I read a Buzzfeed article on Flipbook this morning suggesting that dangerous plagiarized clickbait might be a genuine problem of which we should be aware. This is a serious area of prayer for those of us who live and work online. Though the web has given us great opportunities, social media, especially, is increasingly being used by the greedy—worldwide.

The article is exceedingly interesting. It suggests that a lot of the “news” we get online is stolen or plagiarized junk pumped out by websites from Macedonia, Pakistan, and other unlikely places to make money off Facebook and Google. Now I don’t trust Buzzfeed either, but we should be aware of this stuff targeted at Christians, Conservatives, and so on. Of course, they don’t mention the stuff targeted at liberals and secular humanists.

The Spirit has warned me about dangerous plagiarized clickbait

But I had no knowledge to back that up. I knew it was used by the unscrupulous to make money, but I hadn’t been interested in how that worked. The article linked in the first paragraph gives some intriguing glimpses into that world. It suggests that normal Christian procedure is required, but that means you need to be “wily as a serpent, harmless as a dove”.

Do you work prayed up, spiritually in control of your workspace?

If you’ve read my all-time favorite post on The Skilled Workman, Spiritually cleaning up your workspace, then you have some idea about what I’m thinking. The basic premise of that post is that you need to take spiritual control of your workspace. It describes the limits of your authority, in that regard and much more.

I won’t rehash all of that here, but if you are not clear on these things—you should read that article. One of the key concepts is that the Lord has given you the authority to clean up the areas under your responsibility. You do not have to own the area to be spiritually  responsible for that workspace. You can take control over the space around the table in the coffeeshop where you are writing, for example.

Taking control of your computer and network

You certainly take control over your computer [even if it’s a company computer and you can only control it during the time you are assigned to work]. But it’s important to do that. Believe it or not, this process provides virus protection, blesses your computer, and protects your network.

What do you think? We’ll talk more about these things.