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''See also:'' [[Internet atheism and the coronavirus pandemic]] | ''See also:'' [[Internet atheism and the coronavirus pandemic]] | ||
Revision as of 03:10, April 29, 2023
During the period of 2008 to 2012, the atheist community made a concerted effort to spread atheism through means of the internet. However, leading atheist websites saw plunges in web traffic during the latter period of this time.[1] See also: Internet atheism
An article entitled Internet atheism: The thrill is gone! declares: "In 2007, the Bible believer Chuck Norris noted that atheists were making a concerted effort to spread atheism via the internet. As you you will soon see via the graphs below, it has been an abysmal failure. The atheist community flooded the internet with a lot of shallow, ill-reasoned fluff that many in the public quickly dismissed."[2]
For more information see: Internet atheism - post 2007 market share loss
Contents
- 1 Large list of atheist websites that have lost much of their web traffic with supporting data
- 2 Internet outreach and the Matthew effect: Atheist websites vs. religious websites
- 3 Google trends graphs: Search of atheism/agnosticism related terms
- 4 American Atheists website and its loss of Google referral traffic
- 5 Sam Harris' websites loss of Google referral web traffic
- 6 RationalWiki and its large drop in Google referral traffic since October 2019
- 7 Richard Dawkins' website and loss of Google referral traffic
- 8 Center for Inquiry website's loss of Google referral web traffic
- 9 Freethoughtblogs
- 10 Skeptoid.com's Loss of Google referral web traffic
- 11 Atheist Republic's loss of Google referral web traffic
- 12 Atheist Alliance International website: Loss of Google referral traffic
- 13 Secular Web's website: Loss of Google referral traffic
- 14 The Orbit: Loss of Google referral traffic
- 15 Atheist Ireland website: Loss of Google referral traffic
- 16 The Atheist Revolution website: Loss of Google referral traffic
- 17 John W. Loftus' Debunking Christianity website: Loss of Google referral traffic
- 18 Christian websites and the pandemic
- 19 Decline of YouTube atheism
- 20 Elevatorgate and Richard Dawkins' loss of online influence
- 21 Post sexual harassment allegations against Lawrence Krauss and David Silverman, searches for atheism related topics have dropped markedly
- 22 Reddit atheism
- 23 Ineffectiveness of much of internet material
- 24 Notes
Large list of atheist websites that have lost much of their web traffic with supporting data
Internet outreach and the Matthew effect: Atheist websites vs. religious websites
See also: Internet outreach and the Matthew effect: Atheist websites vs. religious websites
Study.com defines the Matthew effect thusly, "The Matthew Effect is a term that describes the concept in society of accumulated advantage. It argues that people who start from a place of advantage, like intelligence, fame, wealth, or skill, will have the opportunity to accrue more of that advantage compared to others. The Matthew Effect is often thought of by the phrase, "the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer."[3] The Matthew effect's etymology can be traced to Gospel of Matthew which declares: "For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away." (Matthew 25:29, RSV).
Because the religious population is larger than the atheist/agnostic populations and raises more money for web marketing budgets than the atheist/agnostic populations, they greatly outperform atheist websites in terms of web traffic. In addition, Google tends to rank large websites with a lot of traffic higher at Google for various search terms - especially high volume searches. So large Christian websites with a lot of web traffic have a big competitive advantage over atheist websites. Furthermore, religious groups often have more evangelistic zeal and also have more international cooperation in terms of web outreach efforts.
As time has progressed the gap between the effectiveness of religious websites vs. atheist websites in terms of reaching larger audiences has widened and will most likely widen further. For example, Christian websites are greatly outperforming atheist websites in terms of their respective web outreaches (see: Internet evangelism: Christians vs. atheists).
For more information, please see: Internet outreach and the Matthew effect: Atheist websites vs. religious websites.
See also: Google trends - Atheism and agnosticism terms
2019 Google trends graphs for the terms: Atheism, atheist, Richard Dawkins, agnostic and agnosticism
2019 Google trends world graphs
2019 Google trends USA graphs
For more information, please see: Post sexual harassment allegations against Lawrence Krauss and David Silverman, searches for atheism related topics have dropped markedly and A shambolic atheist community faces some tough choices
American Atheists website and its loss of Google referral traffic
See also: Internet atheism and the coronavirus pandemic
Google uses over 200 factors to evaluate the quality and the relevance of a website to various topics.
Sam Harris' websites loss of Google referral web traffic
Google uses over 200 factors to evaluate the quality and the relevance of a website to various topics.
RationalWiki and its large drop in Google referral traffic since October 2019
See also: RationalWiki and the coronavirus pandemic and RationalWiki and web traffic and RationalWiki
In addition, according to SEMRush, RationalWiki dropped from a 66 domain authority score on October 21, 2023 to a 44 domain authority score on February 22, 2023. Domains with low domain scores typically have less traffic, less authoritative websites linking to them and more lower quality websites linking to them.
Google uses over 200 factors to evaluate the quality and the relevance of a website to various topics.
Indications that RationalWiki lacked funds during the pandemic
See also: RationalWiki and the coronavirus pandemic
On May 29, 2022, one of the founders of the RationalWiki website indicated "Currently the donations we get are sparse... We have not done a donation drive in a long time and have not been self-supporting for over a year....".[4] Rationalwiki has not complied with non-profit reporting requirements for 7 consecutive years.[5] See also: Atheist organizations and fundraising and Atheist fundraising vs. religious fundraising
Indications that RationalWiki had poor leadership during the pandemic
See also: RationalWiki and its poor leadership during the pandemic and Atheism and leadership
There are indications that RationalWiki had poor leadership during the coronavirus pandemic (see: RationalWiki and its poor leadership during the pandemic).
RationalWiki lost a significant amount of its popularity from August 2020 to January 2023 according to the Mangools SEO tool
Richard Dawkins' website and loss of Google referral traffic
See also: Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science website
Center for Inquiry website's loss of Google referral web traffic
See also: Center for Inquiry
Google uses over 200 factors to evaluate the quality and the relevance of a website to various topics.
Freethoughtblogs
See also: Freethought Blogs and Internet atheism
Freethought Blogs is a spinoff of ScienceBlogs launched by PZ Myers and Ed Brayton.
Freethought Blogs has lost a very large proportion of its monthly Google referral traffic
Web traffic of Freethought Blogs dramatically declines from June 2019 to September 2019
On June 23, 2019, Freethought Blogs was the 90,953th most popular website in the world according to Alexa, but by September 23, 2019 Freethought Blogs was merely the 170,112th most popular website in the world according to Alexa.
Web traffic of Freethought Blogs: July 2015 to March 2019
Alexa is a web traffic tracking company. In 2015 and 2016, Freethought Blogs saw a large decrease in its Alexa ranking.
Skeptoid.com's Loss of Google referral web traffic
See also: Skeptoid
Google uses over 200 factors to evaluate the quality and the relevance of a website to various topics.
Atheist Republic's loss of Google referral web traffic
See also: Atheist Republic
Google uses over 200 factors to evaluate the quality and the relevance of a website to various topics.
Atheist Alliance International website: Loss of Google referral traffic
See also: Atheist Alliance International
Google uses over 200 factors to evaluate the quality and the relevance of a website to various topics.
Secular Web's website: Loss of Google referral traffic
See also: Secular Web
Loss of Google referral traffic to the Secular Web's website
The Orbit: Loss of Google referral traffic
See also: The Orbit
Google uses over 200 factors to evaluate the quality and the relevance of a website to various topics.
Atheist Ireland website: Loss of Google referral traffic
See also: Michael Nugent
The Atheist Revolution website: Loss of Google referral traffic
See also: Internet atheism
Google uses over 200 factors to evaluate the quality and the relevance of a website to various topics.
John W. Loftus' Debunking Christianity website: Loss of Google referral traffic
See also: John W. Loftus
Google uses over 200 factors to evaluate the quality and the relevance of a website to various topics.
Christian websites and the pandemic
See also: Internet evangelism: Christians vs. atheists
A number of major Christian websites, such as Christianity.com and Gotquestions.org, saw significant increases in their Google referral traffic during the difficult coronavirus pandemic time period (See: Internet evangelism: Christians vs. atheists).
Decline of YouTube atheism
In December 2015, a video entitled What Killed YouTube Atheism? was released giving a number of reasons YouTube atheism saw a big decline.[8]
Elevatorgate and Richard Dawkins' loss of online influence
See also: Atheist movement and Elevatorgate
Richard Dawkins is still widely criticized for causing embarrassment to his fellow atheists via his Elevatorgate scandal and for igniting deep fractures in the atheist movement.[9]
Graph showing Richard Dawkins' loss of influence post Elevatatorgate
See also: Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science website
As can be seen by the graph below, by means of embedded code on his website from Quantcast, Quantcast directly measured the web traffic of Richard Dawkins' website. Traffic to Dawkins website is significantly down post-Elevatorgate scandal.
Although his following of Dawkian atheist has significantly waned post-Elevatorgate and due to his generally abrasive manner, he does retain a small cult following (See: Richard Dawkins' loss of influence and Richard Dawkins' cult of personality and Atheist cults).
In October 2012, Rebecca Watson published a story about Elevatorgate and its aftermath in Slate entitled, It Stands to Reason, Skeptics Can Be Sexist Too: I spoke out about sexual harassment among atheists and scientists. Then came the rape threats.[12]
The web traffic was measured via Quantcast which directly measured Dawkins' website traffic via embedded code on his website.[13]
Recent web traffic according to Quantcast which directly measured Dawkins' website traffic
Alexa ranking of Richard Dawkins' website
See also: Alexa rankings of Richard Dawkins' website
Reddit atheism
See also: Reddit atheism
Reddit atheism, also known as r/atheism, is one of the largest internet groups of atheists.[15]
In 2013 Reddit atheism lost its main page status
In 2013 it suffered a major setback as it lost its status as a default subreddit (default subreddits are the forums that all non-logged in users see when they visit the site. In other words, the atheism subreddit was removed from its homepage).[16]
In 2016, due to Reddit removing inactive "ghost accounts", Reddit reduced the amount of members in Reddit atheism by 10,000 user accounts.[17]
Reddit atheism has a bad reputation
A June 14, 2013 Mashable article declared: "In recent years, r/atheism has become known for memes, images, quote pictures and other content viewed by some as "low brow."[15]
According to the website Motherboard.com, "The term “reddit atheist” has evolved as a shorthand in recent years for a negative internet cliché, that of the rabid Richard Dawkins supporter, the mansplainer..." [17]
Historically, the atheist population has often used mockery as a substitution for reasonable discussion/debate and Reddit atheism is a continuation of this tradition (see: Atheism and mockery).
Ineffectiveness of much of internet material
In 2007, WorldNetDaily featured a column by Chuck Norris concerning atheism and the internet which declared:
| “ | Atheists are making a concerted effort to win the youth of America and the world. Hundreds of websites and blogs on the Internet seek to convince and convert adolescents, endeavoring to remove any residue of theism from their minds and hearts by packaging atheism as the choice of a new generation. While you think your kids are innocently surfing the Web, secular progressives are intentionally preying on their innocence and naïveté.
What's preposterous is that atheists are now advertising and soliciting on websites particularly created for teens... YouTube, the most popular video site on the Net for young people, is one of their primary avenues for passing off their secularist propaganda.[18] |
” |
Atheism internet outreach efforts, however, are very ineffective.
Notes
- ↑ Internet atheism: The thrill is gone!
- ↑ Internet atheism and skepticism: The thrill is gone!
- ↑ What is the Matthew effect
- ↑ Difference between revisions of "RationalWiki talk:Site support", Revision as of 17:15, 29 May 2022 (edit) (undo)
- ↑ Is the Foundation Defunct?, RationalWiki talk:RationalMedia Foundation/Archive2, 22:50, 26 August 2021. Rationalwiki.org.
- ↑ Richard Dawkins says Christianity is world's best defence against radical Islam, Christianity Today, January 2016
- ↑ Professional Atheist Dawkins Says Christianity ‘Bulwark Against Something Worse’, by Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D, Breitbart News Network, Jan 12, 2016
- ↑ What Killed YouTube atheism?
- ↑
- Richard Dawkins: Skeptic of women? - Salon, July 8, 2011
- Sharing a lift with Richard Dawkins by David Allen Green - New Stateman - 06 July 2011
- Richard Dawkins Torn Limb From Limb—By Atheists - Gawker
- Atheists address sexism issues - USA Today
- Richard Dawkins, check the evidence on the 'chilly climate' for women by Emily Band, The Guardian, July 24, 2011
- Richard Dawkins and male privilege By Phil Plait, Discover Magazine, July 5, 2011 10:30 am
- ↑ 2012 has been a very BAD year for Richard Dawkins's website according to Quantcast
- ↑ Richard Dawkins' loss of influence
- ↑ It Stands to Reason, Skeptics Can Be Sexist Too: I spoke out about sexual harassment among atheists and scientists. Then came the rape threats by Rebecca Watson, Slate, October 2012
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Quantcast - Quantcast Measure
- ↑ Web traffic of Richard Dawkins' main website
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 Reddit Atheists Have New Leadership After Turbulent Coup
- ↑ Reddit dumps r/atheism and r/politics from its default homepage
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 Reddit Rapture: How r/atheism Suddenly Lost 10,000 Users
- ↑ https://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55789
