Facebook Censorship and the Atlantic Council
Yesterday we witnessed one of the greatest Facebook account and
page purges since its formation over a decade ago. In total, 559 pages
and 251 personal accounts were instantly removed from the platform, for
having “consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior” according to Nathaniel Gleicher,
Facebook’s Head of Cybersecurity and former White
House National Security Council Director of Cybersecurity Policy under Obama. This is but one of similar yet smaller purges that have been unfolding in front of our eyes over the last year, all in the name of fighting “fake news” and so called “Russian propaganda”.
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House National Security Council Director of Cybersecurity Policy under Obama. This is but one of similar yet smaller purges that have been unfolding in front of our eyes over the last year, all in the name of fighting “fake news” and so called “Russian propaganda”.
What very few people know though, is that about 5 months
ago, Facebook announced that is was officially partnering with the
Atlantic Council in the form of an “election partnership […] to prevent [their] service from being abused during elections.” Indeed, the US midterm elections are only a couple of weeks away, so the Atlantic Council and its Digital Forensic Research Lab are
now going at it with full force, closing facebook accounts left and
right that they personally deem could be fake accounts, or accounts
spreading misinformation, based on very shady criterias.
One doesn’t need to look far to understand who the Atlantic
Council are and what they stand for : it is a think tank essentially
funded by NATO, weapons manufacturers, Middle-Eastern oil-state
monarchies, billionaires and different branches of the US military. In
short, it has been described as being nothing less than NATO’s
unofficial propaganda wing.
The Atlantic Council doesn’t shy away from its political intents across
the world, which can be seen solely by looking at who sits on its
directors board – the crème de la crème when it comes to US neocons & war criminals:
Henry Kissinger, Condoleezza Rice, Frank Carlucci, James A. Baker, R.
George P. Shultz, James Woolsey, Leon Panetta, Colin Powell, Robert
Gates, and many more.
Needless to say, the Atlantic Council has been on the same side as every single war and conflict
engendered by US and NATO imperialism over the last 50 years, and has
itself played a role in abusing democratic elections around the world as
well as spreading propaganda and misinformation both in home countries
and abroad to achieve its political means.
Hence, it should come as no surprise that when the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab
gets down to work weeks before the upcoming midterms, it has little
intention of putting a stop to actual disinformation groups and rather silences those that speak a message opposing their own. Many
of the pages and accounts taken down have been political (often
leftist), anti-war, independent journalists and media outlets that are
known to go against the grain of mainstream media outlets. Anti-Media (antimedia.com), a reputable source of independent journalism, saw its page with over 2 million followers taken down overnight with no concrete explanation as to why.
Shortly after, Twitter decided to take them down as well, as well as
Carey Wedler‘s (editor at Anti-Media) own personal account for literally
no reason:
Many of the pages taken down had already been targeted back in 2016 by the McCarthyist webpage PropOrNot.not,
endorsed by the Washington Post, in an effort to arbitrarily mark pages
that they believe somehow are connected to Russian propaganda efforts.
Already back then it was clear that many of the pages targeted by
PropOrNot were leftist, anti-war pages, and almost none of them had
anything to do with Russia whatsoever. The Washington Post finally later
on retracted their article endorsing PropOrNot, but this didn’t help the fact that these websites had now already been flagged as propaganda by many.
Other pages taken down are The Free Thought Project, also
an anti-war critic of establishment politics with around 3.1 million
followers on Facebook. RT Reporter Rachel Blevins with 70.000 followers
on facebook and investigative journalist Dan Dicks with 350.000
followers also both saw their accounts taken down overnight – both were
very critical of mainstream journalism. These are but some of the many
accounts affected, with certain accounts on the fringe far right also
targeted. Facebook has suffered great pressure lately from Congress
for its apparent role in the outcome of the 2016 presidential election,
being blamed for not having taken on enough active measures to fight
the spread of fake news. Under such pressure it is not surprising that
Facebook choses to cooperate with a congress-approved think tank – the
Atlantic Council -, and basically give them a free hand to censor as
much as they want, in order for themselves to avoid any future heat from
the US government. This can be argued as to seriously stain the name of
Facebook as an independent social media platform, if it is going to
bend down to any unreasonable demands coming from the US government.
In the name of fighting fake news and targeting
“inauthentic behavior” and “misleading users”, Facebook has essentially
indulged in what was in 1934 Germany called the “Gleichschaltung”
of the media – a synchronized outphasing of dissident voices in the
media and a consolidation of political opinions. The internet has
traditionally always been a bastion of free speech, and it is hence not
surprising that those in power seek to undermine its ability to openly
criticize the powerful. The truth does not do them favor, hence they
would rather not have it expressed too far and wide – something that the
internet has otherwise made possible. Given that censorship is still
extremely frowned upon by the general public, doing so (just like when
seeking to sell a war) requires the majority of people to approve of it.
The fight against fake news and foreign propaganda efforts has done
just that : it has given those in power a pretext to openly censor
dissident voices all while being praised in the making for so-called
“safeguarding western democracies”. More of the same behaviour can be
expected from both Facebook and Twitter in the future, and we cannot
expect major media outlets like The New York Times,The Washington Post,
CNN or MSNBC to stand up against it. After all, many of these censored
independent medias are the only actors left who dare hold the mainstream
media into account for their role as mere propaganda outlets of the
establishment.
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Jonathan Sigrist is
a student at the University of Tromsø in Northern Norway, currently
studying the geopolitical, environmental, cultural and economic
relations between the Arctic nations (The US, Canada, Russia, Norway,
Finland, Sweden, Denmark/Greenland and Iceland), as well as the future
of the Arctic’s role in global politics. He has lived in Denmark,
Sweden, Finland and France, and is a fervent observer and critic of US
foreign policy.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Jonathan Sigrist, Global Research, 2018
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