“I had to be creative about getting the information to them,” said the project’s creator, whom we’re calling John Jones. He is a small business owner in Southern California who spoke to The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity, because he fears reprisal from his former church. “You’re taught not to listen to apostates. You don’t listen to anything anti-Mormon, the same way you wouldn’t give in to any other temptation.”
. . . . . .
Nobody wanted the hear his real reasons for giving up his religion. “Nobody would listen to me,” Jones said. “They thought I had to be doing something else bad to leave the church.” (The Church of Latter-day Saints declined comment for this story).
After a lifetime in the close knit community, the abrupt social isolation was painful. Jones searched for a way out of it. Then in August 2017, he had a revelation of his own. A way to explain himself to his friends and relatives that they wouldn’t reject out of hand, and would never trace back to him.
. . . . . .
Of the 30 people targeted in that first ad, only three clicked. But it was enough to convince Jones his plan could work. “I could see how many unique people were seeing my ads, and I could see the clicks,” he said. “It gave me the satisfaction of knowing that some were going to sites that showed them what I knew and they didn’t. That was good for my psyche.”