Free Republic

He insulted the currency and shared the video on social media. The Dubai Police have arrested a young man over a video that he posted on social media in which he can be seen insulting the UAE's national currency. In the viral video, the suspect can be seen pretend-sneezing and using a currency note to clean himself. He has been referred to the authority concerned for further action, the police said. The police said that the cybercrime law specifies a maximum fine of Dh1 million and a prison term for insulting the country or its symbols. The police also posted...

NORMAN — A Lexington police officer accused of threatening Norman Mayor Breea Clark on Facebook admitted to "writing and posting it," Norman police reported Friday afternoon. "The individual responsible for the comment admitted to writing and posting it on social media," police spokeswoman Sarah Jensen said in a news release. "Police investigators found no indication of a direct threat to public safety."

I don’t normally write in first person. It’s not a matter of being pretentious or anything, but the monks trained me well: in high school English, with our trusted copies of Warriner’s Guide to English Grammar and Composition perpetually at hand, we were reminded that the first person is to be avoided at all costs. Write like the dispassionate observer, out of the action, unless you’re penning a film noir or a personal letter. But when you find yourself in jail, and you need to write about the experience, well, there’s no substitute for the first person. If you need...

Social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are finding it difficult to remove a coronavirus conspiracy video called Plandemic that has spread faster that the virus and can still be accessed on these platforms. The 26-minute video features a famous vaccine conspiracist who defy the advice of medical experts like saying that “sheltering in place harms consumers’ immune systems and that masks can make people sicker”. “The video tries to argue that the coronavirus pandemic was created to make profits off vaccines,” reports CNBC. The video features Dr. Judy Mikovits, a figure best known for her anti-vaccine activism in...

It’s a common refrain: We have bubble-wrapped the world. Americans in particular are obsessed with “safety.” The simplest way to get any law passed in America, be it a zoning law or a sweeping reform of the intelligence community, is to invoke a simple sentence: “A kid might get hurt.” Almost no one is opposed to reasonable efforts at making the world a safer place. But the operating word here is “reasonable.” Banning lawn darts, for example, rather than just telling people that they can be dangerous when used by unsupervised children, is a perfect example of a craving for...

Having a 10 person limit for gatherings is not fair... that means Joe Biden can have his rallies but @realDonaldTrump can’t.

Egyptian lawmakers have called for stricter surveillance of women on video sharing apps after the arrests of a popular social media influencer and a well-known belly dancer on charges of debauchery and inciting immorality. Instagram and TikTok influencer Haneen Hossam, 20, is under 15 days detention for a post encouraging women to broadcast videos in exchange for money, while dancer Sama el-Masry faces 15 days detention for posting “indecent” photos and videos. MP John Talaat was among several politicians to complain, and has submitted a request to Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly to increase monitoring and censorship of apps that young...

Mark Zuckerberg is worried the economy could “reopen” too soon. The Facebook founder and CEO said returning life to normal in areas where the coronavirus is still too prevalent could “almost guarantee future outbreaks” and cause the economic downturn to last even longer.

The Chinese government has adopted known disinformation techniques and utilized social media harassment campaigns to try to increase its influence in Asia, according to new findings that add to a growing body of research. In recent months, two distinct Chinese internet campaigns have sought to influence public opinion with fake news ahead of an election in Taiwan, and intimidate pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong by posting their personal data online. Both efforts mimic similar Russian operations, and reflect how governments’ use of social media for propaganda efforts have become an everyday reality for much of the world’s population. The latest...

Instead of being a vital technology empowering average people to learn and act for themselves, the internet now mostly succeeds in making users feel small, paranoid, and helpless. Some people might take issue with Facebook’s decision to remove posts attempting to organize protests against shelter-in-place orders, Twitter’s stance against presumed misinformation, and major news outlets acting as mouthpieces for the Chinese government. But by now, most people hardly blink at these heavy-handed moves to control public speech. They are told that dissent is either misinformation or hate speech, and, in the midst of a pandemic, such freedoms are positively dangerous.This...

Including the line ‘China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong’ discredits any piece of writing that discusses civil liberties and the rule of law. My former law professor Jack Goldsmith, now at Harvard Law School, and Andrew Keane Woods of the University of Arizona Law School, have a remarkable article in The Atlantic that defends technology companies’ surveillance and speech controls regarding coronavirus information. “Significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet,” they write, “and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is...

There is a great debate going on in America about the power of big tech over our lives. One issue is whether they are going too far when they sell personal data collected by the company. Another issue is when they moderate content in a way that is perceived as discriminatory against conservatives. These are important issues and recent events show that these companies’ hands are not clean when it comes to privacy and censorship. Social media companies like Twitter and Facebook fill a networking and communications need felt by Americans, and because of their success, they have been handsomely...

Facebook didn't provide much confidence in its ability to navigate the uncharted waters of a pandemic in the age of Big Tech on Monday. Experiencing a pandemic on the scale of the Wuhan coronavirus in the age of Big Tech is a journey into uncharted territory, making the industryÂ’s often cozy relationship with the political class a recipe for new abuses of personal data and speech policing. Facebook didnÂ’t provide much confidence in its ability to navigate these waters on Monday. At first, the company seemed to be bragging about its work with state governments to remove posts promoting protests...

CARROLLTON, Ga. (WSAV) – Two Georgia high school seniors have been expelled and will reportedly not graduate after posting a racist video on social media. Two seniors at Carrollton High School posted the video on TikTok on Thursday, where it quickly went viral and spread across other social media platforms. The video shows the two students using the n-word and saying derogatory things about African Americans. The students, one boy and one girl, can be seen in a bathroom mimicking a cooking show using labeled cups of water. “First, we have ‘black’,” the girl can be heard saying, as the...

Hello FR, Some of you may know through my posts of our total loss of our Spring Fair season. It is looking like our Summer season will now be a bust. Now instead of crying about it, while mowing down one of our pastures, (because our tractor broke and we can't afford for Randy to come and take care of the fields), I had an idea. The idea would incorporate multi-media to create a virtual store at the Fair. Now I have no money, but I do have an existing website that still needs to be brought up to snuff....

Have you ever been COVID-shamed online? Maybe you posted pictures of you and your family at a park and got reamed by someone for not being at home. Maybe, heaven forbid, you even dared to express a view on social media that strays from the ‘accepted opinion’ of months of mandated quarantine and government-enforced shutdowns until not a single solitary individual is infected with the virus. If the wrong people get wind you’ve expressed such an opinion, you’ll reap the whirlwind, I can promise you that. I’ve been there and done that. Fortunately, however, my work in conservative and right-of-center...

They may be used to getting glammed up for the red carpet, but just like the rest of the world, celebrities are currently staying home and practicing social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic. With no buzzy premieres or press events on their calendars for the time being, these stars are skipping makeup in favor of letting their natural beauty shine through — and they’re sharing it all on social media.

An Oklahoma museum put its head of security in charge of its social media account during its closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and his posts are now going viral around the country. The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City announced on March 16 that it was closing to help prevent the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. The museum then shared a post on social media, announcing that Tim, head of security, will take on the additional duty of social media management SNIP “I have been asked to take on the additional duty of social media management...

“Complete transformations” happen so fast these days that it is helpful to set Thursdays aside to recall the roots of some of today’s popular technologies and ideas.The Origin of Texting DevicesFor example, few people today know the proper way to set a formal dinner table.The correct placement of the texting device is below and slightly to the left of the butter plate.And it seems that every decade or so people forget that really bad ideas create bubbles: that result in a really bad economic downturn when they burst. Yet they continue to fall for really bad ideas.Just a few random...

On Wednesday, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell and other conservative leaders released an open letter to Attorney General Bill Barr. The letter highlighted the deep concerns they have about tech giants Google, Twitter and Facebook and the need for transparency and a respect for free speech.