Free Republic

If an Islamic terrorist is apprehended in Detroit or blows himself up in Stockholm, it doesn’t usually take long to trace their career progression back to Britain. The CIA despairingly refers to “Londonistan”, but the phrase doesn’t quite do justice to Britain’s ability to incubate terrorism all over the country. For various reasons – chiefly our being quicker to accept asylum-seekers than expel villains – Britain has ended up as a kind of finishing school for jihadis.

The founder of Russia’s leading social media network—a wunderkind often described as Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg—has left his post as CEO and fled the country as cronies of President Vladimir Putin have made steady inroads into the company’s ownership. The slow-motion ouster of Pavel Durov from the network known as VKontakte, or “In Contact,” is the latest sign that independent media outlets in Russia have become increasingly imperiled. Although months in the making, the loss of Durov’s leadership in VKontakte means that the space for free speech on the Russian web could shrink even further. …

This is the power of social media. This is the power of personal video cameras. This is the power of citizen journalists. And the next time Senator Feinstein calls for “licencing” only “legitimate journalists,” that the 1st Amendment only extends to people who work at the New York Times, Washington Post, or MSNBC, remember this moment. This is how the bullies with the power, the cronies and their allies, are turned back. Dianne Feinstein First Amendment Is A Special Privilege This is not about a rancher owing the Bureau of Land Management money. This is about a federal government which...

Just ten days after becoming CEO of web company Mozilla, Brendan Eich resigned after drawing the ire of LGBT advocates. In 2008, Eich donated money to the Proposition 8 campaign, an effort around legislation to make same-sex marriage illegal in California. When he was announced as the new Mozilla head, members of the LGBT community and even Mozilla employees expressed their dissatisfaction through social media and called for Eich’s resignation. Many have since spoken out against the backlash calling it unfair. On Monday’s “NewsOne Now,” Roland Martin was joined by a panel of guests to discuss the news, whether the...

What do the forced departure of Brendan Eich from Mozilla and #CancelColbert have in common? They are both examples of Fakectivism. Fakectivism is social media activism by small numbers of people that is integrated into the news cycle because it matches the media’s political agenda.Every Tea Party member knows that media coverage of actual protests is unequal. Twenty students, most of them volunteers at an environmental non-profit, protesting Keystone will get media coverage that a thousand Tea Party members protesting ObamaCare won’t receive.The same is true of online protests.Many of the real life protests covered by the media are fake....

Everyday, our feeds on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are flooded with the same old crap. Girls are going crazy taking pictures of EVERYTHING throughout their days, and subjecting their friends to this garbage on all the social media sites. These following 20 [sic] pictures are the most commonly posted, and the reason Zuckerberg gave us an 'unfriend' button.

FireChat is one of the most interesting new communications products to arrive in the past year. Mostly because it’s not another take on standard messaging. By which I mean it’s not another WhatsApp clone. FireChat is a hyperlocal chat tool that allows smartphones to connect to each other directly, without the need for WiFi hotspots or cellular networks. As long as two devices (or a bunch of devices in a small space) can connect to one another, using Bluetooth or their WiFi radios, they’ll be able to chat. (Typically, every communication your smartphone gets from another smartphone comes through an...

A woman abandoned as a newborn 27 years ago in an Allentown, Pennsylvania, fast-food restaurant bathroom has been reunited with her birth mother after a social media blitz, local media reported on Wednesday. Katheryn Deprill, left in the Burger King bathroom only hours after she was born, met her birth mother on Monday in a lawyer’s office, she told WFMZ television in an interview. Deprill said her birth mother, who she did not identify, recounted getting pregnant after being raped while on a trip abroad and giving birth in her childhood bedroom at the age of 17. Her parents did...

Recent events in Turkey, and prior events in Egypt and Libya got me thinking about the amazing power of social media. On Thursday, Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to eradicate twitter, adding “The international community can say this or that – I don’t care. They will see the power of the Turkish Republic.” The next day a "digital coup" occurred and Twitter Use in Turkey Jumped to New High. With the above in mind, I propose ... The Law of Social Media: Arrogant fools who think they can control social media quickly discover social media controls them. The...

Even if you weren’t one of the 28.2 million Americans watching the 2014 Grammys last month, you probably caught wind of the controversy over Beyoncé’s raunchy performance of her song “Drunk in Love,” featuring her husband Jay-Z. Perhaps it was her lingerie-like outfit or her chair dancing or the part where Jay-Z grasped her rear, but this was one of those moments when parents find themselves putting their hands over their children’s eyes—or flipping to another channel. Beyoncé, a mother of a 2-year old, raked in tons of media attention for that performance. Some of the publicity was negative. The...

"Al-Qaeda unveils new magazine aimed at Western jihadis Advert for 'Resurgence' magazine uses words of Malcolm X in appeal to disaffected Muslims in US and Europe, as it turns focus away from Middle East" SNIPPET: "Al-Qaeda is starting an English language magazine as part of a fresh effort to recruit and inspire Western jihadis to launch attacks in their own countries, according to security analysts. A video posted on YouTube uses the words of Malcolm X to justify violent struggle, before announcing the name of the magazine, Resurgence." SNIPPET: "However, the new magazine appears to be the first English language...

<p>Los Angeles gang members have joined the fray in Syria. The gang-bangers are reportedly fighting alongside the regime forces.</p> <p>MEMRI posted the transcript.</p> <p>A video-clip recently posted on the Internet shows two Armenian Power gang members from Los Angeles fighting in Syria. One of them, Wino Ayee Peeyakan, also posted a picture of himself in Hizbullah garb on his Facebook page.</p>

Joint Subcommittee Hearing: Iran’s Support for Terrorism Worldwide Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa 2172 House Rayburn Office Building Washington, DC 20515 Mar 4, 2014 10:00am

Facebook may announce company policy changes for gun-related pages in the coming weeks, VentureBeat has learned. The social network has been under pressure from the powerful Mayors Against Illegal Guns and the Moms Demand Action civic group to ban gun-themed fan pages on the site. “Talks are progressing. The discussions are ongoing; there have been positive developments,” sources close to the conversations told VentureBeat. An extensive VentureBeat investigation last week revealed that adults and children were making arrangements to buy, sell, and trade guns through the many Facebook fan pages devoted to guns and the people who use them, sometimes...

Raise your hand if you’ve ever walked smack into something or someone while staring down at your smartphone? Yeah, you. You know who you are, and you’re far from alone. We’re guilty of walking and texting, too. Fear no longer, distracted, device-gazing zombie walkers. Help for unabashed, small-screen addicts like us is on the way -- to the Google Play store next month, actually. The industrious geniuses at New York City’s One Llama Labs have developed a hyper sound-sensitive Android app called Audio Aware.

Snippet: "Iran and its terrorist proxy groups’ influence in Latin America remains a troubling security threat to the region and world, experts said at a congressional hearing on Tuesday."

I get messages from a website called Linked In all the time. It appears to be some sort of business oriented facebook thingie. But, I can't figure out what it does.

Boasts about sexual conquests on a now-deleted Web page could trigger felony charges against a popular Rogers High School student athlete and others, the latest twist in a swirl of accusations, comments and protest involving social media.The furor in the Elk River Area School District on Tuesday transcended the dispute over a controversial tweet by the student and exposed the sexually explicit and often vicious exchanges that fill popular online pages created by students at many Minnesota schools. The anonymous posts include bragging messages, accusations and insults directed at students, teachers and others.Rogers Police Chief Jeff Beahen said the “Rogers...

The Internet, in particular, offers immense possibilities for encounter and solidarity. This is something truly good, a gift from God. —Pope Francis No, your holiness, quotes like these are the gift. In this papal statement released Thursday, the pope throws his considerable influence behind the idea that social media, and the other tools of the Internet, can be one of the means to unite the world and perhaps rectify the gap between the rich and poor—an emerging theme of his papacy. "We should not overlook the fact that those who for whatever reason lack access to social media run the...

<p>Researchers with Trustwave's SpiderLabs said they discovered the credentials while investigating a server in the Netherlands that cyber criminals use to control a massive network of compromised computers known as the "Pony botnet."</p> <p>The company told Reuters on Wednesday that it has reported its findings to the largest of more than 90,000 websites and Internet service providers whose customers' credentials it had found on the server.</p>