Purged Journalists Speak Out
Facebook purged hundreds of pages from its platform on Thursday. But instead of the usual targets - namely Russia and Iran - Thursday’s ban shut down accounts operated by independent American reporters and activists … Most of the pages that were banned … were independent media outlets and pages that advocated for marijuana legalization or shined a light on police brutality.
In total, Facebook removed 559 pages and 251 personal accounts … Facebook said, going on to accuse the accounts of manipulating the platform to make their content appear more popular, hawking fake products or functioning as ad farms that tricked "people into thinking that they were forums for legitimate political debate."
The founder of one of the pages — The Anti-Media — said he had no knowledge of his page engaging in any such behavior. The Free Thought Project co-founder similarly denied Facebook's accusations. Rachel Blevins, a reporter for RT America whose personal journalism page was nixed, also denied inauthentic behavior.
Just hours after its ban from Facebook, Twitter suspended Anti-Media from its platform, [coordinated collusion?} …
Facebook has been partnering with the Digital Forensics Lab, an arm of the Atlantic Council think tank — a neoconservative group funded by Gulf monarchies and defense giants like Raytheon — to weed out inauthentic users from its platform. Similarly, it has been partnering with the neoconservative Weekly Standard magazine to fact check so-called fake news. …
Independent reporter John Vibes, who contributes to The Free Thought Project and other websites: …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. … the platforms … are favoring “mainstream” sources and silencing alternative voices. …
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 … 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.
"Information exchange" activist Jason Bassler, who co-founded The Free Thought Project and solely founded Police the Police, both of which were banned:We were verified by Facebook with a little check mark next to our name, so they know we are a legitimate organization/outlet. They have seen our "Articles of Organization" … issued by the state of Louisiana … We have even paid Facebook to boost our posts … they gladly took our money … Do we get that money back now? … I never thought I would have built fan pages of 5 million fans, nor did I ever think we would employ and give jobs to nine other activists (at one point), but I was inspired to do what I could to plant seeds and combat the mainstream media's bullsh*t narratives, to keep police and government accountable …
All that's gone now with a click of a button. Six years of hard work, literally seven days a week, working our as*es off finding stories, researching them, writing them, making thumbnails and titles for them, making graphics and videos for them, sharing them on various social media outlets. …
Rachel Blevins, a correspondent for RT America:Today I was locked out of my Facebook account … my public page was "unpublished." There appears to be no explanation for this other than the vague claim from Facebook that my page was taken down because it was "administered by a fake account, misleading users or violating the Facebook spam policies." I am the only person who publishes posts on my page; the only posts I publish are articles I have written or videos of my reports, and I only post one or two times a day — which rules out all of the claims that I have violated Facebook's policies. My page had nearly 70,000 followers … I have poured the last four years into building my page as a journalist …
Nicholas Bernabe, founder of The Anti-Media: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. … 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 … 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. … these suspensions were a coordinated effort to stifle our message ahead of the coming elections.
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