Censored Journalist Brings Herself Back Online

A lesser known story of social media silencing...and a rise from the ashes.

I woke up to a notice from a major social media platform: "Your page has been unpublished."

That afternoon, another major platform emailed: "Your account has been suspended."

Two hits in a day. The Anti-Media, the independent news outlet where I was editor-in-chief and worked with a handful of committed activists and journalists, was gone. Our website remained, but our audience was wiped out.

Facebook removed hundreds of pages that day in October of 2018, claiming they were fighting inauthentic activity and spam. Far less publicized and sparsely known to this day is that the platform formerly known as Twitter banned some of the same accounts, including the Anti-Media and my personal Twitter account, that same day. It appeared to be a coordinated campaign.

Present-day “anti-media” sentiments are often associated with right-leaning objections to the corporate media’s coverage of Donald Trump. Our reporting was less partisan.

We didn't subscribe to left-right, Republican-Democrat narratives. Instead, we focused on issues many people agree are problematic: the military-industrial complex, mass surveillance, corporate hegemony achieved through backroom deals with power-hungry politicians and bureaucrats, and the growing police state and its accompanying intrusions. We supported no politicians and routinely called them out no matter their party or popularity. We challenged their authority altogether and highlighted disruptive, non-government solutions to the problems "authority" so often creates. And we reached lots of people. Millions every week.

Obviously, we were a threat to democracy.

A Likely Suspect

The bans occurred just a few months after Facebook partnered with the powerful Atlantic Council, whose board of directors is filled with former State Department, Department of Defense, national security, CIA, and other ex-government authority figures. The official partnership was with the Atlantic Council's "Digital Forensics Research Lab" (DFRL), which vows to fight disinformation and protect democracy. Between 2018 and 2019, Facebook and Twitter provided substantial funding to the Atlantic Council, which also receives funding from various government departments within the US government, foreign governments, and the who's who of powerful corporations.

In addition to Facebook's partnership with the DFRL, the "lab" announced mere days after our removals that Twitter had given them early access to unrelated data, confirming the group also had some degree of communication with Twitter. Curiously, an article dubbed a "Twitter Files extra" published on Racket News noted the "research lab" was behind the Facebook bans (I have been unable to find conclusive proof of this). The same article acknowledged that the Atlantic Council was in communication with Twitter in May of 2018, and that the DFRL had “similar correspondence” early on with the app (editorial note: I’ve clarified the language here, which originally said that per the article, the DFRL specifically was in touch with Twitter in 2018; I believe the original wording is still accurate, but a second check of the article led me to want to add this note/edit for maximum accuracy). The article did not explore the Twitter bans that occurred on the same day as Facebook's.

We never got our pages back—even after X's new owner took over and promised amnesty for suspended accounts. Our representative at Facebook, assigned to us by the company several months before the bans, ghosted us after telling us our appeal was at the top of the pile. To our knowledge, that appeal was never processed. If it was, their decision remains clear.

I can't prove the DFRL was behind our bans (and I may never know who was), but they are as good a guess as any. We received no prior warning from either platform that we were violating any rules (you’d think our official Facebook representative would have let us know). The reasons cited for deleting our pages didn't apply to us. To the best of my knowledge, it appears Facebook applied a rule against "spam" to many pages that partnered with each other to promote content with similar themes and ideals. They also applied it to pages that posted articles in like-minded groups.

This was a widespread practice on Facebook among pages of all subject matter and political beliefs, and it was especially common among activist groups like ours. We certainly did not fall under the "spam" claims the platform announced in its press release, which described "inauthentic" behavior by fake accounts and bots to drive people to ad farms. Nevertheless, the Anti-Media and countless other activist pages lost years’ worth of dedicated, passionate efforts.

In another example of dubious justifications for the bans (after initially providing no justification at all), Twitter claimed the removal of my personal account was for 'manipulating user experiences.’ This was a vague and meaningless term that didn't apply to my rare posts on the platform. At least one other Anti-Media member also permanently lost his personal account with similar ‘justifications.’

Considering the ongoing, massive waves of social media censorship often purportedly fight fake news, it is important to acknowledge that there is a lot of terrible “reporting” in “alternative” and “independent” media (I gave a talk on this several months before losing the Anti-Media). Whether people are well-intentioned but lack the skills to conduct accurate research or are aware that they are sharing false information but do so for clicks and revenue depends on the outlet. But just as with the mainstream, the independent media sphere has both excellent and abysmal reporting. Unfortunately, the abysmal became fodder for extensive bans that swept up others who upheld standards of integrity.

An Equally Powerful Prison

Over the last several years, I may have been censored by the powers-that-be, whoever they really are, but I also censored myself—in large part out of fear: fear I'd lose the platforms I had left, and worse, that there was no point. I continued to make videos, my original medium, but with far less frequency.

My efforts were dimmed by an overwhelming sense of "why bother?" The ruling powers are relentless, and humanity is lost in indoctrination, collectivism, and lust for a false sense of control through the political system. The masses are driven by blind hysteria and emotional mayhem stoked by never-ending fear-mongering on all sides. I judged and resented this widespread ignorance, and I withdrew.

But who was I to judge? I was once a fervent Obama supporter who questioned nothing until the end of his first term. In my years of running the Anti-Media and making videos on the same subject matter, the same reactivity and dysregulation I loathed in others flowed through me, too. Like everyone else, I was too busy vomiting my frustrations and opinions onto the internet to notice my inner turmoil. But the less I said online, the more that internal reactivity came into focus. My views might have been different from those I criticized, but I was caught in the same loop of fear, self-righteousness, and outrage as the masses I viewed as the problem.

The Only Way Out Is Through

I still care deeply about everything we covered at the Anti-Media and our foundational philosophy, which rejected the legitimacy of political authority on historical and moral grounds. But now more than ever, I also see how the internal human experience reflects externally in the collective discord unfolding daily.

It is only human, and always has been, to grasp outward to quell discomfort and suffering within. Today, there is always a pill or drug to take or a screen to scroll to help us avoid ourselves. There is always an outrage to scream about and politicians capitalizing on our rage, keeping us plugged into the matrix at the expense of our connection to ourselves and our humanity. The problems we see today are not just a result of people's propaganda-conditioned minds: dangerous beliefs and policies reflect a deeper crisis of heart and spirit.

But it's not all hopeless. At the (a)political level, despite humanity's constant march of one step forward and two steps back, an evolution of consciousness has long been underway. People generally no longer believe in the divine right of kings or trial by fire. An increasing number of people, whatever their ideas for solutions, recognize that the systems that have dominated human existence for thousands of years are not effective or even legitimate. They want something different.

The same is true of our inner worlds. More people are recognizing the battles raging within themselves at an individual level, which inevitably manifest in the world. They are working to shine the light of awareness and compassion on their suffering, which allows them to do the same for others. How can we expect the world to become less chaotic and hateful if our relationship with ourselves is exactly that?

A Pleasure to Burn

As I bring myself back online, I will continue to cover the grave injustices inflicted in the name of "authority." But I will also highlight another power: our own—not as supposedly reflected through elections or the conditioned belief that people in positions of control "represent" us but our true power as individual human souls. I believe we can harness this authentic power—the only real kind there is—for lasting peace, freedom, and love...both internally and externally.

My new Substack, named for one of the greatest dystopian novels ever written, Fahrenheit 451, will focus on all of this: the wildfires of indoctrinated beliefs still burning, the often painful yet empowering metamorphosis of burning them off and evolving in heart, mind, body, and spirit, and the burning flames that can forge a new paradigm—one that rises from the ashes of obedience to abusive ruling authorities and humanity's disconnection from the unconscious drives that have allowed the old systems to thrive throughout history.

It's a pleasure to burn.