South Front

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Group.png South Front   Twitter Website YouTubeRdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
South Front logo (2016).jpg
Formation2014
Type Analytical project
Member ofPropOrNot/List

SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence is a public non-profit analytical project. It was launched in the summer of 2015.[1] It is regulated by an independent team of volunteers and experts from 13 countries.[2] The project provides analysis of battles in conflicts, evaluation of the major world power armed forces, and study of tensions between countries.[1] Their focus is on international relations along with crises and use a number of media platforms with an emphasis on social networks.[1]

History

South Front was originally launched on YouTube in late 2014 while the news website was added in June 2015. The stated reason for the creation of the project were to "dig out the truth on issues which are barely covered by states and the mainstream media."[1]

It is the news that has most contributed to the popularity of South Front. Initially it focused on the conflict in Ukraine. More recently the focus shifted to Syria. The detailed character of its news - with several releases a day - and its regular publication of maps explaining the development of military conflicts have made it a popular medium (ranked #17,926 on Alexa in February 2017).[3] Its content is regularly republished on sites like The Saker[4] and Global Research [5].

The analytical articles on South Front often focus on military affairs. In April 2016, South Front noted that the Russian military's creation of three new army divisions reflected a change its conventional mechanized warfare doctrine.[6] In July 2016, South Front made a detailed analysis on the Chinese Navy capabilities in a hypothetical South China Sea conflict with the United States.[7]

Goals of South Front

The stated goals of the project are:[1]

1. Highlighting alternative points of view
2. Providing independent analysis and intelligence of international events
3. Breaking through the information blockade and media bias
4. Promoting human justice and peaceful dialogue between warring nations
5. Preventing the escalation of conflicts that can lead to wars with the threat of the use of nuclear weapons
6. Reducing the flow of media disinformation
7. Building a community of constructive and progressive authors freely sharing their views and analysis with people all over the world

Funding

The stated objective of the project is to be an independent news source without any government or corporate support.[8] It is supported exclusively by crowdfunding and individual donations through PayPal and Patreon.[9]

Opposition

South Front has faced censorship and other measures from some companies. South Front report that the website has been subjected to cyber-attacks in 2015, which they attribute to the Atlantic Council and other NATO-related organizations.[2]

YouTube

On 24 April 2015, South Front had its original YouTube account with millions of views deleted by a copyright claim from Nordic Filmworks LTD over a critical montage of their "Stand with Ukraine" video.[10] The video was deleted after the first strike, but several months later received an additional strike despite already being deleted. South Front launched an appeal that encouraged viewers to message YouTube over this violation of guideline, however, the channel remained deleted.[10] South Front's Facebook page was also suspended without warning around that time.[2]

Paypal

On 15 April 2016, South Front was notified by PayPal that unless they provide more data, the project's account would be suspended on 15 May 2016.[11] Despite being in contact with them, PayPal did not reply for days, even as the suspension was nearing.[12] By 19 May 2016, PayPal blocked South Front's account, complicating the process of donations.[13] Following two months of uncertainty with 34 days of the account being restricted and 15 days being blocked, PayPal restored South Front's account on 6 June 2016.[14] The reason was because of South Front's 20 different appeals, and the readers' 100+ appeals on returning the account.[14]

"Fake news" allegation by Corporate Media

Full article: Fake news

On 10 May 2016, Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro released an article for Springer Link heavily criticizing South Front as a Kremlin-backed propaganda tool.[15] She further claimed that "[it] portrays itself as being a crowdsourced project, but it looks more like a professional info-war project run or backed by the Russian military."[15] South Front mocked this allegation, and stated that this new attention also synchronized with the May 2016 blocking of their PayPal account.[16]

On 24 November 2016 the Washington Post published an article by Craig Timberg in which it linked the PropOrNot list that included South Front among sites "spreading Russian propaganda during the [U.S.] election."[17][18] In December, following the article's wide criticism, the author of it had to formally discredit the story and distance himself from the dubious PropOrNot source.[19]

Removal from Wikipedia

Wikipedia's South Front page was proposed for deletion on 27 February 2017 and was deleted on 7 March 2017. Its page was originally created on 27 June 2016, and had existed for a mere 8 ½ months. The admin's reasoning was based on it not being notable enough by Wikipedia's standards. This former discussion can be found here. South Front wrote an open letter concerning the deletion attempt on 27 February, and on 12 March reacted to the deletion as being censorship "to suppress the alternative point of view provided by the project."[20]

Prior to the deletion, the page was moved to Wikispooks on 1 March 2017 as the original article was targeted by editors. South Front was considered to be a ""non-reliable" source on Wikipedia pages since at least 2016,[citation needed]for not repeating the corporate media's narrative of world conflicts.

In contrast, the online version of The National Interest which has a solid standing as 'international affairs magazine' in Wikipedia, does cite from Southfront as source, giving them the label 'defense site'.

 

A document sourced from South Front

TitleTypeSubject(s)Publication dateAuthor(s)Description
File:Another Version Attempting To Explain Trip Of GRU Agents Petrov And Boshirov To Salisbury.pdfarticleSkripal Affair/Boshirov and Petrov in the UK20 September 2018Andrei GrachevOriginally written by Andrei Grachev on his Facebook page. The post was deleted by Facebook because it allegedly violated its rules.
Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.



References

  1. ↑ a b c d e "About South Front". South Front. Retrieved 27 June 2016.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
  2. ↑ a b c "Open letter on the situation with SouthFront's PayPal account". South Front. 12 May 2016. Retrieved 27 June 2016.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
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  8. ↑ "Donate". South Front. Retrieved 27 June 2016.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
  9. ↑ "SouthFront is launching crowdfunding campaign on Patreon". South Front. 22 January 2016. Retrieved 27 June 2016.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
  10. ↑ a b "South Front vs. Youtube". Fort Russ. 24 April 2015. Retrieved 27 June 2016.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
  11. ↑ "Important: SouthFront faces stiff pressure from ill-wishers". South Front. 10 May 2016. Retrieved 27 June 2016.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
  12. ↑ "PayPal's unlawful actions against SouthFront (Update)". South Front. 13 May 2016. Retrieved 27 June 2016.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
  13. ↑ "Attention: PayPal blocked SouthFront's account". South Front. 19 May 2016. Retrieved 27 June 2016.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
  14. ↑ a b "Breaking: PayPal restores SouthFront's account". South Front. 19 May 2016. Retrieved 27 June 2016.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
  15. ↑ "Revealed! SouthFront is run by 'the Russian military'". South Front. 24 May 2016. Retrieved 24 June 2017.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
  16. ↑ Craig Timberg (24 November 2016). "Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say". Washington Post. Retrieved 28 February 2017.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
  17. ↑ "An Initial Set of Sites That Reliably Echo Russian Propaganda". PropOrNot. 30 November 2016. Retrieved 28 February 2017.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
  18. ↑ "Washington Post appends "Russian propaganda fake news" story, admits it may be fake". South Front. 8 December 2016. Retrieved 24 June 2017.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
  19. ↑ "Wikipedia entry on SouthFront was deleted". South Front. 12 March 2017. Retrieved 24 June 2017.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").


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