How Many Jehovah's Witnesses Are There Really? Zoom, Checkboxes, and a Bot

Watchtower used to be able to tell you where every Jehovah's Witness was. They were in the Kingdom Hall on Thursday night and again on Sunday morning. On Saturday morning they were out in field service, with their hours written on a slip of paper carrying their name, everything they placed, and every return visit. That grip is slipping. It is slipping so badly that the organization can't be sure how many Jehovah's Witnesses there actually are.

Watchtower has two ways of counting its people: those who count as a publisher, and those who show up to the meetings. Both definitions have gone soft in the past couple of years. Being a publisher now takes only a checked box on a slip, and showing up now means logging into Zoom. The question of how many real Jehovah's Witnesses there are no longer has a precise answer. We can't know for sure, and for the first time neither can Watchtower. But it's a lot worse than they want you to think.

The Bot That Attends More Meetings Than He Does

In July, a PIMO posted on the XJW subreddit about a small piece of software he had put together. He is physically and mentally out. He still goes, but he no longer believes the religion. Meetings can be attended on Zoom, and at every scheduled meeting time his software logs into his congregation's Zoom on its own. There is no screen, no camera, and no microphone. It records the meeting and sends him the transcript afterward.

He isn't there, but he looks like he is. In his words, people suddenly thought he was actually attending the meetings again, and that's when the love bombing started. He added, "The bot attends more meetings than I do."

The one caveat is that he had to use his real name, because the attendants check names and try to work out who they don't recognize. So the bot logs in as him. It's kind of brilliant.

Watchtower's own instructions to elders for hybrid Zoom and in-person meetings say that the attendant counts those on the video conference at the designated time. This man's bot was counted as if it were in attendance. A piece of software is now part of how Watchtower measures its own faithful.

I was a Jehovah's Witness for most of my life, and I left about nine years ago. I know what it feels like to have your name go quiet on that report and to start getting phone calls because you weren't in attendance. So when active Witnesses began describing, on their own members-only forum, what their meetings really look like right now, I went and got the documents. I pulled every elders' letter I could find that mentioned Zoom, from the 2021 instructions through the leaked monthly announcements that came out this year. I read dozens of posts and threads on both the JW forum and the XJW forum to see what each side said about the meetings. And I checked every number against Watchtower's own service reports.

The Number Watchtower Is Proud Of

I'll be fair here and play devil's advocate by treating Watchtower's numbers as if they're real. Watchtower's 2025 service report lists a peak of over 9.2 million publishers worldwide, up about 160,000 from the year before. On paper that looks like real growth, and some of it is real. A lot of it comes from Africa, where baptisms are high and the congregations are young.

But that same report contains the giveaway. That year, attendance at the Memorial, the most important night on the Jehovah's Witness calendar, went down by almost half a million people. Publishers are claimed to be up by 160,000 while fewer people attend the Memorial. And as you'll see, that Memorial figure already counts the people watching on Zoom.

That is the first crack. The publisher count is going up, and the one attendance number Watchtower publishes isn't keeping pace. So what does "publisher" even mean now, if you can have more of them and fewer people at the most important event of the year?

How a Checkbox Redefined "Publisher"

Before November 2023, you had to report hours in the ministry every month to be counted. Since then, all you have to do is check a box saying you did something in the ministry that month. Any amount and any form will do. If you used the name Jehovah with the person at the checkout line, you could tick the box and claim to be an active publisher.

Look at the effect in the United States. Publishers went up by almost 26,000 in the first year the checkbox rule was enforced. The number of people baptized in the US that year was about 23,000. So the count grew by more than every single person baptized, in a country where Pew Research found that Jehovah's Witnesses have the worst retention rate of any religious group it measures.

The simplest explanation is that people who would have slipped into inactive status under the old rule stayed on the books, because all they had to do was check a box. Watchtower isn't saying that. That is my inference from their own numbers. The bottom line is that Watchtower seriously lowered the bar for being counted as a publisher.

How Zoom Lowered the Bar for "Attending"

During the COVID lockdowns, many Jehovah's Witnesses couldn't attend meetings in person at the Kingdom Hall. When in-person meetings came back in 2022, Watchtower told congregations to keep the Zoom option running. Watchtower calls these hybrid meetings, and its instructions describe them this way:

They allow brothers and sisters to attend meetings, offer comments, and present meeting parts whether they are at the Kingdom Hall or on Zoom.

So how do you count people who are tapped in through a Zoom call? The attendant, the brother taking the count, indicates how many people are on the call when he connects, and that becomes the tally of people in attendance. Watchtower puts the responsibility on the attendant to get it right, but admits:

However, it is understood that it may not be possible to obtain the most accurate figures.

That's true. When you rely on a person to indicate how many people are there, and whether they are actually there, you can't get particularly accurate figures. What if the attendant clicks the button wrong, or indicates too many or too few? What if someone turns Zoom on and walks away? You can't really count that person as being in attendance, but none of this is covered.

On cameras, the same guidelines say it is a personal matter, and that the elder should generally not make rules in this regard. Picture what the attendant is actually looking at: a grid of black squares. Some have names. Sometimes it just says "iPad" or "Smith family." Some people on Reddit say that although Zoom can ask for the count, a lot of halls stopped bothering. One wrote that it's not uncommon to see a family name or a couple of iPads, all with their cameras off.

Here is where that leaves us. Watchtower's own instruction letter admits the count might not be accurate. It tells elders not to make rules about cameras, and the login gets counted no matter how people use it. This isn't a congregation taking an accurate count of who is present. It is Watchtower admitting that it can't see a lot of its people.

What Active Witnesses and Ex-Witnesses Say About Attendance

How many people aren't showing up in person anymore? Watchtower doesn't publish weekly meeting attendance, and it doesn't separate Zoom from in-person, so we couldn't know even if it did. The only attendance figure we have is from the Memorial. The best picture we can assemble comes from the people sitting in the halls, and believers and ex-believers say almost exactly the same thing.

In October on jwtalk.net, a private forum for active Witnesses only, a member asked whether the branch estimates attendance at 60% in person and 40% on Zoom, because that's what he'd heard. The replies came in fast. One said it was 50/50 in his hall: "We have 180 publishers. I'd say average is 100 in person, 70 on Zoom." A member in Sweden said 60/40 is probably the average across the whole country. Another said their circuit overseer told them 60/40 is what he hears from the rest of the circuit. Some halls are fuller than that. One member said theirs usually runs 20 to 25% on Zoom. The range generally lands between 30 and 40% not being there in person.

The people who left describe the same thing on Reddit. A father who sits in with his family said an elder gave a local needs talk in January and said that 40% of the meeting attendance is on Zoom.

It reaches conventions too. At one Italian convention this summer, according to the announced counts collected by an Italian blog, 3,289 were present and 1,13 watched online. In France, someone wrote that 4,000 were present, 1,000 were on Zoom, and 3,000 seats were completely empty.

The cameras make it worse. In September on JW Talk, a member described the Zoom side of their hall:

Locally, 80% of Zoom participants do not even put their cameras on. Only a very few regulars actually comment, and the others disappear pretty much as soon as the meeting concludes. This is also a topic for shepherding, but honestly, it makes little impact.

Another said there is just one sister among more than 45 individuals on Zoom who comments. A PIMO running the Zoom desk in Philadelphia last year was asked how many of the 52 people on his screen had their cameras on. His answer was one.

Keep in mind that these are individuals describing their own congregations. This isn't formal statistical analysis. But when the people who still believe and the people who don't describe the same thing across their congregations, the picture is hard to ignore. Somewhere around a third of the people in the room aren't really in the room, and most of that third is a black square nobody can see into.

Zoom Was Meant for Those Who Can't Attend

Now compare that with what Watchtower's own rule book says is supposed to be happening. The 2025 edition of Shepherd the Flock of God is the latest edition of the elders' manual. Chapter 4, paragraph 25 says:

Congregations may use broadcasting and video conferencing systems to benefit publishers and interested persons who are unable to attend local congregation meetings and conventions in person because of infirmities, advanced age, or other circumstances.

Unable to attend. That's what the Zoom option is for. It is a provision for people who can't make it for some reason, such as the sick and the elderly. According to one believer, it's a priority seat. You can sit in those seats, but they are there for special needs.

Watchtower has known for years that people weren't treating it that way. A letter went out to every congregation dated July 29, 2022, just four months after in-person meetings came back. Elders were told to have it read at two meetings in a row. It says:

Jehovah is clearly blessing this arrangement of meeting in person.

And then:

It has been observed that some have developed a tendency to attend meetings on a video conference when according to their circumstances, they could be physically at the Kingdom Hall.

That was 2022. After being able to stay home and attend on Zoom, enough people didn't want to come back that headquarters wrote a letter and had it read twice. Almost everything Watchtower has said about Zoom since then is an attempt to get people back to the Kingdom Hall in person.

Look at what they did with conventions. This April's announcement to the elders says the convention live stream is for those who are infirm, advanced in age, or have other circumstances that limit their ability to attend a convention in person. Only an elder may approve access, and the announcement says:

We are confident that all whose circumstances allow them to attend the convention in person will do so.

We are confident. If you've ever been a Jehovah's Witness, you know that Watchtower says "we are confident" when it isn't. Anytime you see that phrase, there's a problem.

A Reprinted Article From Before Zoom

Then there's the January 2027 Watchtower study edition, released for the Memorial season. It runs an article called "What Our Attendance at Meetings Says About Us." Active Witnesses on JW Talk noticed right away that it is basically a reprint of an article from January 2019, picture for picture and almost word for word. Watchtower's own footnote admits it, saying the articles were originally published in the Watchtower of January 2019.

Think about when that article was written: before Zoom was a thing at the Kingdom Hall, and before there were hybrid meetings. One member on JW Talk joked that it was written "BZ," before Zoom. Back then you could call in, but you couldn't zoom in. So the reprint says nothing about Zoom or about attending in person. Watchtower had a chance to address the biggest attendance change in modern history, and instead of writing something new, it reached into the archive.

Paragraph 2 of that article says:

Jehovah is not primarily concerned with the number of people who come. He is more interested in the reason for their coming. Motives matter to Jehovah.

I find that hilarious. I do agree that your motive matters in what you're doing. But the organization that published it is counting black squares and a bot. It can't see motive, and you can't count motive. It can't even see faces anymore, because the cameras are off.

On paper, Zoom is an on-ramp for the sick and the elderly. In practice, it has become an exit ramp, and the only number Watchtower can still measure is the one that tells it the least about who's really there.

Why Watchtower Doesn't Split Out the Zoom Numbers

This is what turns the problem into a choice. Members on both sides, active Witnesses on JW Talk and ex-Witnesses on Reddit, describe attendance going to the branch as one combined total. In-person and Zoom are counted together, not separated. I haven't seen that form, but since both sides say it, I trust it's probably true. I have read the instructions, and nothing in them tells elders to separate the two.

Think about how easy it would be. The attendant sees how many people are on Zoom, or at least how many squares are showing, and for the halls that enabled it, knows how many people have said they're in attendance. They could split that out to show how many people are in the hall and how many are on Zoom. But they aren't asked to. In every letter I read, from the 2021 Zoom instructions through this October, it isn't there. What I found instead was a February instruction to make sure remote attenders are counted in the Memorial total.

So Watchtower had a choice. It could get a number that tells it who is showing up and who isn't, or it could get a number that makes it look good. It asked for the second. It doesn't matter what a branch or a circuit overseer estimates. What matters is that headquarters isn't asking for separate numbers, which means it can't really answer how many real Witnesses it has. If your real attendance were strong and you knew your believers were faithful, is that how you would do it? Or would you keep the number vague and as flattering as possible because you know you have a problem?

Four Years of Mixed Messages From Headquarters and the Field

Watchtower is well aware of this, and I have no doubt they're writing letters about it. But the official line and the local line are not the same. They have been pulling in opposite directions for four years.

Start with what one elder posted about recently. He is stepping down as an elder, and good for him. He described his last quarterly elders meeting, where the subject was, you guessed it, attendance. Every group overseer was supposed to make a list of the people in his group and discreetly keep track of their attendance and absences without letting the brothers realize they were being monitored. Anyone who attended too many meetings on Zoom was supposed to get a shepherding call so they could feel the warmth of Christian love. That's how he worded it. That is one elder's account, but the paper trail shows how a congregation gets there.

It started in March 2022, when in-person meetings were reinstituted. The letter to congregations said every congregation would continue to have a video conferencing option, and that personal choices regarding vaccination and whether to attend in person should be respected. Four months later came the July letter telling members to ask themselves whether they could put forth greater effort to worship Jehovah in person.

In November 2023, the elders' manual was revised. The Memorial and the special talk will usually be given in person, and public talks by video conference were limited to no more than once a month.

Then comes February 2024, which is my favorite because it gives the game away. In the elders-only section of that month's announcement, headquarters tells elders to encourage others to attend meetings in person if they are able. But:

However, you should not judge those who attend meetings by video conference. And neither should you make rules about who is permitted access to the meetings by video conference. Doing so would go beyond the direction provided by the faithful and discreet slave.

See the change? At first, Zoom was a provision for the elderly, the infirm, and those in unusual circumstances who couldn't make it. Now anyone who attends by video conference should not be judged. Ask yourself why they had to write that. You don't tell elders to stop making rules about Zoom unless elders are making rules about Zoom. And they were. Reddit was full of posts about congregations where the Zoom password went only to people the elders decided were sick enough, old enough, or disabled enough. One commenter in northern Italy said their congregation made a rule that you could only log in if you had special needs.

That 2024 announcement didn't really stop them. The elders were being pressured by Watchtower, and still are, to get people back in the seats. In December 2024, a member described a circuit overseer who had a meltdown that 70 people were on Zoom during his visit, and told them they needed to be elderly or infirm to use it. That is exactly what the announcement said not to say. Last December, another member said their circuit overseer opened his visit by saying Zoom should only be used when absolutely necessary, which again conflicts with the 2024 announcement. And a member recently described a new overseer whose very first service talk, back in February, said Zoom was for absolute emergencies only.

Here's a funny one. In August, a member posted that right after the circuit overseer's visit, their coordinator said Zoom would be strictly for the elderly and the sick, and that they would change the password every week. Someone replied: they did that in my congregation and the attendance dropped a lot, so they went back on it. In that congregation, closing the door to Zoom didn't send people back to the Kingdom Hall. They just stopped coming at all.

The October Broadcast Treats Zoom as a Temptation

Watchtower doesn't publish figures on this, but we know it isn't just a few local congregations, because they built it into the October broadcast. There's a whole segment around it. In it, one speaker says:

Honestly, sometimes I'm just exhausted. We have so much to do on top of our spiritual routine. Family responsibilities, making a living, caring for our health, not to mention the constant pressure from Satan's system. It can feel overwhelming. Sometimes I just want to tie into our meetings on video.

Another replies, "Me, too." The first continues:

But picturing that vision helps me keep going. It reminds me that Jehovah will give me the physical and emotional strength I need.

And the second:

I feel that way, too. So, when I start to feel like slowing down, I try to pray for that Holy Spirit and then act. Sometimes that just means showing up for a meeting or for field service. Even if I don't really feel like it, I trust that Jehovah will give me the power I need.

Notice how they frame tuning in by video. It's the tired impulse that a good little Witness is supposed to overcome. They want you in person because 30 to 40% of people aren't going in person, and those who aren't, if pushed to come in person, may just not show up at all.

Now put that next to what the September study Watchtower said about the COVID years. It held them up as a test of the Witnesses' obedience. Congregations were directed to use video conferencing for their meetings. An elder in Peru was quoted saying he didn't think that was practical, but he obeyed anyway and saw how Jehovah rewards obedience.

So here is the mess Watchtower finds itself in. In 2020, getting on Zoom was obedience. In 2026, staying on Zoom is something you're supposed to overcome, and going to the Kingdom Hall in person is obedience. Headquarters is still saying not to judge people on the conference, while the men in the field are trying to clamp down and get people back to the hall. Neither approach is getting people back in the seats. If anything had worked, it wouldn't have been in the October broadcast.

Who Is Behind the Black Squares?

I want to be fair here, because many of those people are exactly who the rules say they should be. There are a lot of elderly and sick people, including people who can't drive at night anymore. The elder who gave the Zoom guilt-trip talk in January also said that 40% of the congregation is over 65, and of course many of them will be on Zoom. Kingdom Halls have been sold and congregations merged, so there are now long drives at night that some elderly people can't handle. In London this summer, Kingdom Halls without air conditioning went Zoom-only through the heat waves. Some of these people are the most devoted Witnesses you'll ever meet, and they're on Zoom because they physically can't come.

But they're not all of it, and the organization can't tell which is which. That's the point. On JW Talk, an active Witness wrote that some of the regular Zoomers are people who missed many meetings before Zoom and now have near-perfect attendance. Zoom didn't just keep the sick connected. It tuned in a lot of people who used to be absent, and now they're marked present again. What does that tell you about the figures Watchtower is publishing?

Then there are the Zoomers who aren't really there at all. One PIMO who hadn't been to a Kingdom Hall since March 2020 posted that everybody has their camera off, and gave instructions for routing the audio from the meeting to a muted output so you don't even have to listen. Someone on Reddit coined a name for it: VIMO, virtually in, mentally out. I thought that was pretty good.

A Brazilian elder who is himself a PIMO explained what he sees in his own congregation, and I think he nails it:

Since publishers only need to check a box to remain active, the sense of urgency has completely vanished. People connect to Zoom just to keep their names on the list.

He's right, and that's my thesis in a nutshell. To keep your name on the list of active Jehovah's Witnesses, all you have to do is check a box, turn on Zoom with your camera off, and mute the audio.

It isn't only people with doubts. One member wrote that a believing friend stays on Zoom with the camera off because, in the friend's words, "If I don't get involved with the people, I won't have any problems." That's a believer telling you the Kingdom Hall is the thing he wants to avoid.

And sometimes it isn't even the person's choice. In April, somebody posted that a family member left a computer logged into the Zoom Memorial, set to play automatically, and left for the Memorial because they were attending in person themselves. The family member who hadn't gone in 12 years might hear a little of it. That person, who probably paid no attention at all, got counted as a Memorial attendee.

Now set that next to what headquarters told elders in February of this year:

Special attention should be given to ensure an accurate count of all those who attend the Memorial, including those who attend remotely, such as by telephone or video conference.

How do you make that number accurate when a family member turns it on hoping someone else will pay attention? The Memorial is the one attendance figure Watchtower actually publishes, and by policy it includes remote logins and doesn't split them out from the people who are there in person. A login left running for somebody who doesn't believe a word of it and isn't going to listen counts the same as a pioneer in the front row.

Look at what these reports give us. A sick sister who is actually paying attention. A doubter who has turned the volume off completely. A believer who is hiding from their own congregation because they don't want the problems. A laptop left running for someone who stopped believing over a decade ago. And the PIMO's bot running at the same time. All five look exactly the same on the attendance screen, and all five get counted as in attendance.

A Rough Estimate of Real Attendance in the United States

Given all that, how many real, active, believing Witnesses are there? Can we get at least a spitball estimate? I think we can. Since Watchtower publishes no meeting attendance, the publisher count is the closest proxy we have, so take the United States. Watchtower reported about 1.25 million average publishers in 2025.

Suppose 30 to 40% of the people counted at the meeting are on Zoom, which is where the believers on JW Talk and the ex-Witnesses on Reddit all land. And suppose four of every five people on Zoom have their cameras off, as the JW Talk member described in his Kingdom Hall. That is roughly a quarter to a third of the attendance. Against 1.25 million people, that means somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 of the people being counted as present can't really be known to be present at all, not in any meaningful way. And that is before you factor in how many people at the hall are PIMO, which nobody can count.

Watchtower does publish some numbers that help. In 2015, US Memorial attendance was just under 2.5 million. In 2025, it was just under 2.4 million. That's lower even though they claim more publishers now, and the 2025 number includes people logging in on Zoom. Over the same ten years, the number of US congregations dropped from 14,000 to under 12,000. That isn't necessarily proof of shrinking by itself. The average congregation got bigger as Kingdom Halls were consolidated, with some sold and congregations merged, forcing people to drive farther. As you'll see below, that is one more thing pushing people onto Zoom.

So the honest answer to how many real Jehovah's Witnesses there are is that it can't be answered accurately, not by me and not by Watchtower. The publisher count rests on a checkbox. The attendance count rests on a Zoom login. You can't tell a believer from someone who ticked a box, and you can't tell a believer from a black square on a Zoom screen or from a bot a PIMO wrote so he can look like he's attending when he isn't paying attention. The organization that once tracked every hour every Witness spent in field ministry can't tell you who is in the room anymore. What does that tell you about their decline?

The Trap Watchtower Built for Itself

Members have been saying this for two years: if Watchtower stopped Zoom completely, a big chunk of the people on it would not come back to the hall. Remember the congregation that locked down the password, saw attendance drop, and had to reverse course? Ending Zoom won't fix the attendance problem. It would only expose the number problem, and the reports still don't split it out.

But keeping Zoom means the numbers they have mean less every year. Every new person logging into Zoom is someone they can't see, can't read, and can't pressure the way you can pressure somebody sitting three rows from an elder.

Watchtower is making it worse through its Kingdom Hall sales and consolidations. Every time two congregations merge, somebody has a longer drive ahead of them and somebody else says, forget it, I'm not driving, and logs in from home. One member said their hall was sold in 2019, and now the elders drive more than an hour each way just to give a ten-minute part, because the circuit overseer said Zoom is only for emergencies. You can sell the halls, or you can demand that everyone show up in one. You can't do both, not forever.

Why do they want bodies in the seats so badly? I've talked about this before, and I think the answer is in the documents themselves. The Kingdom Hall is where the peer pressure works. It's where people see you, where the elders notice you didn't make a comment this time, and where the shepherding visit might get planned. A black square doesn't feel any of that pressure. The member who said Zoom shepherding makes little impact was describing exactly what scares them. On Zoom, the control is gone.

If an elder on the platform says something you don't like and you make a face of distaste, nobody sees it when your camera is off. If you have a question and think, "that's not right, I disagree with that," you don't have people sitting around you giving you the side-eye and telling you that you're wrong or being disloyal to Jehovah. A lot of people woke up during the lockdowns when they couldn't go to the Kingdom Hall. Watchtower knows it, and it wants people back in the hall so it can exert that control. But if it does away with Zoom, we already know many of those people won't go back to the Kingdom Hall. Then Watchtower can't count them at all, and its decline becomes even clearer, despite its best efforts to prop up the numbers with the checkbox and with allowing Zoom in the first place.

A Bot in Good Standing

Control used to mean knowing where every Jehovah's Witness was and when. Now Watchtower can't tell a believer from a bot. The PIMO who wrote that bot said he was thinking about shutting it down because he's tired of the love bombing. But for as long as he keeps it running, it will log him in on schedule under his real name. As far as the congregation's attendant is concerned, he's one of the faithful. It never misses a meeting.