For those don't know UBF has a web committee. In this post I will break down in detail what it is, its true purpose, and how it operates.
These are the members of the UBF web committee as of March 2018:
Source: http://www.ubf.org/world-mission-news/international-hq/2017-ubf-committee-annual-report-hq-web-news-committee-ubforg
As you can see the committee is composed of all ubfkoreans. In the past there used to be an UBF native or two in the web committee.
Here is a description of the UBF web team:
"Since UBF Web ministry began in 2007, the website has developed continually..." Source: http://www.ubf.org/world-mission-news/north-america/2012-ubf-web-ministry
"This committee is to post articles on the UBF website. We posted prayer topics of world wide, general director’s messages and announcements, events year around and Bible lectures." Source: http://www.ubf.org/world-mission-news/international-hq/2017-ubf-committee-annual-report-hq-web-news-committee-ubforg
That is half-true about the UBF web team. What many current members don't know is that the UBF web team is on a crusade to remove (or at least hide) EVERY piece of anti-UBF material.
When the UBF web team looks for anti-UBF material to remove they look at 3 places:
1. Wikipedia
2. Prominent/ Popular Search engines and websites
3. Websites and posts created by ex-members
Regards to Wikipedia it is a site where anyone can post and change any information at any time. This has been discussed in an old ubfriends post: http://ubfriends.net/ubfriends2015/ubf-leaders-continue-their-denial/
As for prominent websites this is how the UBF web team operates to alter the web results:
Posted by: Brian Karcher. Director of the Detroit branch of UBF (USA) (until September 2011). Date of publication: September 23, 2011.
At the very beginning of this month [September 2011] , one senior Korean missionary sent me a copy of an e-mail sent initially by the Director of the UBF Internet Committee. [Brian Karcher also writes about the existence of this Web Committee in UBF here .] This man found one negative article about UBF on the Urban Dictionary website . I immediately checked this article and found that it is indeed negative, full of emotions, but at the same time contains some facts.This article was posted on the Internet in 2008, so I don’t understand why this letter was sent with such urgency in this month of 2011. And when I checked it for the last time, it was already deleted. Nevertheless, it is interesting to observe how much UBF leaders fear any negative words, while at the same time taking a defensive position. Below I quote this letter, deleting the sender's and recipients' names. It is also interesting to see that this leader was doing a “mass mailing of this letter.” I [the leaders of UBF] reproached me that during my exit from UBF I also used the "mass mailing". [Apparently, in order to openly explain his position and reasons for leaving. The leaders of this organization, as a rule, try to hush up and hide from the rest the care of their members. If it becomes impossible to hide it further, the UBF leaders try to convince their adepts that the departing person allegedly strayed from the true path, set off for all serious, having decided to leave the cross of the mission and live an easy life, etc .; sometimes they even say that the demon has moved into the outgoing one] . ———- Forwarded message ———- From: —— @ gmail.com> Date: Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 5:29 AM Subject: removing anti-UBF articles : To: ———
Greetings to you, God's servants,
In general, I do not like to create mass mailings, but in this case I really needed your help urgently. Recently, a popular site called the Urban Dictionary attracted my attention. According to an article in Wikipedia, about 15 million people visit this site every month, and 80% of users are under the age of 25 years. This is a very important site that many American students visit every day. This “Urban Dictionary” contains many terms of “street slang” that young people are currently using. Much of this is written in vulgar language, but, nevertheless, it is very popular. It also contains articles on UBF and University Bible Fellowship.These articles are extremely negative. If curious young people use this resource, trying to find out about us, they will certainly turn away from our ministry. I think this is a very important issue for spreading our ministry [UBF organization] among students at the beginning of this new school year.The only way to eliminate these articles is if a sufficient number of people mark it as “Dislike” by clicking on the “Down” icon in the upper right corner of this article. On each computer this can be done only once. As soon as an article becomes very unpopular among the overwhelming majority of votes, editors will remove it from the Urban Dictionary website. Could you find these articles: “UBF” and “University Bible Commonwealth”, and vote that you don’t like them? This will help us eliminate their poisonous attacks on our organization. Also, please be insightful when distributing this letter. (In my opinion, it’s not good if many of our young people learn about this negative attack on our ministry through these articles on the Urban Dictionary website.) Perhaps, if many of our UBF employees in Korea also visited the Urban Dictionary website and voted like “I do not like”, this would make these articles even more unpopular.
Thanks for the help.
In Christ,
Original article in English (saved copy in search engine cache) :
UBF
University Bible Fellowship. Evangelical Korean-American church heading for all major cities around the world.
UBF targets “lost” undergraduates to turn them into future UBF-proselytizers. College students who are lonely, can be attracted by the UBF community. It is a new “comer” his or her life problems.
UBF members are expected to follow the Korean Confucianism traditions as well as very conservative Christian values. It’s a little bit different. comer is now called a “Shepherd” or “Shepherdess”.
The most “sheep” leave after the closed-mindedness of the group. UBF “shepherds” who gave them their attention. For “shepherds”, strict obedience to the values of the group is expected. UBF is strictly forbidden, it is also closely monitored by the group.
At UBF, there is one “Shepherds” or “Shepherdesses”. This is a list of UBF members. Since there is a “no dating” or “decline” or “accept” of the offer. Declining a partner is considered disobedience and lack of faith, since it was often described as “marriage by faith”. Do you have a chance to speak a common language? What is a couple of couples?
Many house-churches dedicate their lives to proselytize for UBF. There are also a lot of people who live there. And This perpetuates the UBF cycle.
Typical approach near a major campus: “Do you wanna study the Bible?” “What? Where are you from? ” “ We are from UBF ... ”
Source: http://exubf-ru.blogspot.com/2011/10/ubf_03.html
This is the Urban Dictionary website they were referring to: https://www.urbandictionary.com/
If you go to Urban Dictionary now and search "University Bible Fellowship" or "UBF" you will not find anything on UBF. Urban Dictionary is just one example. They do the same thing to similar websites.
Regarding to big search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo what the UBF web team does is play god by altering the search engine results.
They start by looking at the auto-fill entries. It is the words and phrases that people search the most.
Here are some of the auto-fill entries for University Bible Fellowship (UBF)
The UBF web team Googles one of the auto-fill entries in the search bar and look at the search results:
Here is how the UBF web team alters the search results. They will look for any negative links about UBF, make note of them, and they would constantly start clicking on pro-UBF links (or anything that is not anti-UBF). It that way they move the anti-UBF links far away from page one of the search results as possible.
Notice how the UBF web team moved anti-UBF links and content as far as 14 (Yes 14!!!) pages. That is how the UBF web team manipulates the search engine algorithm.
Now as to websites, blogs, and posts by ex-members the UBF web team goes to extreme lengths to have them removed.
Awhile back I made a blog about Winnipeg UBF that showcases declassified intel: https://winnipegubf.blogspot.com/
Luckily I made archives of all the posts which catch the UBF web team in the act.
Here is one post archive:
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20180122182713/https://winnipegubf.blogspot.com/2017/09/winnipeg-cult-branch-denies-pressure.html
The last time I archived that post was in Jan 2018 nearly a year ago.
But if you go to the post the image of the newspaper clipping has been removed:
Source: https://winnipegubf.blogspot.com/2017/09/winnipeg-cult-branch-denies-pressure.html
The UBF web team has had all the images of newspaper clippings in the entire blog removed. Though the transcripts of the newspaper articles are still intact
So how did the UBF web team do it? They contacted the web host of the blog. In this case the web host is Blogger (Blogspot). They reported to the web host admin through this link: https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/87065?hl=en&ref_topic=6321979
The problem is that anyone can report to Blogger without any basis or reason. What makes matters worst is that Blogger didn't even tell me that all the images of newspaper clippings were removed. I only found out after a friend pointed it out to me.
Unfortunately the UBF web team became successful in the complete removal of an older blog of mines: https://www.ubinformed.com/ubinformed/harvest-south-bay-church-gardena-the-church-strikes-back
If this fails then the UBF web team resorts to taking legal action.
In 2007 an ex-member from Germany UBF was sued by Peter Chang of Bonn UBF (and the UBF web team) into taking down the ex-member's website. The ex-member whom is also my friend was sued for 100.000 Euros or $100,000 (100k) USD.
Unfortunately the ex-member had to step down due to being at a disadvantage financially. Luckily he did archive his entire website before it was taken down.
This was his website:
You can view his website here: https://web.archive.org/web/20041204025231/http://ubf-info.de:80/index.en.htm
And that is the whole truth about the UBF web committee/team and how they operate. Was there anything I missed? Comment below