Remembering "The Purge" of Alternative Media 5 Years Later
Friends,
Most people don't know but in the ongoing information war, today is an important day. Today marks the 5th anniversary of what has become known in alt-media as "The Purge". On this day in 2018, 500 of the biggest Facebook pages reaching 100s of millions of people were deleted.
Prior to this, we had been facing shadow banning and down ranking. We could see it in our analytics, even if most people still thought it was a conspiracy.
Now, 5 years later, nearly everyone knows that the internet is not as free as it used to be bc of deplatforming & banning.
I wrote about this as soon as it happened & I was likely the first person to call attention to the role of The Atlantic Council and Newsguard in my article, Is the Purge of Independent Media a Coordinated Attack by the Military Industrial Complex?
Five years later and, yes, indy media still exists. But, for the most part, we are not reaching the millions we used to. The most popular content creators/journos are just another version of the MSM at this point, doing no investigative work, just talking about the trendy stories of the week.
Some days I want to give up, but what else would I do? It makes me sad to hear from other indy media friends who are still struggling to find stability, and having to consider moving on with their life because its not financially sustainable.
Meanwhile, most of the audience doesn't want to pay for anything.
Nonetheless, those of us with the resources, the patience, the drive, and the desire barrel forward in the hope that we can still reach new hearts and minds.
I do this with the hope that my work will reach someone who is ready to take action in their lives and not just consume my articles and videos as if they are conspiratainment. Maybe that's too much to ask.
Time will tell.
Here's to those still swimming 5 years after The Purge.
Great points. There is a frightening deadening of curiosity and independent thinking these days ... and it is indeed discouraging. I've been a professional journalist for 37 years, starting off as a features reporter for a north Atlanta newspaper back in 1986. When the whole COVID debacle went down, I created a 2-page compilation of info—from the CDC's mortality estimates clearly showing a 99.5% survivability rate for people under 70, to dozens of credible clinical studies showing viable "alternative" treatments like Ivermectin etc. etc. I researched a listing of 125 independent newspapers, state by state, across the US (you used to be able to easily find full listings of independents on just a couple of websites but no longer) and emailed the info to editors. I heard back from one guy thanking me for the information, saying he "only covered local news." Thinking there might be a spark of curiosity alive in young upcoming journalists, I did the same thing, researching over a hundred contacts at college and university newspapers across the country, and emailed out the same info. NADA. Not one reply. And now the alt-news is no longer news except for the notable exceptions. Sigh. Thanks for being one of the "true alt" sources left.
Thank you for the work that you do. You are an inspiration and I really appreciate getting your emails about freedom cells and the Greater Reset. I love that you have this strong focus on how we can make a better community from the grassroots up. It helps me to feel stronger to do that in my own community. And when I was looking for alternative ways of governing our communities you introduced me to Bob Podolsky and Organised Anarchy or government without the State. And the octalogues and holomat, brilliant ideas and I can recall being in a group that was like that where we were incredibly creative and productive. I could see a time ahead when I might have the resources to organise a Greater Reset Gathering in Australia. Not now but it would be amazing and I do know some wonderfully creative people. When we started the whole Pandemonium times in 2020 I knew about some of the false narratives out there but now I don't feel I can trust any history unless independently verified. I work in crisis support in Australia and I know that we need, for our mental health, to be able to look to positives in our future. So sharing ideas about different ways to create a parallel system as our mainstream institutions crumble is vitally important. I can feel the difference in myself when I am in balance in this regard and it is a more peaceful state. Thanks again for all that you do. (-: