Free Republic

"....Kim Kardashian, a celebrity by virtue of having accomplished not a thing substantive, but having been an expert at using a voyeuristic culture to make herself well-known, decided to sit for nude photos, apparently to make sure she stayed in the limelight. Did she do this to raise awareness about women's body image issues? Did she get nude photos taken to highlight the abuse of animals for expensive fur or clothing? Of course not, to both of these. At a time when women want to be taken seriously and enter into leadership positions,Kardashian apparently merely wanted continued fame and fortune...

Andrew Stiles contributed to these explanations.What is Truthy?“Truthy” is a research project being conducted by the University of Indiana. Proponents claim this is an apolitical study of how information spreads online through the social media platform Twitter.What is Twitter?Twitter is a social media platform that allows users to post hot takes and/or anonymous insults on the Internet.What is the Internet?The Internet is a cultural phenomenon that allows people to earn money by typing words on a computer regardless of talent or expertise. For example, you are reading this “explanatory” post on the Internet. Weird, huh?Yeah, that is weird. Told you.What is...

California Rep. Darrell Issa, who asked Twitter followers Friday to tweet photos of their family members in the U.S. military, was duped into retweeting support for some of history’s most notorious killers. A Twitter user by the name @BrooklynJuggler trolled the Republican into retweeting a photo of his dear “Uncle Lee,” which was really a photo of Lee Harvey Oswald, the former Marine believed to have assassinated President John F. Kennedy, The Daily Dot reported. Another user by the name @Butt_C_Planet tricked Mr. Issa into retweeting a photo of his “late grandfather,” which was actually a photo of Heinrich Himmler,...

An 11-year-old hunter from Oceola Township, Michigan, took a rare albino 12-pointer with a crossbow last week while hunting with his father. The albino buck was well known in the area, but Gavin Dingman ended up being the lucky hunter to harvest it. Sadly, the celebration ended for Dingman and his family, as they became the subject of death threats and social media backlash. "My dad was just like, 'Take a deep breath. Are you sure you can take the shot? If you're not 100 percent, we don't want to injure it,'” Dingman told the Livingston Daily on Monday. The...

Earlier this week, the federal government’s National Science Foundation, an entity created to encourage the study of science — encouragement that it achieves by awarding grants to scholars and universities — announced that it had awarded a grant to study what people say about themselves and others in social media. The NSF dubbed the project Truthy, a reference to comedian Stephen Colbert’s invention and hilarious use of the word “truthiness.” The reference to Colbert is cute, and he is a very funny guy, but when the feds get into the business of monitoring speech, it is surely no joke; it...

Canadian officials were quick to finger ISIS in this week’s attacks on government targets. But it’s still not clear whether or not the killers were part of a larger jihadist web. Terrorists have twice attacked Canadian government targets this week, with a shooting Wednesday at the country’s parliament in Ottawa. Now Canadian and American authorities are trying to learn whether the killers acted alone or were part of a larger extremist network. The mayhem caused by alleged Ottawa shooter Michael Zehaf-Bibeau occurred just two days after another man, Martin Rouleau-Couture, struck two Canadian soldiers with a car in Quebec—killing one...

Well, if you thought the Wendy Davis gubernatorial campaign, which has devolved into a clown show, couldn’t get any worse; you should brace yourselves. She had this tweet featuring a bunch of eager young Davis supporters, but there’s only one problem. It was actually a group of volunteers for the College Republican Federation of Virginia who posed for a photo after knocking on doors for Ed Gillespie, the GOP senate hopeful in the Old Dominion.

It might be time to whittle down your friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter. Not just because they continually post “news” articles from The Daily Mash or because they upload twelve pictures of their newborn baby every day, but because they could be negatively affecting your credit scores and credit worthiness. In a society where online data is abundant and easy to obtain, creditors are starting to use this information to their advantage. Lenddo, a ‘trust-based lender,’ is very open regarding their policy of using social media data as a factor in loan applications. In an article by Fortune...

"...I was victimized all over again," she said. "I had my ID set as Tina Si at the time. Luckily I went in and changed my name to Tina IsSavedByGrace and blocked them and it stopped." But her problems weren't over. A short time later, Facebook demanded she provide photo identification to prove she is a real person. Their goal, she added, was to silence her. "They didn't care that I was a rape victim," she said..." [mandatory excerpting sux pls read the whole article]

Search for the word “fat” on Twitter and you’ll likely find a torrent of criticisms, insults, and jokes at overweight people’s expense. Now researchers have undertaken such an experiment in a much more systematic way, across a variety of platforms — and what they’ve found may give the public health community a look at the reality of being overweight online.

Isa Infante, the liberal Green Party candidate running for governor in Tennessee, is hiring people to create profiles on social media, such as Reddit, pretend to be an average user, then push for her "progressive" agenda. Ms. Infante is a self-labelled "progressive" candidate for Tennessee. Part of her platform is "ecological wisdom, social justice, feminism, and nonviolence." But, of course, as a Green Party candidate, she has had trouble gaining traction in the race. Her campaign, therefore, is now posting ads looking for people to pose as average social media users to pretend to have "found" this wonderful, liberal candidate....

Faith is the fulfillment of the spiritual blessing of hope. It’s the difference between serving Christ, the personification of benevolence, or slavery to allah that exemplifies intolerance Social media is probably one of the most insidious misnomers in use today. It entices tech savvy young people to become reliant on the internet to fill their social needs. A belief that connecting with others through the web, via twitter, Facebook, Skype and other digital sites, can replace intimacy has developed a void in western culture. Individuals are taking solace in the safety of internet friendships to avoid the hurt that can...

Pharmaceutical companies say the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) new social media rules would have a "chilling" effect on the industry and leave consumers in the dark.The FDA in June released draft guidelines for how drug firms should use social networks like Facebook and Twitter. But pharmaceutical companies are concerned the FDA would hold them responsible for misinformation about their products posted online by third parties that the companies have little to no control over. They say the rules would discourage them from interacting on social networks, leaving consumers without useful information about their products."Given the extraordinary growth of the...

We live in an era today where practically everyone is “famous.” It’s not just reality stars anymore; anyone can have their own blog at no cost, and use social media for free, where their every word and photo is broadcast to the entire world. Activists all across the spectrum have taken to these platforms, utilizing them to influence politics. If that is where the younger generations are hanging out, it makes sense to reach out to them there. Organizations like Americans for Prosperity were ahead of the curve several years ago, encouraging and teaching activists on the right how to...

Do not dare challenge the Masters of the Universe, the Party of Davos, or the Permanent Political Class with facts. After Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), in a thunderous Wednesday speech on the Senate floor, denounced Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg for pushing amnesty on foreign soil and high-tech executives for demanding more guest-worker permits while laying off American workers, Facebook board member Marc Andreessen maligned the Alabama Senator in a series of incensed Tweets. "Outright slander from an odious hack," Andreessen Tweeted on Thursday evening. "Mark has directly&indirectly created 10s, maybe 100s, of thousands of US jobs." He implied that Sessions...

It’s not often I get to cite Peter Frampton. Hell, it’s not often anyone gets to cite Peter Frampton anymore. His massive album “Frampton Comes Alive” was before my time, yet my ears are intimately familiar with the songs on it. “Baby, I Love Your Way” was a staple of junior high dances and couples skates, until such things were replaced by dry humping. So it’s nothing personal when I write that I don’t get much occasion to write about Frampton, he’s just mostly before my time. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t still things we can learn from the...

Well, this sounds interesting and probably sinister and open to manipulation: The federal government is spending nearly $1 million to create an online database that will track “misinformation” and hate speech on Twitter. The National Science Foundation is financing the creation of a web service that will monitor “suspicious memes” and what it considers “false and misleading ideas,” with a major focus on political activity online. The “Truthy” database, created by researchers at Indiana University, is designed to “detect political smears, astroturfing, misinformation, and other social pollution.” The university has received $919,917 so far for the project. “The project stands...

'Some of my best friends are black!' You're probably lying. Do you have friends of another race? Statistically speaking, probably not.With so much racial unrest going on in America these days, it can be hard for people to understand the "other" side. Maybe it's because white Americans never walked a mile in a black friend's shoes -- or maybe because they have no black friends to begin with. Public Religion Research Institute found that whites' social networks are 91 percent white. Even more alarming, 75 percent of whites have a totally white social network. For a nation that prides itself...

There is a lot of anger in Ferguson, Missouri, and much of it understandable. But there is also a lot of spectacle and drama. "Ferguson" has become a rallying cry for hucksters, a ratings point for the media, and a point of argument for friends on social media. What Ferguson really is, is a deeply wounded city in Missouri. Its citizens are divided; its trust in authority is collapsed; it has one less 18-year-old and an injured policeman. There are no winners in Ferguson, just a lot of tears and heartache. Most Americans tend to trust and support their police....

Race Manners: Michael Brown’s death didn’t cause a divide between you and the people in your social networks. It simply revealed one. Use the information you’re getting to decide which relationships you value. Dear Race Manners: I have been so offended and angered by what some of my friends on Facebook have said about Michael Brown and the situation in Ferguson (he was a thug, he deserved it, black people destroy their own communities, blacks are criminals, all the police officers in Ferguson should quit because blacks don’t appreciate them and more). I feel as though I don’t know some...