![\"Jamie](\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Jamie-Fly.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThis October, Facebook and Twitter deleted the accounts of hundreds of users, including many alternative media outlets maintained by American users. Among those wiped out in the coordinated purge were popular sites that scrutinized police brutality and U.S. interventionism,<\/strong> like The Free Thought Project, Anti-Media, and Cop Block, along with the pages of journalists like\u00a0Rachel Blevins<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n Facebook\u00a0claimed<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0that these pages had \u201cbroken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior.\u201d<\/strong><\/em> However, sites like The Free Thought Project were verified by Facebook and widely recognized as legitimate sources of news and opinion. John Vibes, an independent reporter who contributed to Free Thought,\u00a0accused<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0Facebook of \u201cfavoring mainstream sources and silencing alternative voices.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In comments published here for the first time, a neoconservative Washington insider has apparently claimed a degree of credit for the recent purge \u2014 and promised more takedowns in the near future.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cRussia, China, and other foreign states take advantage of our open political system,\u201d remarked Jamie Fly, a senior fellow and director of the Asia program at the influential think tank the German Marshall Fund, which is\u00a0funded by the U.S. government and NATO<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThey can invent stories that get repeated and spread through different sites. So we are just starting to push back. Just this last week Facebook began starting to take down sites. So this is just the beginning.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Fly went on to complain that \u201call you need is an email\u201d to set up a Facebook or Twitter account, lamenting the sites\u2019 accessibility to members of the general public.<\/strong> He predicted a long struggle on a global scale to fix the situation and pointed out that to do so would require constant vigilance.<\/span><\/p>\n Fly made these stunning comments to Jeb Sprague, who is a visiting faculty member in sociology at the University of California-Santa Barbara and co-author of this article. The two spoke during a lunch break at a\u00a0conference on Asian security<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0organized by the\u00a0Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0in Berlin, Germany.<\/span><\/p>\n In the tweet below, Fly is the third person from the left who appears seated at the table.<\/span><\/p>\n A rare opportunity to discuss Asian security in Berlin, with an excellent group of experts from the region @SWPBerlin<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/Ogdc9d5BVK<\/a><\/p>\n — Garima Mohan (@GarimaMo) October 15, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n