Free Republic

Facebook Inc. is inching closer to fact-checking the news on its platform, a role that Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg shunned a month ago, by rolling out steps to weed out the “the worst of the worst,” the social media platform said on Thursday. Facebook said it has identified several markers of sites that consistently peddle fake news, and it will demote posts from those sites in people’s news feeds. It is also outsourcing the delicate task of determining whether individual stories are true or false to four external organizations and tweaking its news feed algorithm based on their rulings. It...

Twitter was told it was "bounced" from Wednesday's meeting between tech executives and President-elect Donald Trump in retribution for refusing during the campaign to allow an emoji version of the hashtag #CrookedHillary, according to a source close to the situation. Twitter is one of the few major U.S. tech companies not represented at Wednesday afternoon's Trump Tower meeting attended by, among others, Apple's Tim Cook, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg and Tesla's Elon Musk — an omission all the more striking because of Trump's heavy dependence on the Twitter platform. With some 17.3 million followers of his account, the...

Here's the story of a not-so-lovely lady. Actress Susan Olsen — who played the youngest daughter Cindy on "The Brady Bunch" — was just fired from her hosting gig on an L.A. radio show over a homophobic rant she sent over Facebook. The Donald Trump supporter co-hosted the show "Two Chicks Talkin' Politics" before she was dismissed by the station, according to reports. Olsen used a homophobic slur over and over again towards openly gay actor Leon Acord-Whiting, who decided to publish the once-private message publicly. Recommended for you: Watch Now - It's Not Just Radio on TV. It's Not...

Brooke Hughes, 18, from Scranton, and Chaniya Morrison-Toomey, 19, from Dunmore, died in the crash, which happened just after midnight Tuesday near Mount Pocono, according to KTLA sister station WNEP in Scranton. The pair died after their car was hit from behind by a big rig. The video, which has been taken down from Facebook, shows Hughes driving along Interstate 380 while holding the cellphone, according to the Times-Tribune newspaper in Scranton. Morrison-Toomey asks, "Are you going live?" But before Hughes can respond, lights suddenly fill the interior of the car and there's the sound of screeching tires. Then the...

The Internet has jumped the shark. An omnibus personal media platform independently encompassing all social media, Facebook, Twitter & all, intricately controlled by YOU, is 'technically' possible--but you'll never see it. It would enable you to absolutely control your own e-profile, dynamically interacting all social media solely at your command, completely immune to censorship, hosted on your computer as an independent, autonomous server. The technology exists now. But computer techno-fascism will never allow you to have it. A microcosmic example is 'the internet of things'. To counter the 'blinking 12:00 display' on all your devices, they should all interact wirelessly...

Facebook, Twitter, Google's YouTube and Microsoft must act faster to tackle online hate speech or they will face laws forcing them to do so, the European Commission said on Sunday. .... This included removing or disabling access to the content if necessary, better cooperation with civil society organizations and the promotion of "counter-narratives" to hate speech.

VIDEO: Man using Facebook Live while speeding seriously injured in crash PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Police say a Rhode Island man who streamed himself on Facebook Live speeding and weaving in and out of traffic was seriously injured when he crashed into a garbage truck and a concrete barrier. State police say 20-year-old Onasi Olio-Rojas, of Pawtucket, lost control Wednesday on U.S. Route 6 in Providence. The video was posted on Olio-Rojas' Facebook page and shows him driving at speeds exceeding 100 mph and weaving through traffic. Police confirmed its authenticity to WJAR-TV.

The president-elect of the United States is a notorious troll — a fact which his promise to ban Muslims from entering the country, threat to imprison and strip Americans of citizenship for exercising their First Amendment rights, and widespread insulting of people online all make clear. We now learn via Slate that the two technology platforms Donald Trump uses most prominently to spread his messages of hate and division, Twitter and Facebook, take a very different stance on how to respond to future instances of harassment by Trump. Namely, Twitter says it would consider suspending his account. Facebook, which CEO...

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are two investors in Bridge International Academies. But in Uganda, the group's 63 schools have been "ordered to shut down in a matter of weeks, leaving the lives of thousands of pupils in limbo." An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Uganda's High Court has described the Bridge International Academies...as unsanitary and unqualified, and has ordered it to close its doors in December because it ignored Uganda's national standards and put the "life and safety" of its 12,000 young students on the line. The Director of Education Standards for the Ministry, Huzaifa Mutazindwa, told CNN that the...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Now, Reuters: "Conservatives bristle as Trump backs off Clinton prosecution." There's another one. "Trump walks back." "Trump backs off." "Trump changing mind." "Trump relaxing." Don't believe it! He hasn't done anything yet. He's just talking to a bunch of people at the media that he knows don't tell the truth about him. But in this story, there's something of particular interest to me. "Conservatives who have reveled in the possibility of a Clinton prosecution were not pleased. Breitbart News, the outlet once led by Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon, published a story on Tuesday under the headline:...

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, has cultivated relationships with China’s leaders, including President Xi Jinping. He has paid multiple visits to the country to meet its top internet executives. He has made an effort to learn Mandarin. Inside Facebook, the work to enter China runs far deeper. The social network has quietly developed software to suppress posts from appearing in people’s news feeds in specific geographic areas, according to three current and former Facebook employees, who asked for anonymity because the tool is confidential. The feature was created to help Facebook get into China, a market where the social network...

The money comes from a class action lawsuit settlement over Facebook’s use of members' names and faces in “Sponsored Story” adsSome of Facebook's 1.8 billion users have recently received a $15 check from the social media giant in the mail, leaving many recipients scratching their heads. "Is this check real?" The answer is: Yes. The money comes from a class action lawsuit settlement over Facebook’s use of members' names and faces in “Sponsored Story” ads without their permission and without paying them. Fraley vs. Facebook was filed in April 2011. In their lawsuit, the five plaintiffs claimed Facebook improperly used...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a message for his billion-plus users: "you're not capable of deciding for yourself what is 'news' and what is not, so we will do it for you." Facebook has been widely blamed - by the left-leaning mainstream media - for allowing the spread of online misinformation, amusingly much of it pro-Trump, but Zuckerberg has rejected the notion that Facebook influenced the outcome of the election or that fake news is a major problem on the service. "Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99 percent of what people see is authentic," he wrote in...

Supporters on Facebook blast 'liberal' media for ouster. A firefight of words has erupted in Houston after a Fox affiliate fired a TV reporter for expressing her support for President-elect Donald Trump on her personal social media. Her critics are blasting her, and the Houston Chronicle suggested there was some element of racism. But Scarlett Fakhar, 25, KRIV-TV in Houston also has her supporters. “I for one will not be watching Fox 26 any longer,” wrote Steve Woodruff on her Facebook page. “Their bias is more than obvious. You have our full support & here’s hoping for bigger things for...

Police have arrested an Ohio teen who they say broadcast himself shooting a rifle into his neighbor's home on Facebook Live because he was bored. Police say he live-streamed a series of disturbing, profanity-laced videos, in which he's seen playing with guns and laughing.

A Texas television reporter is out of a job after she criticized President Obama and praised President-elect Donald Trump on her personal Facebook page — claiming the country went “downhill” under the outgoing commander-in-chief. Scarlett Fakhar said she was recently canned from her local news gig at Fox in Houston for posting last week that she was “happy and relieved” over Trump’s unexpected White House win. Fakhar had said in the post, which has since been deleted, that Obama made the “entire county hate one another” and claimed God “had a hand” in the election. She also said she could...

Fake election news got more Facebook hits than the top stories from major news outlets during the final three months of the presidential race, BuzzFeed News reported Wednesday. According to the news outlet's analysis, 20 top-performing false election stories from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook. During the same period, the 20 best-performing election stories from 19 major news websites generated a total of 7,367,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook, the analysis found. BuzzFeed News reported the major outlets had the most activity on Facebook before the race's last three months –...

Hello. I have reached a conclusion all by myself and have not been in any way influenced by anybody else at all to make this video and I hope everybody understands where I'm coming from. I am going to read the statement now. "I, Dave Cullen, do hereby retract all of my previous statements concerning social media censorship..." (looks off camera) I, I can't do this, I'm sorry... (sound of repeating rifle chambering a round) Okay. I can do this... "I have now seen the error of my ways and have realized that stringent community guidelines policies on Twitter and...

...the tech behemoths could no longer ignore the growing outcry over their power in distributing information to the American electorate. During the past week, two of the world’s biggest internet companies have faced mounting criticism over how fake news on their sites may have influenced the presidential election’s outcome. On Monday, those companies responded by making it clear that they would not tolerate such misinformation by taking pointed aim at fake news sites’ revenue sources. Google kicked off the action Monday afternoon when the Silicon Valley search giant said it would ban websites that peddle fake news from using its...

Mac SlavoNovember 15,2016 In the runup to the 2016 election Matt Drudge linked to reports that Hillary Clinton’s health was faltering. For weeks the ‘rumors’ were denied by mainstream media, especially left-leaning web sites. As the election drew closer, The Huffington Post and other partisan web sites claimed that Clinton had unbeatable lead. On November 4th, just days before the election, Huff Post went so far as to suggest that Clinton had a 98% chance of winning the election. All the while, alternative media researchers, journalists, commentators and bloggers were highlighting the fact that polls actually showed a dead even...