Neon Nettle's Facebook Page Deleted in Mass Censorship of Independent Media

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As Mark Zuckerberg's recent censorship campaign continues to wage war on independent media, Neon Nettle's Facebook page has been the latest target after our page was deleted from the platform without warning.

Since starting our page in 2013, we had built up a community of over 550,000 followers.

Despite the fact that building an audience on Facebook of such a size has taken five years of hard work, representatives from the company claim we have been removed for "spreading hateful content" and refuse to elaborate further.

According to Filipe from Facebook's Global Marketing Solutions, we have been "deceiving" our followers by "causing people to like or engage" with our page and content "unintentionally."

So basically, the site says we have been tricking people into following our page and linking our content.

After Facebook deleted our page, without warning, they sent an automated email notification - from a no-reply email address - that simply stated:

"Your Page "Neon Nettle" has been removed for violating our Terms of Use. A Facebook Page is a distinct presence used solely for business or promotional purposes. Among other things, Pages that are hateful, threatening or obscene are not allowed. We also take down Pages that attack an individual or group, or that are set up by an unauthorised individual. If your Page was removed for any of the above reasons, it will not be reinstated. Continued misuse of Facebook's features could result in the permanent loss of your account."

Facebook has refused to respond with an answer as to how we actually violated these terms or how we might come across as "hateful" or which individuals we may have attacked.

According to Facebook's representative, the decision is "final" and any "additional queries on this matter" will be ignored.

So to all the people who followed our page - over half a million people - Facebook has decided that you no longer get to view our content on their site because, according to Facebook, you are unable to think for yourselves and were tricked into reading our "hateful" news.

Instead, when you search for Neon Nettle on Facebook from now on, you will be presented with only links to posts that discredit our brand as "conspiracy/pseudoscience" or "fake news," and none of our own articles.

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Facebook's Mass-Censorship Campaign

The reality is that shutting us down on Facebook is part of a much larger censorship campaign to silence independent media.

A number of large Facebook pages have recently been shut by the "social" network.

The most recent wave of culling before our page was taken down saw the Collectively Conscious page removed with almost one million followers.

According to Jake Passi of Collectively Conscious, his page was also removed without warning, with Facebook refusing to give a clear reason why.

In a statement, Passi said:

"A page which represents both a company and a community that have become my passion and purpose in this world, a page which I have invested a countless amount of time, energy and money into over the past 6 years has suddenly been deleted by Facebook. The email I received earlier today said it violated their Terms of Use but did not specify which one(s). I am unable to appeal this decision because the page is inaccessible. This comes after dozens of other large, alternative media pages have been deleted including Heart Centered Rebalancing, Natural Cures Not Medicine, Earth We Are One, Meditation Masters, Nikola Tesla, etc."

"Hateful" Content

A common thread between all the pages that have been removed - that we are aware of - is that Facebook claims that have been deceiving users into engaging with "hateful" content.

The choice of words is noteworthy here, as they aren't accusing us of using hate speech.

In fact, NN has always had a zero-tolerance policy for hate speech both on and off Facebook, so what exactly does Zuckerberg et al. consider to be hateful?

The pages we are aware of that have been removed in the recent waves all post a variety of different content, but one glaring correlation we have found is that all of them have posted links to articles that speak positively regarding Donald Trump's policies or asked questions regarding alleged crimes related to Hillary Clinton, The Clinton Foundation or the Democratic Party.

In the weeks running up the deletion, the reach on our page was so low that barely any of our community could see our posts.

In fact, links to our website posted from the page reached an average of less than 0.1%.

The small number of visitors we were getting from Facebook on our website were mainly coming from people sharing our articles organically rather than from our page.

In the weeks prior to the page being removed, one article stood out as it was garnering a lot of attention from users on Facebook and that was our coverage of the Inspector General's report on the investigation into Hillary Clinton's misuse of classified email.

READ MORE: IG Report: Hillary Clinton Has Committed 'Sexual Crimes Against Children'

The IG's 500-page report indicates that FBI agents uncovered evidence of "crime against children" committed by "Hillary Clinton & Foundation."

These notes were highlighted in two pages of the report which is publically available on the Justice Department's website.

Despite the notes in the report about these horrific crimes, it was completely ignored by the mainstream media.

Our report on these findings clearly asked questions that a lot of people answered as Facebook users begun sharing the link organically, with the article receiving over 12,000 shares on the site.

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However, shortly before our page was pulled, we noticed a sudden drop in visitors to that article from Facebook users.

The instant drop in traffic to this post suggested that the link to the article may have been blocked by Facebook to prevent it from circulating on the site.

Could this be the "hateful" content that Facebook claims we have tricked users into engaging with?

"Left-leaning" bias

When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was called to answer questions during a Congressional hearing in April, he admitted that his company's workforce most likely has a left-leaning bias.

During the long-awaited hearing on Capitol Hill, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, accused Facebook and other technology companies of engaging in "bias and political censorship."

Zuckerberg responded:

“I understand where that concern is coming from because Facebook and the tech industry are located in Silicon Valley, which is an extremely left-leaning place.”

For regular users of Facebook, it's no secret that the site's news feed is filled with anti-Trump propaganda.

As Senator Cruz stated during the hearing, a number of Facebook pages that actively support the president have been shut down by the site without explanation.

On the other hand, should anyone report negatively on Hillary Clinton's alleged criminal activity, then they are instantly branded as "fake news" and silenced.

"Fact" Checkers

In the last few months, Facebook has ramped up its censorship efforts by employing the services of shady "fact checking" outfit Snopes.

David Mikkelson and his "debunking" team are now tasked with filtering out information from people's News Feed that they don't like the look of.

For a little context for those unaware of who Mikkelson is, his ex-wife and former co-owner of Snopes, Barbara Mikkelson, claimed in their divorce proceedings that he embezzled company money to spend on prostitutes.

In fact, she and the other shareholders locked Mikkelson out of the company after they discovered he was spending the firm's money on luxury vacations for himself and a porn star named Eryn O'Bryn, who he also placed on the company's payroll.

This is the man that Facebook trusts to use their own "moral compass" to tell their users what they can and can't see in their News Feed.

This so-called "debunker" claims almost every report we do that relates to exposing child trafficking is "fake news," all while falsely claiming that we are "obsessed with pedophilia."

Reporting on the absolute worst crimes that human beings are capable of and demanding action be taken doesn't make us "fake news peddlers" or "obsessed with pedophilia" as Snopes is so desperate to suggest.

We are obsessed with seeking justice for sexual crimes against children, however, and we won't stop asking questions until these crimes fully investigated rather than covered up and swept under the carpet.

Political bias

The truth is that Neon Nettle doesn't have any 'political bias.'

We're punks, our mission is to challenge the establishment and question wrong-doing where ever we find it.

If the people who have been elected into positions of power to represent the citizens of this world are suspected of committing crimes against children, then we demand a full and open investigation.

What we won't do is buy into smear campaigns or turn the other cheek to suit a political agenda.

If that makes Neon Nettle's brand of news "hateful," then so be it.

One thing we can promise our loyal followers is that we will never change.

Moving forward

Facebook may have silenced our message on their platform but there are lots of alternatives ways to find our content.

Aside from regularly checking our website directly, you can follow us on Twitter where we post all the same content that we posted on Facebook.

Alternatively, you can sign up for notifications by clicking the "bell" logo in the bottom right of the screen, or by selecting "allow" from the pop up at the top of the screen.

And of course, you can sign up to our mailing list using the form at the bottom of the page, or by clicking this link, and get all of our latest news delivered to your inbox for free every day.