{"id":381366,"date":"2018-10-17T19:41:56","date_gmt":"2018-10-17T18:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=381366"},"modified":"2018-10-17T19:41:56","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T18:41:56","slug":"boycott-facebook-twitter-and-google-heres-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/boycott-facebook-twitter-and-google-heres-why\/","title":{"rendered":"Boycott Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Here’s Why:"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

NATO \u2014 the neoconservatives, the marketeers for firms such as Lockheed Martin and BAE \u2014 has taken over the social-media giants and much of online international \u2018news\u2019-reporting, including that of virtually all independent news-sites and blogs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Facebook, Twitter, and Google, in recent days, delivered what might be the death-blows.<\/span><\/p>\n

NATO\u2019s main PR agency, think-tank, and lobbying organization, is \u2018non-profit\u2019 \u2014 a legal tax-dodge that\u2019s financed by donations from those weapons-making firms and their supporting firms and their \u2018non-profits\u2019, so that the taxes that it doesn\u2019t pay will need to be paid instead by the general public. Billionaires know how to avoid taxes, and they hire politicians who write the laws with all the \u2018right\u2019 loopholes for them \u2014 and only<\/i> for the very richest \u2014 to use. This PR agency is called \u201cThe Atlantic Council<\/span><\/a>,\u201d and it was set up in 1961, the exact same year that U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower left office warning that \u201cthe military-industrial complex\u201d might take control of the U.S. Well, it did so, with The Atlantic Council\u2019s help; and, now, it is finally lowering the boom against democracy itself \u2014 at least among the U.S. and its allied nations (the governments whose weapons-manufacturing firms are in, and sell to, NATO governments). The aim is to drive up the percentage of government-expenditures there that go to pay those firms, and so to reduce the percentages that go to pay everything else. The aim, in short, is the permanent-warfare-economy<\/b>. After all, firms such as Lockheed Martin and BAE sell only<\/i> to allied governments. They have virtually no consumers except those governments. So: their (and their \u2018charities\u2019) basic message is \u2018austerity\u2019 \u2014 except<\/i> on \u2018defense\u2019 or realistically called \u201caggression.\u201d This is national \u2018defense\u2019 such as against Iraq in 2003, and against Libya in 2011 \u2014 it is instead sheer aggression. George Orwell predicted \u201cNewspeak\u201d \u2014 well, here it is. It\u2019s today\u2019s norm, so normal that the public think it\u2019s just natural, and conservatives and even many liberals think it\u2019s the way that \u2018a free market\u2019 ought<\/i> to be. <\/span><\/p>\n

Here was Facebook\u2019s announcement, on October 11th:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/newsroom.fb.com\/news\/2018\/10\/removing-inauthentic-activity\/<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

11 October 2018<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Removing Additional Inauthentic Activity from Facebook<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Today, we\u2019re removing 559 Pages and 251 accounts that have consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior. Given the activity we\u2019ve seen \u2014 and its timing ahead of the US midterm elections \u2014 we wanted to give some details about the types of behavior that led to this action. Many were using fake accounts or multiple accounts with the same names and posted massive amounts of content across a network of Groups and Pages to drive traffic to their websites. Many used the same techniques to make their content appear more popular on Facebook than it really was. Others were ad farms using Facebook to mislead people into thinking that they were forums for legitimate political debate.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Those 559 and 251 weren\u2019t identified; none<\/i> of them were. Facebook wants them to need to scream in order for them to be able to be noticed at all by the public. The announcement didn\u2019t even say by what criteria they were measuring \u2018Inauthentic Activity\u2019 versus \u2018legitimate political debate\u2019. Their announcement did say \u201cwe look at these actors\u2019\u00a0behavior\u00a0\u2013 such as whether they\u2019re using fake accounts or repeatedly posting spam \u2013 rather than their\u00a0content\u00a0when deciding which of these accounts, Pages or Groups to remove,\u201d but unless they make public what the actual algorithms are by means of which they remove sites, no one should trust them, at all, because they can remove whatever NATO or The Atlantic Council (neither of which their announcement even mentioned) want<\/i> them to remove.<\/span><\/p>\n

The background for this act by the war-economy\u2019s billionaires had already been reported at Mint Press on May 18th, \u201cFacebook Partners With Hawkish Atlantic Council, a NATO Lobby Group, to \u2018Protect Democracy\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/a>, where Elliott Gabriel opened:<\/span><\/p>\n

Facebook is hoping that a new alliance with the<\/i> Atlantic Council<\/i><\/span><\/a> \u2014 a leading geopolitical strategy think-tank seen as a de facto PR agency for the U.S. government and NATO military alliance \u2013 will not only solve its \u201cfake news\u201d and \u201cdisinformation\u201d controversy, but will also help the social media monolith play \u201ca positive role\u201d in ensuring democracy on a global level.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The new partnership will effectively ensure that Atlantic Council will serve as Facebook\u2019s \u201ceyes and ears,\u201d according to a company press statement. With its <\/i>leadership<\/i><\/span><\/a> comprised of retired military officers, former policymakers, and top figures from the U.S. National Security State and Western business elites, the Atlantic Council\u2019s role policing the social network should be viewed as a virtual takeover of Facebook by the imperialist state and the council\u2019s extensive list of ultra-wealthy and corporate donors.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Then, on October 12th, Mint Press\u2019s Whitney Webb bannered \u201cFacebook Purges US-Based Independent Media For Political Disinformation\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and reported that,<\/span><\/p>\n

Notably, Facebook\u2019s statement on the mass purge of pages was co-authored by Facebook Head of Cybersecurity Nathaniel Gleicher, who is a former White House<\/i> National Security Council director<\/i><\/span><\/a> of cybersecurity policy.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Twitter <\/i><\/b>also banned<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/a> many of the pages targeted for deletion by Facebook on Thursday, suggesting a coordinated censorship effort between the two most popular social media platforms.<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Many of the pages banned had millions of likes, such as the Free Thought Project (3.1 million likes), Antimedia (2.1 million), Cop Block (1.7 million), and Police the Police (1.9 million). Several of the pages that were deleted on Thursday had been targeted by Facebook in recent months, both through new censorship algorithms and Facebook\u2019s<\/i> controversial team<\/i><\/span><\/a> of \u201cfact checkers.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

For instance, the Free Thought Project had been flagged earlier this year as \u201cfake news\u201d by Facebook \u201cfact checking\u201d partner organizations, including\u00a0 <\/span>the Associated Press (AP) and Snopes. In one case, a story published by the Free Thought Project was flagged as \u201cfalse\u201d by the AP. That story, <\/i>which detailed<\/i><\/span><\/a> the documented case of Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) being forcibly removed from a DHS migrant detention center that had once been a Walmart, was marked false because the AP asserted that the article made the claim that Walmart was housing immigrants for DHS. However, the article does not make the claim, instead accurately noting that the facility used to be a Walmart.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Censorship algorithms had also greatly affected traffic to the recently deleted pages for much of the past year. In the case of Antimedia, its traffic dropped from around 150,000 page views per day in early June to around 12,000 by the end of that month. As a reference, in June of last year, Antimedia\u2019s traffic stood at nearly 300,000 views per day.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Also on October 12th, heavy dot com bannered \u201c\u2018Facebook Purge\u2019: List of Some Deleted Accounts on Left & Right\u201d<\/span><\/a> and listed a few dozen sites that the article’s writer had seen online screaming about having been removed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in UK\u2019s very mainstream Daily Mail<\/i> (the second-largest-circulation<\/span><\/a> of all UK\u2019s newspapers), columnist Michael Burleigh headlined on October 13th \u201cPutin’s taking over Libya by stealth in order to point a new weapon at the West \u2014 millions of desperate migrants\u201d<\/span><\/a> and he opened:<\/span><\/p>\n

So bloody and extensive is President Putin\u2019s record of aggression, not least in Syria and Ukraine, that an incursion into the empty deserts of North Africa might hardly seem worth noting.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Yet the discovery that Russia is moving troops and missiles into war-torn Libya has rightly caused alarms to sound throughout the capitals of Europe.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

It is a step of huge significance, and one with potentially disastrous results for Western nations.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The discovery that Vladimir Putin, above, and his government is moving troops and missiles into war-torn Libya has rightly caused alarm. Russia \u2013 this time in the form of Rosneft, the huge oil company controlled by Putin\u2019s sinister crony Igor Sechin \u2013 is interested in a slice of Libya\u2019s vast oil reserves, the largest in Africa<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Libya has both oil and Mediterranean ports, and Russia is hungry for both.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

But was it Russia that in 2011 had invaded and destroyed Libya, or was it U.S., UK, and France, who invaded and destroyed Libya \u2014 a country that like Iraq, Syria, Yemen and others which The West has destroyed, had never threatened nor invaded any<\/i> of them?<\/span><\/p>\n

Burleigh continued:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u2013 cause enough for concern, perhaps. Yet the real fear for European governments is this: Libya, with its porous southern borders, has become the main jumping-off point for the hundreds of thousands of African migrants now seeking to cross the Mediterranean to the shores of the EU and, in particular, Italy.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

So, his own country, UK, had helped with the bombing of Libya that had caused all those \u2018migrants\u2019 (actually refugees) into Europe, but now he\u2019s trying to blame Putin for it, as if Russia and not UK, U.S., and France were the cause of it. Doesn\u2019t that \u201cmislead people\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\n

But is the Daily Mail<\/i> being strangled by Facebook, Twitter, and Google; or is it instead<\/i> being done to the small-fry political sites, which aren\u2019t<\/i> owned and controlled by the aristocracies of the U.S., UK, France, and their allied aristocracies \u2014 all the aristocracies that are in NATO and promoted by The Atlantic Council?<\/span><\/p>\n

Here is yet more from Elliott Gabriel\u2019s excellent news-report at Mint Press on May 18th, providing background to the present purges and censorships:<\/span><\/p>\n

The announcement, made last Thursday in a <\/i>Facebook Newsroom post<\/i><\/span><\/a>, explained that the social network\u2019s security, policy and product teams will coordinate their work with the Atlantic Council\u2019s <\/i>Digital Forensic Research Lab<\/i><\/span><\/a> (DFRLab) to analyze \u201creal-time insights and updates on emerging threats and disinformation campaigns from around the world.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

DFRLab employees include pro-war media activist Eliot Higgins (of <\/i>Bellingcat<\/i><\/span><\/a> fame) and <\/i>Ben Nimmo<\/i><\/span><\/a> \u2014 a senior fellow for information defense at the Atlantic Council, who <\/i>earned infamy<\/i><\/span><\/a> for his groundless accusations that actual Twitter users are Russian trolls.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Read more on Facebook<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n