bribed Meta into placing their accounts on terrorism watch lists to kill competition in the online adult industry. 

Have you used a church phone monitoring app? Let us know in the comments! 

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