Free Republic

Gab, a social network favored by the alt-right that exploded in popularity after the riots at the US Capitol, was offline Friday evening, and its Twitter account also went dark. Twitter users first started posting that the website and its associated social media account went down at around 6:30 p.m. Eastern time. At least one Twitter user who claimed to be on Gab just before it went dark Friday night speculated that the site was hacked as a part of a cryptocurrency scam. The Post could not verify that theory.

You are used to ignoring the lying, outrage-seeking, politically manipulative media. But this time, they are spinning lies directly about you. They are exploiting the awful travesty of some people’s inexcusable violence to delegitimize and shame every responsible citizen who took reasonable and lawful means to raise legitimate questions about election integrity. Perhaps you hope you can offer some perspective, tell your side of things. But it’s too late. The media spin is overwhelmingly effective. Nobody will listen, they have made up their minds. They sincerely believe the lies, the disinformation, the emotional manipulation. They sincerely believe you are a...

Big Tech’s efforts to restrict user access to various Internet platforms are a serious challenge, President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with leaders of parliamentary factions on Wednesday. He responded to the recent statements made by Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma (lower house), who put the spotlight on Big Tech’s violation of freedom of speech. “What you said about these so-called platforms, IT companies, is a serious challenge not only for us – we see what has happened in the [United] States,” Putin noted. According to him, it is quite obvious that such an “ideological divide” runs...

Facebook has blocked Australians from accessing and sharing news in protest at a new law which would have forced the site to pay for the content it hosts. Furious Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the move shows tech companies 'think they are bigger than governments and that the rules should not apply to them' while others branded it 'an assault on a sovereign nation' and an 'abuse of power'. The backlash quickly went international, with one Democrat politician in the US saying it shows 'Facebook is not compatible with democracy' while the hashtag 'Delete Facebook' quickly began trending on rival...

Democrat politicians don’t want healing, love, or compassion. They want power. If long-lasting, their reign will ensure America is never united again.On Friday, the president and first lady meandered through a Valentine display Jill Biden designed to decorate the front lawn of the White House. With Champ, Major, and a handful of media lap dogs in tow, the Bidens nodded with approval at the large white, red, and pink heart-shaped cut-outs adorned with trite truisms: “unity,” “healing,” “love,” and “compassion.” But Democrat politicians don’t want healing, love, or compassion. They want power. If successful and long-lasting, the policies they push,...

Twitter claims it suspended the account of Rep. Devin Nunes (R- CA) on Tuesday in “error” after Nunes allegedly failed to complete the social media platform’s anti-spam filter. His account was restored shortly after. Twitter said its automated systems blocked Nunes’ account in “error,” and that it has since reversed his suspension, according to a report by Business Insider.

A law professor who’s been sitting on Facebook’s oversight board stepped down to accept a position in President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice. Stanford’s Pamela Karlan will serve as principal deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Division after spending less than a year on the Facebook board set up in 2019 to review the social media behemoth’s content policing decisions. In 2019, she testified at Trump’s first impeachment trial, making a quip at the expense of his son, for which she later apologized. During one public appearance she joked that she “had to cross the street” to avoid...

After months of hearing that life could never return to normal until we get a vaccine, we got a vaccine (two, actually), but life did not return to normal. In fact, life got worse. We were instructed to take the new vaccine as soon as possible and then to put on more masks. Anyone who complained about that was punished. Most people obeyed the orders (not like they had a choice), but the whole thing made them nervous. Why exactly did the rules change all of a sudden? Was there a good reason for that? When are we finally going...

China's Communist Party uses the Great Firewall to block information from its citizens. Blocking speech based on politics has been a hallmark of every totalitarian government“That is all right. I had them on my list, too,” a prominent public figure joked after learning that he had been blacklisted by a political opponent. Who said this? Was it Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., after Simon and Schuster canceled his book deal because he challenged the Electoral College results from Pennsylvania, even though Democrats had similarly objected in 2001, 2005, and 2017? Was it a Trump administration official responding to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s...

Time magazine's article intones the 'Trump is crazy' mantra over his claims of a 'rigged' election while telling anyone who reads it how powerful people conspired to rig the 2020 election.Time magazine's article intones the 'Trump is crazy' mantra over his claims of a 'rigged' election while telling anyone who reads it how powerful people conspired to rig the 2020 election. Corporate media has spent the last year arguing that Donald Trump’s claims about 2020 election integrity amount to “seditious” conspiracy theories. While maintaining that narrative despite the cognitive dissonance, Time magazine’s Feb. 15 cover story pulls back the curtain...

Free speech social media platform Gab received 272 million visits during the month of January, outperforming legacy media competition such as NBC News, The Wall Street Journal, Breitbart, and TMZ by a wide margin. Gab’s success is particularly remarkable, considering the fact that the website has been “deplatformed” from mobile app stores, PayPal, and email marketing services. The official Gab Twitter account revealed that the website had far outperformed legacy media on Monday, posting “Gab: ~272 million in Jan” next to a screenshot of traffic numbers from various corporate legacy media outlets. A total of 272 million visits would put...

Joe Biden has faced nearly no public scrutiny over the fact that the U.S. president's son has raked in millions of dollars from U.S. adversaries who use business deals to push goals against the U.S. interest.On Feb. 7, CBS Anchor Norah O’Donnell asked Joe Biden in an interview that aired prior to Super Bowl LV about his son Hunter’s new memoir, but failed to ask about the scandal implicating him in Hunter’s many business deals with China, Russia, and Ukraine. Worse, President Biden failed to condemn Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, who is responsible for ethnic cleansing and other forms of...

When we first got cameras on our smartphones or signed up for social media, none of us realized that they would come to control our lives. In our technological age, we’ve all participated in creating our surveillance state, whether as enforcers or self-censoring victims. Thanks to the technology in our smartphones, each one of us has the capability to contribute, and many on the left seem to revel in the power. The rest of us must weigh every action we take, every word we say. If we say or do the “wrong” thing, we may no longer have the right...

While the media and Democrats demonize Parler, and it was de-platformed by Google, Apple, and Amazon, it’s clear that leftist social media giants were a hub for alleged criminal behavior A trove of documents released by the Department of Justice reveals that their investigations leading to arrests in the Capitol riot focused almost entirely on big tech platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, with little to no mentions of Parler. A stunning (to some) revelation that exposes the Left’s claim that Parler was uniquely responsible, and completely destroys big tech’s excuse for their deplatforming. Parler’s success rattled the left,...

A new bill revitalizes the war on terror's favorite slogan in service of forcing tech companies to turn over more user data to the government. The "See Something, Say Something Online Act," introduced by Sen. Joe Manchin (D–W.Va.) and co-sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn (R–Texas), is the latest attack on the federal communications law known as Section 230 as well as freedom of speech and online privacy. The legislation says any interactive computer service provider—that means social media giants, small blogs, podcast hosting services, app stores, consumer review platforms, independent political forums, crowdfunding and Patreon-style sites, dating apps, newsletter services,...

Three Democratic U.S. senators introduced a bill that would limit Section 230, a law that shields online companies from liability over content posted by users, and make the companies more accountable when posts result in harm. Called the SAFE TECH Act, the bill would mark the latest effort to make social media companies like Alphabet Inc’s Google, Twitter Inc and Facebook Inc more accountable for “enabling cyber-stalking, targeted harassment, and discrimination on their platforms,” Senators Mark Warner, Mazie Hirono and Amy Klobuchar said in a statement. In the wake of the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol in Washington,...

Marjorie Taylor Greene and I share the same political party. We share some political views. We don't share all the same political views, God knows, but I don't see how that really makes a difference, do you?The same "cancel" rhetoric used against the freshman from Georgia has been used against Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Doug Collins, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, and even grandfatherly Mitch McConnell.Let's be clear: Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Chuck Schumer, and Dick Durbin claim all Republicans are dangerous extremists when it serves their political purpose. Hell, they depicted Paul Ryan murdering an elderly, wheelchair-bound woman...

When embattled freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., took to the U.S. House floor Thursday morning in advance of a chamberwide vote to possibly strip her of all committee assignments, she spoke through a face mask embroidered with that most iconic of all American rallying cries: "FREE SPEECH." Greene thus followed in the footsteps of many others on the right who respond to a domineering and increasingly illiberal ruling class with rote proceduralist appeals to free speech and open discourse -- whether in the context of media/academia-driven "cancel culture," ideologically homogenizing Big Tech censorship or elsewhere. On the merits, it...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a darling of the left, not just in the news media but in Hollywood and pop culture venues. She's been on the cover of Time, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Bloomberg Businessweek, New York Magazine and the Hollywood Reporter. She is hailed all over for her social media prowess. But at a time when these left-wing venues have expressed a massive panic over misinformation on the internet and the need for fact-checking, they don't seem to feel this way about anything spouted by AOC. In the Feb. 1 CNN "Reliable Sources" newsletter, a top story headline read, "AOC...

The New York Times published an essay on Tuesday detailing a range of recommendations for the Biden administration to adopt to fix the “reality crisis” and “de-radicalize” citizens, including setting up a “reality czar” and “truth commission.” The essay, penned by Times technology columnist Kevin Roose, accuses “millions of Americans” of embracing “hoaxes, lies and collective delusions” before questioning how to unite a country where these millions “have chosen to create their own version of reality.” “I worry that unless the Biden administration treats conspiracy theories and disinformation as the urgent threats they are, our parallel universes will only drift...