{"id":382527,"date":"2018-10-26T18:42:53","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T17:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/facebook-censorship-of-alternative-media-just-the-beginning\/"},"modified":"2018-10-26T18:42:53","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T17:42:53","slug":"facebook-censorship-of-alternative-media-just-the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/facebook-censorship-of-alternative-media-just-the-beginning\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook Censorship of Alternative Media Just the Beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t                            \t<!-- S3 Cache --><!-- S3:S3:Non-Original -->\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>This October, Facebook and Twitter deleted the accounts of hundreds of users, including many alternative media outlets maintained by American users. Among those wiped out in the coordinated purge were popular sites that scrutinized police brutality and U.S. interventionism, like The Free Thought Project, Anti-Media, and Cop Block, along with the pages of journalists like\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RachBlevins\/status\/1050487416488890370\">Rachel Blevins<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Facebook\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/newsroom.fb.com\/news\/2018\/10\/removing-inauthentic-activity\/\">claimed<\/a>\u00a0that these pages had \u201cbroken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior.\u201d However, sites like The Free Thought Project were verified by Facebook and widely recognized as legitimate sources of news and opinion. John Vibes, an independent reporter who contributed to Free Thought,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/sputniknews.com\/us\/201810121068814924-Reporters-Pages-Shut-Down-By-Facebook\/\">accused<\/a>\u00a0Facebook of \u201cfavoring mainstream sources and silencing alternative voices.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In comments published here for the first time, a neoconservative Washington insider has apparently claimed a degree of credit for the recent purge \u2014 and promised more takedowns in the near future.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRussia, China, and other foreign states take advantage of our open political system,\u201d remarked Jamie Fly, a senior fellow and director of the Asia program at the influential think tank the German Marshall Fund, which is\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gmfus.org\/our-partners\">funded by the U.S. government and NATO<\/a>. \u201cThey can invent stories that get repeated and spread through different sites. So we are just starting to push back. Just this last week Facebook began starting to take down sites. So this is just the beginning.\u201d<span class=\"amazon-element-wrapper-custom align-right\"><br \/>\n<span class=\"amazon-element-med-image\"><span class=\"amazon-image-wrapper\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Republican-Gomorrah-Max-Blumenthal\/dp\/1568584172?SubscriptionId=AKIAI63WS3YGA3Y5U2QA&amp;tag=lrc18-20&amp;linkCode=xm2&amp;camp=2025&amp;creative=165953&amp;creativeASIN=1568584172\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/41AwgwRM83L.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"amazon-image amazon-image-medium\"\/><\/a><\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"amazon-element-title\"><span class=\"appip-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Republican-Gomorrah-Max-Blumenthal\/dp\/1568584172?SubscriptionId=AKIAI63WS3YGA3Y5U2QA&amp;tag=lrc18-20&amp;linkCode=xm2&amp;camp=2025&amp;creative=165953&amp;creativeASIN=1568584172\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Republican Gomorrah<\/a><\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"amazon-element-author\">Max Blumenthal<\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"amazon-element-lowest-used\"><span class=\"appip-lowest-used\"><span class=\"appip-label label-lowest-used\">Best Price: <\/span>$3.29<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"amazon-element-formatted-price\"><span class=\"appip-formatted-price\"><span class=\"appip-label label-formatted-price\">Buy New <\/span>$5.00<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"amazon-element-disclaimer-new\"><span style=\"display:block;color:#888;font-size: .80em; padding: 0 0 3px 0;\">(as of 10:30 EDT &#8211; <span style=\"cursor:pointer;\" title=\"Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date\/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon.com at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.\">Details<\/span>)<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"amazon-element-button\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/aws\/cart\/add.html?AssociateTag=lrc18-20&amp;SubscriptionId=AKIAI63WS3YGA3Y5U2QA&amp;ASIN.1=1568584172&amp;Quantity.1=1\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/wp-content\/mu-plugins\/amazon-ad-link-lr\/img\/buy-from-tan.gif\" border=\"0\"\/><\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Fly went on to complain that \u201call you need is an email\u201d to set up a Facebook or Twitter account, lamenting the sites\u2019 accessibility to members of the general public. He&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/2018\/10\/no_author\/facebook-censorship-of-alternative-media-just-the-beginning-warns-top-neocon-insider\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This October, Facebook and Twitter deleted the accounts of hundreds of users, including many alternative media outlets maintained by American users. Among those wiped out in the coordinated purge were popular sites that scrutinized police brutality and U.S. interventionism, like The Free Thought Project, Anti-Media, and Cop Block, along with the pages of journalists like\u00a0Rachel [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-382527","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}