leadSince its founding in the 1950s, L. Ron Hubbard’s organization has put a premium on controlling the flow of information—an increasingly impossible enterprise in the Internet age.

The Atlantic, Sophie Gilbert

(…) But the Church is losing control of its public image—in large part because the flow of information in the digital age is irrepressible. “It’s the Internet that has changed everything,” says Tony Ortega, the former editor of The Village Voice and founder of a website, The Underground Bunker, that’s dedicated to criticizing Scientology.

For example, in 2013, a Scientology spokesperson told the BBC that 27,000 people had attended its services in northeast England during the past decade. But those curious about the true number of members in the region can easily find the results of a 2011 census, which found only 2,418 self-identified Scientologists in England and Wales. (In contrast, 176,632 respondents identified as Jedi Knights.)

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Without credible high-profile spokespeople, Scientology has mostly been limited to doing damage control. Its efforts to wrestle back control of the narrative remain strong, but its ability to fight on a million different fronts—responding to accusations of everything from extortion to human trafficking—is clearly limited, while the voices making the accusations are growing louder. Whether or not the Church’s members demand institutional reform will depend largely on how much longer the Church can prevent them from being influenced by negative publicity, and to what extent Cruise and Travolta can continue to decline to answer questions about the more egregious allegations leveled at the organization.

Many of Scientology’s critics believe the Church is inevitably doomed on both counts. “They can’t stop the flow of information, and it’s destroying them,” says Ortega. “Scientology only worked when it could use secrecy to keep people controlled. That doesn’t work anymore.”