Free Republic

What’s become abundantly clear over the past few months is that liberals are now jumping on the anti-fake news bandwagon and using it as an excuse to censor political speech that doesn’t align with their radical agenda. This strategy is perhaps most prominent on social media and various websites across the Internet, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and is implemented by teams of leftists and extremists like George Soros who show zero regards for the freedom of speech outlined in the First Amendment. It’s as if the ability to control what information is spread across the Internet and what information...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google wants to know where you go so badly that it records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to. An Associated Press investigation found that many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store your location data even if you’ve used privacy settings that say they will prevent it from doing so. Computer-science researchers at Princeton confirmed these findings at the AP’s request.

My PC has been running slowly at times during the past several months. Some time ago, I thought I had done enough troubleshooting to conclude I needed more RAM, so I added 4GB and now have 8GB. However, the slowness continues. Now I see that when I am loading a new web page in my browser, or a web page update with new content, the CPU usage goes up to 70-90%, and that is when it slows for a while. I have tried using Waterfox (64-bit version of Firefox) and Edge with the same symptoms and results, so it isn't...

Speaking of Infowars, Alex Jones and conspiracy theories, what do you make of the fact that YouTube, Apple and Facebook decided to put the kibosh on Infowars in the exact same day? You know, sometimes those crazy tin foil hat conspiracy theorists are right. Here’s the deal: it’s a known fact that big tech companies like Apple, Facebook, Twitter and Google/YouTube are heavily left leaning. This is not a secret, nor a conspiracy theory, but an empirically proven fact, by their own admission, i.e. words and actions. The harassment and censorship (via deplatforming, shadow-banning, massive algorithm-based decrease in social-media-driven traffic...

Okay, I'm the biggest anarcho-capitalist on this board, but this is what happens when capitalism starts producing zombies. The zombies must be put down. Legions of users subverting the platform can cost them greatly. Maybe a friendly judges or pols can shove something HUGE up their ass. They have budgets larger than entire nations, and they've basically declared war on us.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq was set for a big down day Thursday after disappointing quarterly results from Facebook sent the social media giant hurtling toward its biggest share price decline ever and on track to lose more than $125 billion in market value. The Invesco QQQ Trust, which tracks the Nasdaq 100 index and can give traders a good idea of how the Nasdaq stocks will trade, was down more than 2 percent at one point in after-hours trading Wednesday. At last count, the ETF was off by about 1.5 percent. Nasdaq futures opened lower Wednesday evening, off by about 0.8...

It was four months and eight days until the 2018 midterm elections, and Anna Eskamani had not spent a penny to promote her political campaign online. Ms. Eskamani, 27, is running to represent Florida’s 47th District in the State Legislature. Like many state-level candidates, she writes her own fund-raising emails and manages her own social media accounts. And with her busy schedule on the campaign trail, advertising online is an afterthought. “My budget is zero for it right now,” Ms. Eskamani said. “It just hasn’t been necessary.” One recent morning, Ms. Eskamani attended an hourlong phone conference with volunteers from...

[Yahoo has] updated how we collect and use data. We’ve updated some of the ways we collect and analyze user data in order to deliver services, content, and relevant advertising to you and protect against abuse. This includes: Analyzing content and information (including emails, instant messages, posts, photos, attachments, and other communications) when you use our services. This allows us to deliver, personalize and develop relevant features, content, advertising and services Linking your activity on third-party sites and apps with information we have about you

The US tech sector does a great job of exchanging photos and recipes and family photos, but it doesn’t do much for overall productivity, which is stagnant as investment goes into apps rather than plant and equipment. This is how it always happens. Late Tuesday an obscure short-seller, Citron Research, announced that Twitter was the social media platform most vulnerable to privacy regulation – and its stock plunged 12% in the course of the day. All the other tech names followed, including the whole of the FANG+ Index (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google, along with a half-dozen other big names,...

At a certain level, formerly functioning societies seem to be growing unnecessarily complicated. Yet, in a more basic sense, it's all coming together: Yesterday, as I was heading home after our live Clubland Q&A, it was all breaking news about the YouTube shooter. As usual in the first moments after such an attack, it's all tediously speculative - except for the apparent eyewitness report that the gunman was, in fact, a gunwoman. That, on the other hand, sent the breaking-news chappies boring down yet another dreary alley - that it was supposedly a YouTube employee upset with an ex-boyfriend. I...

When former national security adviser Susan Rice was named to the Netflix board of directors Wednesday, she became at least the third high-ranking official under former President Barack Obama to receive a top post at a tech giant after leaving the White House. In announcing Rice's appointment, Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings said the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. had "tackled difficult, complex global issues with intelligence, integrity and insight." Rice's appointment was met with outrage from some conservatives. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said Netflix had "[doubled] down in support of Obama corruption" by hiring Rice, a...

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was an epic fight of so-called muckrakers — journalists and novelists such as Frank Norris, Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, and Ida Tarbell, along with trust-busting politicians like Teddy Roosevelt — against rail, steel, and oil monopolies. Whatever one thought of their sensationalism and often hard-left socialist agendas, they at least brought public attention to price fixing, product liabilities, monopolies, and the buying of politicians. No such progressive zealotry exists today in Silicon Valley and its affiliated tech spin-offs. And the result is a Roman gladiatorial spectacle with no laws in the...

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you." I don't know, or care, who said that originally, but in this age of hacking and cyber corruption – and the deep state trying desperately to defeat the forces of light - it's becoming increasingly clear that there appears to be folks out in cyberspace who don't have your best interests in mind. Indeed, you may have heard about how Facebook and Google have been revealed as corrupt data miners more interested in raking in cash and helping their fellow political travellers than in providing the benign...

Facebook shares are still dropping after its worst one-day decline since 2012 yesterday, as data breaches affecting over 50 million uses makes things political and the social media giant loses some $50 billion. On Monday, Facebook shares fell almost 7 percent on news that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating it over personal data breaches. The market-wide sell-off continued on Tuesday, even as the Dow gained points, when more details emerged on the investigation, sparked by a whistleblower who told regulators that more than 50 million Facebook users had their data hijacked by a political consultancy hired by...

• Price performance difference between tech and utilities has spread lately to a level nearly as wide as when the dotcom bubble burst. • "The obsession with dot-com stocks in the late-1990s has been replaced today by a fascination with FANG stocks," said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at the Leuthold Group. Price performance between the two sectors has spread lately to a gap not quite as wide as during the bubble, but close. Using a measure called the "Popular/Panned Ratio", Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at the Leuthold Group, sees danger signs growing for the bull market that began...

French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire says it's "unacceptable" that Google and Apple unilaterally impose prices and other contractual terms on software developers, and that this is hurting France's startups. Le Maire predicted the tech giants could face sanctions amounting to millions of euros, according to AFP. It’s not the first time the French government clashes with Google. It has repeatedly criticised the company for paying little tax in France by transferring its revenues to a subsidiary in Ireland, where taxes are much lower. Wednesday's move comes amid growing fears of an international trade war pitting the United States against...

Starting in May 2010, The Washington Examiner reported, drawing on emails obtained by Citizens United, “Clinton Foundation staff pushed Hillary Clinton’s State Department to approve a meeting between Bill Clinton and a powerful Russian oligarch as her agency lined up investors for a project under his purview.” His name was Viktor Vekselberg of Renova (a Clinton Foundation donor) and the project under his purview was the Skolkovo Innovation Center, which is being built near Moscow. The following month, Bill Clinton would receive $500,000 for a speech in Moscow from a Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment bank with ties to the...

When a cryptocurrency start-up that promised to revolutionize the fruit and vegetable industry shut down last month, it left behind one word on its website: penis. When a virtual currency company called DateCoin recently tried to entice investors for its initial coin offering, it posted a Facebook ad that featured a reclining woman in a swimsuit with text over her body that read, “Touch my I.C.O.” And after the North American Bitcoin Conference in January, which highlighted 84 male speakers and three women, the official conference party was held at a Miami strip club. Virtual currencies and blockchain, the digital...

Glassdoor assembles its annual Best Jobs in America list, which is in its fourth year, based on each job’s overall Glassdoor Job Score, a score that is determined by weighing three key factors equally: earning potential based on median annual base salary, job satisfaction rating and the number of current job openings. Here are the top 10 jobs pulled from Glassdoor’s list: Data scientist Job Score: 4.8 Job Satisfaction Rating: 4.2 Number of Job Openings: 4,524 Median Base Salary: $110,000 Devops engineer Job Score: 4.6 Job Satisfaction Rating: 4.0 Number of Job Openings: 3,369 Median Base Salary: $105,000 Marketing manager...

Tesla Inc. released a new compensation plan for Chief Executive Elon Musk on Tuesday, with payments dependent on massive increases in the electric carmaker's stock market value. The announcement comes as Tesla prepares to report 2017 financial results that are expected to include massive cash losses. Tesla Inc. released a new compensation plan for Chief Executive Elon Musk on Tuesday, with payments dependent on massive increases in the electric carmaker's stock market value. The announcement comes as Tesla prepares to report 2017 financial results that are expected to include massive cash losses.