Author of Be Ready for Anything and Bloom Where You’re Planted online course
Yesterday, the alternative media purge was boldly advanced in a coordinated effort to silence people who dissent from establishment views. It’s just one more step toward a monopoly on information by those who hate freedom. At this rate, they’ll soon have unquestioned access to the minds of more than 2 billion people. And this should terrify everyone who wants to be free to question the status quo and to seek a wide range of information.
Hundreds of alternative media site administrators logged onto Facebook to discover that their accounts had been removed. Soon after, many of these sites and their writers found that their Twitter accounts had also been suspended.
Popular pages like The AntiMedia (2.1 million fans), The Free Thought Project (3.1 million fans), Press for Truth (350K fans), Police the Police (1.9 million fans), Cop Block (1.7 million fans), and Punk Rock Libertarians (125K fans) are just a few of the ones which were unpublished.
Why were these alternative media accounts removed?
The reason given doesn’t really add up.
Facebook told the LA Times that these pages had violated the company’s spam policies.
“Today, we’re removing 559 Pages and 251 accounts that have consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior,” the company said in a blog post. “People will only share on Facebook if they feel safe and trust the connections they make here.” (source)
But this isn’t actually what their spam policy says. Here’s the policy.
We work hard to limit the spread of commercial spam to prevent false advertising, fraud, and security breaches, all of which detract from people’s ability to share and connect. We do not allow people to use misleading or inaccurate information to collect likes, followers, or shares.
Do Not:
- Artificially increase distribution for financial gain
- Create or use fake accounts or compromise other people’s accounts to
- Impersonate or pretend to be a business, organization, public figure, or private individual
- Attempt to create connections, create content, or message people
- Restrict access to content by requiring people to like, share, or recommend before viewing
- Encourage likes, shares, or clicks under false pretenses
- Maliciously use login credentials or personally identifiable information by:
- Attempting to gather or share login credentials or personally identifiable information
- Using another person’s login credentials or personally identifiable information
- Promise non-existent Facebook features
(source)
The Washington Post originally said that these pages were purged for “pushing political messages for profit” as you can see by their URL:
But of course, since they too push political messages for profit (waaah, Trump!) as do all the other corporate media outlets out there, they changed their headline to “Facebook purged over 800 U.S. accounts and pages for pushing political spam.”
The fact that many of these accounts were also suspended by Twitter shortly thereafter should tell you that this is a coordinated effort to silence large swaths of the population.
Of course, the best coverage of this is from…Russia.
Sputnik News contacted many of the alternative journalists who were purged to get their take on what happened. You may recall that basically every blogger outside the establishment media was accused of being secretly Russian during the 2016 election by the Washington Post, so perhaps actual Russians have a vested interest in the truth coming out on this topic.
My friend John Vibes is an amazing person who contributes to The Free Thought Project. He said:
This signifies a re-consolidation of the media. Cable news media controlled the narrative for most of modern history, but the internet has lowered that barrier to entry and allowed the average person to become the media themselves. This obviously took market share and influence away from the traditional media, and it has allowed for a more diverse public conversation. Now it seems the platforms that have monopolized the industry are favoring mainstream sources and silencing alternative voices. So now, instead of allowing more people to have a voice, these platforms are creating an atmosphere where only powerful media organizations are welcome, just as we had on cable news.
People think that we are just providing an activist spin on the news, but they don’t see the families struggling to have their voice heard. For example, when someone is shot by police, mainstream media sources often just republish the press release from the police department, without presenting the victim’s side of the story. We give the victims and their families a voice, which is essential to keep power in check. This also goes for bigger issues like foreign policy as well; multiple full-scale invasions of Syria have been prevented because of information that the alternative media made viral. (source)
Nicholas Bernabe of The AntiMedia is another alternative journalist I consider a friend and support wholeheartedly. He’s worked tirelessly to be a voice of truth in a world of lies. He told Sputnik:
Our approach generally is to cover stories and angles that corporate media underreport or misreport and to amplify activist and anti-war voices and stories. All of our content is professionally fact-checked and edited.
I got into this line of work because I felt there was a need for media that challenged mainstream assumptions and biases in politics. I wanted to shed light on corruption and wrongdoing against oppressed peoples and cover the harsh truth about American foreign policy.
Over the last 28 days, we reached 7,088,000 people on Facebook.
The timing of this purge is rather dubious in my view, coming shortly before the midterm elections. This could be an attempt by Facebook itself to affect the outcome of the coming elections. The Twitter suspension caught me by surprise. I can only speculate that these suspensions were a coordinated effort to stifle our message ahead of the coming elections. (source)
Remember, this is coordinated, across multiple platforms.
Remember when this happened to Alex Jones?
Back in September, an assault was led by YouTube, Google, and Facebook against Alex Jones of Infowars fame. All of his accounts were shut down in quick succession, followed by his credit card processing companies and his newsletter service providers. I wrote at the time, “Alex Jones is just the beginning of this purge. It’s going to get much worse.”
Meanwhile, other dissenting voices were being silenced on social media with limited reach and “shadow banning.”
Infowars is a massive profit machine. But what happens when similar attacks are launched on smaller alternative media outlets? It hits us right in the wallet. And if they’re hit hard enough, they’ll cease to be able to function.
Jones has a lot of money so this may not be the end of him, but for most website owners, this would be the absolute end of our ability to do business. And to be able to bring the information we bring, we do have to run our websites as businesses. It’s far more expensive than most people realize to run a site. I know that my own operating costs every month are more than $2000. A site as big as Jones’s would be many times that amount. When all your avenues of monetization are cut off, it wouldn’t be hard for a site – and the dissent and information they share – to cease to exist. (source)
This is not just about Facebook or Twitter. It’s about the ability to find dissenting information, period. Google is in on it too. A leaked document from Google supported the idea of censorship.
Another Google document has found its way into the public domain, this time through Breitbart. The news publication reports that an 85-page briefing entitled “The Good Censor,” advises tech companies to “police tone instead of content” and to not “take sides” when censoring users…
Google might continue to shift with the times – changing its stance on how much or how little it censors (due to public, governmental or commercial pressures). If it does, acknowledgment of what this shift in position means for users and for Google is essential. Shifting blindly or silently in one direction or another rightly incites users’ fury…
The Google “internal research” even quotes outside experts like George Soros who express justification of censorship in non-U.S. markets, noting that Google should police “tone instead of content” and “censor everyone equally,” as Breitbart put it. (source)
There are 2 trillion Google searches per day. PER. DAY.
That should give you an idea of the power of something like Google. Combine it with billions of Facebook and Twitter users and you can easily see the influence wielded here. This is where free thought goes to die.
Ron Paul reminds us that truth is treason.
Ron Paul, former congressman and the libertarian voice of reason, said when Jones was purged:
“You get accused of treasonous activity and treasonous speech because in an empire of lies the truth is treason,” Paul told the Russia-based news outlet. “Challenging the status quo is what they can’t stand and it unnerves them, so they have to silence people.”
“Some of us tell the truth about our government, they call us treasonous and say we’re speaking out of line and they’d like to punish us, and I think that’s part of what’s happening with social media,” Paul told RT, adding that he hopes anti-government or anti-war voices can eliminate their “dependency” on the current social media platforms.
“I’m just hoping that technology can stay ahead of it all and that we can have real alternatives to the dependency on Twitter and other companies that have been working hand in glove with the government,” Paul added. (source)
Here’s a video from last month with Dr. Paul’s thoughts about the social media purge. In it, he reminds us that Facebook is a private entity so they do have every right to remove the pages they wish. The danger – and the area in which this treads on the First Amendment – is their direct ties to the government.
This affects everyone.
If you’re reading this and you shrug because you, personally, don’t have a Twitter or Facebook account, you’re missing the bigger point.
Consider the fact that the “population” of Facebook is bigger than the populations of the US, China, and Brazil combined.
That’s how many people will now only receive one side of the story on things like war, politics, guns, and current events. People will believe what they’re told because there is no alternative information presented. There are no questions asked. It’s literally the textbook definition of brainwashing.
Definition of brainwashing
1: a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas
2: persuasion by propaganda or salesmanship (source)
(Here’s an article from Psychology Today that discusses how Facebook is, in fact, brainwashing people for profit.)
Social media is a massive source of information and influence today. If the information is rigged by entities that support socialism, gun control, and the end of privacy, we’re doomed. 2.2 billion active users will be bombarded with these messages without any real option for the other side of the story.
So regardless of whether you, personally, participate, this will color popular sentiment to a massive degree. It will grow the cognitive dissonance that assures people of things like “the government is your friend” and that “you don’t need to protect yourself, the police will take care of you.”
People who hate freedom will get unfettered access to the minds of 2 billion people. That should scare the crap out of you.
What can you do about the alternative media purge?
It’s possible but unlikely that social pressure on Facebook and Twitter will push the outlets into restoring the accounts of these alternative media networks. But even if they are restored, I suspect their reach will dwindle even further.
Here are a few things you can do:
- Subscribe to the newsletters of websites you enjoy. Don’t count on seeing their work on social media. (You can subscribe to my newsletter here, incidentally.)
- Support them financially if you can. Many sites have Patreon accounts or donate buttons
- Bookmark them and visit regularly – if they have ads, your visits help them to make the money they need to stay afloat.
- Share their articles on your own social media accounts. If they can’t get their work out there, we can help.
- Join alternative social media outlets like Gab and MeWe.
The truth is getting harder and harder to find. You’re going to have to dig for it.
We’re watching the biggest campaign against freedom of speech and thought that has ever occurred in our part of the world.
The alternative media purge is just the beginning. And we should all be very concerned.
memo.cash
replaces twitter
Thank you – I’m working on an article about alternatives to Big Tech!
I’ve called my senator!
I’ve called my senators (Kaine, Warner) names. Never voted for either one.
But we’re DIFFERENT from Russia and China. We PRETEND to value free speech. They don’t even pretend.
This sites are worse than useless. I dont think google nor face book will be around another 10 years
Facebook- Hehe. Think of MySpace. Yeah it was a hit for a while. Does MySpace even exist anymore? Facebook will also go the way of the dodo bird.
Ew, it is pretty apparent that the big tech giants are coordinating their anti liberty, anti free speech efforts in order to help elevate the putrid progressive ideology. It really is an atrocity the methods and manners being employed to try to manipulate what end users see and read. The laws regarding industry oversight for the tech industry has not kept up with the times and these tech giants KNOW this and take advantage of their power. Consumers should have the same rights regarding access to alternative news as they do access to various lenders, retailers, and other service providers.
We don’t even have the opportunity to BLOCK content that is force fed to us via Google searches, YouTube, etc. Why not? Because the tech giants know they can alter everything to ensure they place what THEY want you to see. Ever gone onto YouTube to watch a certain video only to have that little box with all those other “recommended” videos be present? Videos you have NO desire to watch and have NO interest in? Happens all the time.
Gotta wonder where the so called “consumer” protection voices are. YOu know, the self proclaimed consumer advocate Mrs. Elizabeth Warren.
The whole thing IS terrifying and unfortunately, tech can be used for both good and bad. This is the bad side of tech.
The Media is Complicate in a Failed Coup against our President. The executives should be put on Trial for Sedition, treason, and Conspiracy to commit , Also Collusion. Then promptly executed for their crimes.
You are framing mild opposition as a “Failed Coup.” Framing is propaganda. Stop drinking the coolaid. https://propagandaprofessor.net/category/props/
Daisy, as I am prone to do, I posted a link to this page on my facebook page. Trying to get more folks to see stuff I feel is important. However, this time, when I posted the link, it came up with a “page not found” message. However, if you click the link it still gets you to this article. Found it curious that this should happen when the link I posted talked about censorship.
Anyway, as I posted on facebook, “Orwell had an insight to the future, just got the dates wrong.”
How about that! I’ve had other people tell me they can’t share articles from this site right now, also.
It’s just a matter of time for all of us.
Most people don’t know their Constitutional rights, they don’t know their Constitutions, state or federal, therefore, they apparently have no rights and get walked over….I’ve studied the USC (United States Code), Titles 18, 26, 42 and so far, fb hasn’t really messed with me a whole lot as I have Title 18 USC sec 241, 242 posted in my about section of fb…
I am glad that I don’t use google. I use startpage.com for my searches. I don’t use twitter nor do I support facebook. I get my news by email to the sites I want information from. I no longer use skype now that microsoft owns it. Privacy is gone. There is a saying “vote with your wallet or feet.” That is why I don’t support these organizations. I also don’t own a tv anymore. I don’t need fake news.
Don’t forget Mike Adam’s Real Video for an alternative publishing / information website.
Real.video to be exact.
“What Can You Do About It?” The first steps are obvious……..
First, close your FB account TODAY! ( I closed mine on 7/04/18…”Independence Day” )
Second, close your Twitter account TODAY!
Third, begin to terminate all connections to Google today. I say “begin” to escape Google, because that entity has metastasized to through so many online components for most of us. It’s probably a one week to one month process to excise Google from all our online activities. But a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. If you’re still using Google’s search engine, get rid of that today. Replace it with DuckGoGo, or one of the others. That much is quick and easy.
MeWe is great and it’s growing. Very active people and groups. It’s set up very similarly to Facebook, so it’s easy for most people to get started. No ads, no tracking, and no suspensions for saying something the owners don’t like.
DuckDuckGo is a great alternative to Google Search. Even though there are a couple of internet browsers I actually like better than Firefox, I still use them for the wide availability of privacy add ons. I’ve never used Google Chrome and never will. Proton Mail is a good alternative to Google Mail. You can get one email account for free. You can find more alternatives to Google “services” here: https://nomoregoogle.com/.
mozilla/firefox may now be censoring some content. i use opera. not sure if they do.
Tor Browser is an alternative to anonymous browsing and keeping one undetected. Also,if you’re using windows, break them and climb into Linux…..windows has back doors programed into their OS specifically for the purpose of allowing government intrusion into your computers with your knowledge or consent, and that info they gather, is and will be used later on down the road, against you for whatever reason they see fit, even if it’s absolute lies from them…
I am not terrified and will not be. I couldn’t care less of what the big tech does. The people who are afraid are the one who came to rely on those platform for their information and for their business. No one who is really interested in getting free and real information will expect that a third party will gather that information for him. He will do it himself. And anyone who runs a business that is largely reliant on a third party to have its business plan executed should go back and review his business plan.
The alternative media is upset because of Facebook and Twitter behavior? Still I see plenty of links to those platforms on their websites, plenty of use of their ads platform, plenty of use of their referral links. If you think the big tech are an evil beast, stop feeding it. Same is true for the users.
The issue that is truly worrisome is the influence Big Tech exerts on billions of people. When the majority is brainwashed into accepting socialism, gun control, and the like, our world will become a lot more dangerous, regardless of what we, personally, believe or where we seek our own information.
Daisy, do you really believe that Facebook allow you to reach people whose mind would be somehow changed by what you write? To me Facebook is just a gathering place where like-minded people pat themselves on the back for agreeing with each other. Those two billions minds can be controlled because they want to be controlled. Because they abhor thinking. Because they hate the discomfort that reality and truth bring. Who is Facebook banning? Surely not that one that on both sides continue superficial arguments about issues. They ban people who bring up facts, real data and who want other people to think.
Let’s focus our attention on who is actually doing the control and why. Big Tech is just a tool in the hands of the powers to be. The same that broadcast and press are. Yesterday people believe that something was true because they heard it from CIA trained Anderson Cooper. Today they believe it is true because a number of their “friends”, nudged in a direction or other by some obscure figure, like it on Facebook. Switched from the “expert” opinion to the piloted mob opinion.
Spreading real information and facilitating the exchange of opinions is vital. If the “alternative” websites and bloggers want to really make a difference they have to start from creating their own cyber space, not rely and feed the one who are working against them. Lamenting Facebook behavior hoping that something will change is laughable. Who is going to force them to change; the government that is own by the same owners?
Look at your website: I can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest but there is no RSS feed or mailing list that users can subscribe. Those are yesterday tech that connect you with your reader directly, without intermediary. And while I totally understand that you need money to keep this running, the Amazon Affiliate program feeds Mr. Bezos, Washington Post owner, CIA contractor, deep state lover.
It is time for freedom and independence lover people to boycott the oppressors.
Actually, she reaches me and I have a zillion views different than hers, and from many of you on this page. I am a bonified whiny liberal snowflake who has nothing to do than cry, cry, cry and cry some more cause my feelings were hurt: according to so many people (UGH).
I detest guns, but not for the 2nd amendment, from personal experience. I grew up in a shit*y home and the drinking, violence and bullsh*t has twisted my views deeply and I have a really big mouth about it. I am a white woman married to a black man and I have been physically attacked, verbally attacked and targeted more than I can to count. Hell my own father tried to murder my entire family by taking a pickax to our gas meter!!!
I don’t have a lot of tolerance for foolishness and I alienate more people that I attract.
But at the same time I respect what this page has to offer, even the stuff I don’t necessarily agree with. I have gone on many pages that have views I don’t agree with because they have information I want. Some have become regular sites for me, others I walked away from and never looked back. I’m not the only one either.
Hey, Crazyme. Thank you so much for posting this comment. My goal of late is all about “common ground.” I truly welcome your presence here because the last thing I want is an echo chamber. Civil disagreement can be a great way to learn from one another. (Also, I’m sure sorry to hear about your early experiences.)
Thank you 🙂
Crazyme, you’re obviously different from who, by my own experience, is the average social media user. You do not wait for information to be fed to you. You look for it and take it critically. That’s the healthy way to go at it. We all can learn from each other even when we disagree. What is important is to listen and not to have preconceived ideas.
Looking forward to more comments from you.
LOL if I took all the so-call information that was fed to me I’d either be insane or dead by now. It has cost me a lot to think for myself but I have no regrets (mostly).
this is how hitler convinced the average german that jews were evil. he, and he alone, controlled the media they saw. it was one of his guys that said: tell a lie often enough and it will be believed. paraphrase.
FB only makes money by “eyes on page” – so, last month when they put me in jail for a comment posted to another site that uses FB for identity, I decided to stop looking at FB daily, not even weekly… I told my 700+ FB friends to call me, email me, if they wanted contact sooner.
BTW, FB promotes SPAM on these other sites when FB hosts the SPAM site.
NONE of you women will like this comment,BUT you won’t like what all your brain dead ideas have done,YOU HAVE COMPLETELY DESTROYED AMERICA,and the price you will pay is far beyond anything you can imagine,you’ve pushed your brown skin ideas on the white children to a point where your nation has NO FIGHTING MEN,their ALL pussies and queers now,and IF YOU THINK those white russians and chinese weren’t watching,ITS just more proof how really stupid you are,THEY WERE AND STILL ARE,and their laughing their head off,they didn’t need to invade this country,just sit back and watch,BUT THEY ARE COMING,and when the take over begins,REMEMBER MY WORDS,and take a picture of those shinny white teeth you have,they’ll be knocked out the first time your told to SHUT UP,and you keep running your mouth,I hope you’ll enjoy living like ANIMALS,because you will be,YOUR going into slavery soon and it won’t be pretty,rags will be your new attire,and regular beatings will be your future,YOUR ABOUT TO REAP what you have sown..
Solution? PURGE Fakebook. Copy them and set up your own freedom site. That is how Fakebook got big by copying someone else’s idea. So did Microsoft and Apple.
You can do it too.
Daisy,
I signed up for your newsletter some time ago. That’s how I got to this article, but if your website is gone, then how will we get your articles?
I also get newsletters from other sites, but they all link to their web pages, too.
Looks like direct e-mail may be the only way soon I guess.
Google/FaceBook/Twitter and most the media platforms are an arm of the US government and only does the the government tells them to do.
One thing that may help is to put links to the other sites at the bottom of your articles and ask the other sites to do the same.
The alternative media purge is unsurprising in a country that is #45 on the World Press Freedom Index: https://rsf.org/en/ranking
Daisy, just so your readers can appreciate how good your research and writing are, today ZeroHedge.com at
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-12/why-coordinated-alternative-media-purge-should-terrify-everyone
picked up your article to reprint. In my opinion, ZeroHedge is gold standard in quality for coverage of worldwide financial and political issues — with a global audience, judging by the readership I’ve seen for some years in their comments section.
Other alternative media of excellent quality that frequently pick up your articles to reprint include LewRockwell.com, TheBurningPlatform.com, and TheLibertyMill.com.
You deserve a loud and proud salute!
Thank you so much!
Alex Jones has made his contribution by shutting down his “Planet Infowars” website. This site, for a brief period of time, was a meeting place for many and could have posed serious competition to Facebook and others. However, Jones hit the light switch on it. Instead, he promoted the idea of using Facebook and Twitter (and the like) as the public commons. Now that those sites are cutting people off, ready made alternatives are scarce. We also notice AJ has done nothing to resurrect the site.
If you ask me, he’s part of this censorship campaign. His role, to play the victim.
Daisy,
You might want to consider, as well as all others whom you get your info from, and all friends, to check out and come on over to mewe.com, they don’t treat you with contempt like fb and twitster, where truth is never muzzled, your info is never sold, your privacy is respected, where information is never censored. Mewe is not in bed with government like all the others are….this message is for everyone who is tired of controlling issues with BIG Brother and Deep State Globalists who want to silence the truth for their version…..this is about spiritual warfare Eph 6:11-18….I’m on mewe, and they should be included for a better social site…
Out of curiosity: how do you know those statements are true and they are not just selling points? Is there any independent auditing that verify their claims? Anyone auditing their software to see if there are backdoors?
You give great advice at the end of this post, and I have subscribed to your blog. When I started publishing underreported or unreported news, it was on Facebook. However, Facebook is dangerous. I still share my articles on Facebook for exposure, but I host my own site and subscribe to sites like yours. Thanks and keep up the good work.
I have noticed that some of these sites are being hosted on Cloudflare. Nothing against Cloudflare, but it’s kind-a-like everyone riding on the same jetski. We hope the loaded jetski doesn’t crash or the owner doesn’t get fed up with all the passengers.
That’s a very good point. I, myself, am NOT on Cloudflare.
Get an RSS reader. Use it to follow websites directly. I found yours through a link on another website (couldn’t say which one at this point) and added its feed. Most of the sites I monitor were discovered in a similar manner.
Google had an RSS reader years ago, but shut it down. Tiny Tiny RSS (https://tt-rss.org/) is a free web-based RSS reader that bears more than a passing resemblance to Google Reader.
If you’re using Farcebook to find new websites, you’re doing it wrong.
Social pressure will not stop them, lawsuits will. If anyone has the balls to get it done.
I just started a site (and soon apps) that combines facebook and meet up that might be of interest. Please check out dubwoo.com. Help contribute to make it successful. Thanks.