Francis could be joining Facebook

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Francis may one day not long from now have his very own profile on the world’s favourite social network. The Vatican is looking into the possibility of creating a papal Facebook page. Vatican Insider has learnt from Curia members that the process is well under way and the Vatican’s tech experts are working on it. The Vatican has assigned a team of IT technicians to look into ways in which to prevent offensive or inappropriate messages and other such material from being posted on the Pope’s page. This is the biggest obstacle that would need to be overcome.

Figures show that new technologies open up a sea of opportunities for this incredibly popular Pope who is adored by young people across the world, to spread his teachings. The Pope currently has 12 million followers on Twitter and his tweets are retweeted more frequently that even President Obama’s posts are. Francis’ tweets reach as many as sixty million users.

The papal Twitter account @Pontifex was launched at Joseph Ratzinger’s request on 12 December 2012, in eight different language versions. Latin was later added, on 17 January 2014, sparking great interest and clocking up a surprising number of followers. By the time Benedict XVI left the pontificate on 28 February, he had about 3 million followers on Twitter. The account went into “hibernation” temporarily during the sede vacante period and was then re-activated on 17 March, five days after Francis’ election. Since then, its popularity has soared. The Spanish account currently has the most followers, followed by English and Italian. But the Pope’s message are not just read by direct followers, five times more Twitter users receive them thanks to the retweeting option. The President of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Mgr. Claudio Maria Celli, said over 60 million people receive the Pope’s tweets, which the archbishop calls a “pill” or “a drop of spirituality and hope.”
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vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/the-vatican/detail/articolo/francesco-francis-francisco-social-network-social-network-redes-sociales-32373
 
I’m interested to see if they can figure out how to keep the vitriol from a papal facebook page (other than by prohibiting comments altogether). I hope they can!
 
This may not be such a good thing. Facebook has in the past used “facial recognition” programs to gather info and then "share it with others. One day I happened to mention this on facebook based a segment on sixty minutes and to my surprise, one o f the executives in charge of such things replied to me on Facebook!. I asked her some straightforward questions about facial recognition program and is that information shared with others without their consent She never replied , only gave me a link to their policy.

For those who are not familiar with these sophisticated programs. Any face on Facebook can be scanned and then linked to information they have on that person. Since Facebook is private, they do not have to follow the same laws in the U.S concerning collecting pirate information.

Then again, I am amazed on how much information is shared between businesses!

Sierradepadre:shrug:
 
That’s what I get for not paying closer attention to the source. Good ol’ Vatican Insider is prone to running with stories that are exaggerations at best. :o
 
I am glad the Vatican’s tech experts are looking into it.
Sierradepadre:🙂
 
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