Plundering Online Groups Constitutes Robbery-Style Theft

If someone on the internet forcibly takes over another person's online group, changes the ownership of the group, and pressures the group members to abandon what they previously learned and instead study the dharma that the group-seizer has determined, then the members' rights of belonging and autonomy are also altered—this constitutes stealing. If this person was instigated by others or by an organization, then those others or that organization are the principal thieves, and the person who plundered the group is an accomplice to the theft; both are guilty of the crime of theft and robbery, robbing the group's resources, including its members.

If someone maliciously incites, subverts, and draws away the administrators and core members of a group, sowing discord between the members and the group owner, such behavior also constitutes stealing—stealing the group's resources and its members. If this is done to a group belonging to a monastic, it is the offense of destroying the Saṅgha jewel's propagation of the Dharma, the offense of stealing by alienating sentient beings from the Saṅgha jewel, and the offense of stealing the resources of the Three Jewels. The nature of this is far more than mere theft—it is far more vile than stealing. This is not at all the conduct of a Buddhist practitioner, nor even that of an ordinary decent person. It is like the conduct of demon disciples acting at the behest of māras, destroying the Three Jewels, destroying the Saṅgha, destroying Buddhism. The Kṣitigarbha Sūtra says: 毁谤三宝，破佛身血，污梵诬僧，两舌斗乱，非理毁用，轻法慢教。Such karmic offenses are hellish karma, bringing evil retribution in hell.