Scientology vs. Anonymous - The Online Battle
Written by Andrew Meagher (contact - e-mail) -- February 13th, 2008 | Recommend ThisFor those of you who have been unaware of the Anonymous vs. Church of Scientology story, here’s a quick recap.
When videos of Tom Cruise speaking at a Church of Scientology function leaked onto the Internet in January they quickly became the viral topic du jour, showing up on celebrity sites and mainstream news sites alike. The tapes gave outsiders an unprecedented glimpse inside the typically private organization, and showed a fascinating side of Cruise and the Church that few have been privy to.
Church of Scientology attorneys acted quickly to have the videos removed from YouTube and other top video-sharing sites, claiming that the files had been acquired illegally and that sharing them was tantamount to distributing stolen property.
That action in turn angered some fervent critics of Scientology who claimed the Church was attempting to censor the Internet. One group of critics, calling itself “Anonymous,” issued a declaration of war on Scientology and, claiming the banner of “freedom of speech,” launched denial of service attacks on several Scientology websites (ironically trampling the Church’s freedom of speech in the process).
To get a sense of online reaction to the situation I took a look at traffic to two sites that represent the respective sides of the conflict: Scientology.org, the Church of Scientology’s homepage, and Xenu.net, the URL for Operation Clambake, a site which, though not officially linked to Anonymous, has been one of the most prominent critics of the religion. So how did the controversy affect visitation trends in January?
Visits to Scientology.org more than quadrupled in the month of January, with over 200,000 individuals visiting the site. Xenu.net also saw a bump in visitors, ending the month with a significant percentage increase, but still only managing less than half the traffic to the Scientology site.
This made me wonder if the Anonymous attacks may have backfired by generating new interest in the religion. Looking strictly at searches for the term “Scientology,” it’s possible that this is exactly what has happened.
I don’t want to get into taking sides in this debate, there’s enough of that already taking place in chat rooms and on message boards all over the web. I just wanted to see what trends are in the data surrounding the issue. I’ll leave it to you to decide what it all means.
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February 13th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
I think the people count is far from being the complete picture. I know I for one have visited the scientology site on a couple of occasions during January. Each time I spent only a few seconds there mainly to have a little laugh before moving on. The number of visits to scientology goes up but I wouldn’t say the campaign has backfired.
If you look at the average stay you see that time spent on the site by visitors at scientology has remained static (-3%) while visitors on xenu.net spent 48% more time on the site.
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/scientology.org+xenu.net?metric=avgStay
The data is a little difficult to interpret though as both sites dropped in December.
Pages/visit also does something similar - both sites increase but with xenu.net increasing faster.
February 14th, 2008 at 5:53 am
Why do you call scientology a religion ?
It’s a sect, in the french meaning, like a “Cult” for you english-speaker !
February 14th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Did the attempts of un-censorship from anonymous really backfire because of spikes in Scientology web traffic or was this simply a result of Tom Cruise’s ‘leaked’ videos?
I wonder what the top search terms were around the words “Tom Cruise” during the time period. I’m willing to bet some of them were ..”Is Crazy” and ..”was way cooler in top gun”
~ SF ~
February 15th, 2008 at 10:30 am
you have to remember that the graph you are using is ending on jan 08 and the protests were on feb 10th 2008. Alexa (the web information company) is showing that around FEB 6th is when xenu.net was getting much more traffic then scientology.org. enturbulation.org (forum organizing the raids) has recieved MUCH more traffic then scientology.org in the past few days.
February 16th, 2008 at 1:18 am
With articles and blog posts concerning the protests, as well as Google rankings putting more and more critical sites on page 1 of search results, I predict there will be exponential growth in opposition to the Church of Scientology among mainstream internet users and society at large. Never before has such a wealth of information (xenu.net, Youtube, etc.) been available into what that organization does: intimidation, suppression, human rights abuses, child neglect/abuse, subversion of the legal process, harassment, and so on. Additionally, actual Scientologist documents have recently become widely available on Youtube and photosharing sites, increasing knowledge of the odd upper-level beliefs and self-declared world-domination aspirations of the group.
This is bound to create widespread blowback and a severe crimp in recruitment efforts for the group. Furthermore, details of how the group obtained its religious tax exemption from the IRS are forthcoming, and under review by the 9th circuit court of appeals.
The times, they are a changing. The uncontrolled flow of info offered by the internet is bound to put an end to such shadowy dealings.
March 8th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
I think that the people who go to the official Scientology website will be aware of the elements that don’t add up.
search “anonfollower” on youtube.
See you on the 15th.
~Anon