First They Came for Alex Jones — We Told You We Were Next — We Were

 October 11, 2018 will be remembered in history as the day the tech  giants attempted to wipe out independent, liberty-minded, antiwar media  from the airwaves. On Thursday, in a coordinated effort, hundreds of  pages devoted to peace and liberty were memory holed by social media  giants.   

What makes this recent purge from Facebook and Twitter so egregious  is that the pages like the Free Thought Project, the Anti-Media, Press  for Truth, and dozens of others, did not fit the hate speech narrative  these same companies used to wipe out Alex Jones. Instead, these pages  were dedicated to spreading peace, bridging the divide, bringing  humanity together and holding government accountable.   

The purge happened around 12:30 p.m. CST with mainstream news reports  launching at the same time — implying that they were given the heads up  about the move. In a statement co-authored by Facebook Head of Cybersecurity Nathaniel Gleicher — who Caitlin Johnstone aptly points out, also happens to be the former White House National Security Council Director of  Cybersecurity Policy — the massive social media platform explained that  it has removed “559 Pages and 251 accounts that have consistently  broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior.” Facebook said the pages were “working to mislead others about who  they are, and what they are doing.” 

However, this couldn’t be further  from the truth. Our names, addresses, and phone numbers were on all of  our pages and our profiles. “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” which was issued by the state  of Louisiana, which is where my partner and The Free Thought Project  co-founder lives,” Jason Bassler, co-founder of the Free Thought Project  explained. 

However, in their statement, Facebook then suggested the real reason  behind the purge — elections are coming — and pesky folks like the  independent media have a way of reporting information on candidates that  the mainstream tends to ignore — like war, corruption, and most  recently, Brett Kavanaugh’s disdain for the Constitution. “Given the activity we’ve seen — and its timing ahead of the US midterm elections —  we wanted to give some details about the types of behavior that led  to this action,” Facebook said, before accusing us of hawking fake  products or functioning as ad farms that tricked “people into thinking  that they were forums for legitimate political debate.” 

It should be stated that TFTP never hid the fact that we worked with  other independent media groups to share our information around the web —  this is the very definition of grassroots. But all of us together  certainly posed a threat to the mainstream so this nonsense about  tricking people was brought into play. Within all of our pages under the Free Thought umbrella, we had close  to 6 million followers. 

Does Facebook think it knows better than the 6  million people who clicked like on our page? We also had close to 16,000  reviews on our page with an average 4.1 star rating, directly showing  that people desired to see what we were putting out. The only ones  manipulating people here are the tech giants themselves. All but proving the case that this was a coordinated attack by the  tech giant community, shortly after the purge on Facebook, Twitter  followed suit, wiping out our profiles on there as well. 

They gave absolutely no reason for the suspension. 

“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,” John  Vibes poignantly noted. The bottom line is that sites like ours and the others who were wiped  from the internet yesterday represent a voice against the plutocratic  information-controlling establishment. 

We challenge their paradigm of  control and this is a thorn in their side. There are no longer distinct lines between social media giants and  government either which renders the “they are private, they can do what  they wish” argument moot. Facebook has been partnering with the Digital Forensics Lab, an arm  of the Atlantic Council think tank — a neoconservative group funded by Gulf  monarchies, defense giants like Raytheon, megabanks like HSBC, foreign  state actors, and the US government — to weed out people like us who  challenge the status quo.   

Serving as a kick in the teeth to the thousands of people who lost  their livelihoods yesterday because of this purge is the fact that pages  who do set out to deliberately deceive people, put out actual fake  news, and slander others — like the infamous Your News Wire — remain intact and able to post. No, we are not calling for these fake pages to be removed, but  instead using it as a point of reference as to why they targeted us when  pages like YNW have become famous for spreading lies and deceiving  people.   Indeed, we have reached the precipice of corporate-state censorship.  

Those who have constantly demanded that tech giants silence their  critics and information that ‘offends’ them are finally seeing the  inevitable results of such irresponsible acts. As we have been pointing out for the last two years, tech monopolies large enough to silence those with whom you disagree, are large enough to one day silence you.  

The silver lining to this massive purge of independent media is that  it signals the beginning of the end of censored media. TFTP has been  planning for this day and we have been growing our email list and our  subscriber base. We will not be silenced. While it may seem bleak for now, we will rise from the ashes of the  social media dinosaurs to help build and create new platforms that are  out of their control where ideas of peace and freedom can be discussed  openly without fear of devoting years to a platform that can disappear  you in the blink of an eye.