South Front

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Group.png South Front  
(Independent media) Twitter Website YouTubeRdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
South Front logo (2016).jpg
Formation2014
Type Analytical project
Member ofPropOrNot/List
Russian-friendly video analysis site. Has faced massive Western corporate/government censorship.

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][10]

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.[11] 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.[11] South Front's Facebook page was also suspended without warning around that time.[2] While direct links to South Front SF feature videos, which provide an excellent narration of current battle developments, with maps, especially in Ukraine, may not be shared directly to Facebook, from South Front, they are featured on Facebook site Targetdown, which may be viewed and then shared within Facebook.[12] Several alt media personalities and amateur personalities have successfully shared South Front on X (Twitter), even though it generally can't be directly shared on X, due to site censorship. At this time, and likely due to oversite, articles from new site's URL, appear temporarily accepted by Twitter without censorship.

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.[13] Despite being in contact with them, PayPal did not reply for days, even as the suspension was nearing.[14] By 19 May 2016, PayPal blocked South Front's account, complicating the process of donations.[15] 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.[16] The reason was because of South Front's 20 different appeals, and the readers' 100+ appeals on returning the account.[16]

"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.[17] 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."[17] South Front mocked this allegation, and stated that this new attention also synchronized with the May 2016 blocking of their PayPal account.[18]

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."[19][20] 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.[21]

Criticism

Since the Feb 2022, Russian SMO in eastern Ukraine, South Front has primarily reported on stories with a pro-Russian bias, referring to Ukrainian forces with NATO backing as the "enemy" in an attempt to counter western mainstream media's propaganda aligned with USA and NATO. However, Russian media and its alternative media sympathizers tend to distort news, as an example, to claim Russian military strikes avoid civilians, while western strikes mostly kill civilians. South Front is often late on reporting Russian battlefield failures and successful AFU strikes, pointing to biased reporting.

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 before it was removed as non-notable.[22]. 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'. 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."[23] 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.

The Wikipedia page was re-created on the 8th of March 2022‎.[24]

South Front blocked by U.S. Dept of Commerce controlled "International Domain Name Registry"

During the night of August 18, 2023, South Front's .org extension was censored, site down, access blocked.[25] The “international Domain Name Registry” blocked southfront.org without any warning or explanation. Despite the fact that this organization has been formally independent since 1998, it is actually controlled by the US Department of Commerce. It has since been replaced by a duplicated site: SouthFront.press, with all its original content.[26]

 

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 https://southfront.press/about-southfront/
  2. ↑ a b c https://southfront.press/open-letter-on-the-situation-with-southfronts-paypal-account/
  3. ↑ http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/southfront.press
  4. ↑ http://thesaker.is/category/breaking-articles/southfront/
  5. ↑ =http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/southfront
  6. ↑ http://nationalinterest.org/feature/next-stop-berlin-moscows-nazi-killing-tank-unit-back-15647
  7. ↑ http://www.manilatimes.net/why-china-is-risking-war-with-us-2/271309/
  8. ↑ {https://southfront.press/donate/
  9. ↑ https://southfront.press/southfront-is-launching-crowdfunding-campaign-on-patreon/
  10. ↑ https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Pillars-of-Russia-Disinformation-and-Propaganda-Ecosystem_08-04-20.pdf
  11. ↑ a b http://www.fort-russ.com/2015/04/south-front-vs-youtube.html
  12. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/TargetdownPH/videos/312269677840139
  13. ↑ https://southfront.press/important-southfront-faces-a-stiff-pressure-from-ill-wishers/
  14. ↑ https://southfront.press/paypals-unlawful-actions-against-southfront-update/
  15. ↑ https://southfront.press/attention-paypal-blocked-southfronts-account/
  16. ↑ a b https://southfront.press/breaking-paypal-restored-southfronts-account/}
  17. ↑ https://southfront.press/southfront-is-run-by-the-russian-military/
  18. ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html
  19. ↑ http://www.propornot.com/p/the-list.html
  20. ↑ https://southfront.press/washington-post-appends-russian-propaganda-fake-news-story-admits-it-maybe-fake/
  21. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/South_Front
  22. ↑ https://southfront.press/wikipedia-entry-on-southfront-was-deleted/
  23. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=SouthFront&action=history&offset=&limit=500
  24. ↑ https://southfront.press/southfront-org-blocked-by-u-s-controlled-global-internet-supervisor/
  25. ↑ https://southfront.press/


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