Free Republic

Set designers were finally able to draw fans into their vivid dream without the constraints of Newtonian physics. Yet virtual reality isn't all wonder.Pandemic lockdowns crushed the concert industry, but things are finally starting to move again. Many of us are optimistic that dense crowds might gather regularly by mid-autumn. The process is already starting in red states. Once everybody who’s anybody “takes the jab,” mass events should spread slowly across the country.All over the world, people are dying for another taste of what Émile Durkheim called “collective effervescence”: the intense thrill we get from a mass gathering with a...

The social media platform YouTube is engaging in the duplicitous practice of scrubbing dislikes from Biden videos to protect the president’s political image, new data reveals. The data, obtained by the Epoch Times, shows that YouTube has deleted an astounding 2.5 million dislikes from Biden’s videos. “YouTube has deleted about 2.5 million ‘dislikes’ from videos on the official White House channel of President Joe Biden, according to data collected and posted online by a researcher who wished to remain anonymous,” the Epoch Times reported. “YouTube recently announced that it’s testing a new page design that hides the dislike count.” “The...

Microsoft: "We are concerned by the law’s impact on communities of color, on every voter, and on our employees and their families. "We share the views of other corporate leaders that it’s not only right but essential for the business community to stand together in opposition to the harmful provisions and other similar legislation that may be considered elsewhere."

The White House is working on a COVID-19 vaccine passport initiative that could be required for travel, sporting events and even eating out, reports The Washington Post. The report comes as major U.S. airlines and nearly 30 travel and labor groups are pushing President Joe Biden to develop a standardized, government-backed credential to "accelerate safe economic activity and recovery." "The U.S. must be a leader in this development," the groups wrote in a letter to COVID-19 Recovery Team Coordinator Jeff Zients on Monday. "The current diverse and fragmented digital health credentials used to implement different countries' air travel testing requirements...

On Wednesday, a new conservative coalition launched a website aimed at combatting “woke” capital and cancel culture. StopCorporateTyranny.org aims to educate Americans on the dangers of far-Left advocacy in corporate America and equip them to fight back against the swelling tide of the “woke” inquisition. The coalition, Back to Neutral, includes organizations and leaders fed up with the Left weaponizing big business to achieve its political goals.“We’ve watched with growing concern the Left’s efforts to infiltrate corporate boardrooms and use that power to force their agenda on Americans everywhere,” Justin Danhof, general counsel at the National Center for Public Policy...

Facebook and Instagram removed an interview with former President Donald Trump by his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, simply because it “featured Trump speaking” and the “voice of Donald Trump,” Facebook said in an internal email. As big tech companies continue their bid to cancel the ex-commander-in-chief, audio from the podcast “The Right View With Lara Trump,” was yanked from Facebook Tuesday night and reportedly later removed by Instagram. Lara Trump, who also contributes to Fox News, shared a screenshot of an email sent by a Facebook employee, saying the company would be taking down the interview.

On Tuesday, Lara Trump, a Fox News contributor, posted an image on Instagram of her sitting across from her father-in-law, urging followers to "Join us tonight!" A group of Trump officials were sent an email from a Facebook employee, warning that any content posted on Facebook and Instagram "in the voice of President Trump is not currently allowed on our platforms (including new posts with President Trump speaking)" and warned that it "will be removed if posted, resulting in additional limitations on accounts that posted it." "This guidance applies to all campaign accounts and Pages, including Team Trump, other campaign...

Liberal author and feminist icon Naomi Wolf is warning that the proposed "vaccine passports" would mean the end of liberty in the free world. "I cannot say this forcefully enough: This is literally the end of human liberty in the West if this plan unfolds as planned," she said in an interview Sunday with Fox News' Steve Hilton. Some countries including Denmark, have already begun implementing a digital or paper proof of vaccination that allows a person to enter a venue or board public transportation. "'Vaccine passport' sounds like a fine thing if you don't understand what these platforms can...

When Machiavelli wrote, “in order to know Moses’ virtue it was necessary that the people of Israel be slaves in Egypt …,” he was pointing to the truth that knowing what one is up against is a powerful incentive for dealing with it intelligently. Genesis tells us that only in Moses’ time did the Egyptians make clear how harsh was the alternative to the Exodus by deciding to kill their longtime slaves’ baby boys. Today, the oligarchy that controls American society’s commanding heights leaves those who are neither its members nor its clients little choice but to marshal their forces...

The U.S. music industry’s leading trade organizations collectively slammed Twitter and its CEO Jack Dorsey for not taking down copyrighted material fast enough in a letter to Congress ahead of Thursday’s (Mar 25) hearing on disinformation on social media platforms. Dorsey, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke during the hearing.The letter called out Twitter’s “failure to meet the most basic standards of responsible moderation with respect to other illegal activity — specifically, the rampant theft of creative works on its platform,” as the groups asked the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology and the Subcommittee on Consumer...

Once you have the infrastructure, and public acceptance, of carrying around a card that gives you privileges, or penalties, based on your immunization status, the architecture will be routinely expanded to give you privileges or sanctions based on any other kind of status, such as your status as a Correct-Thinking Individual. Count on it. The passports are expected to be free and available through smartphone apps, which could display a scannable code similar to an airline boarding pass The Biden administration and private companies are working to develop a standard way of handling credentials -- often referred to as "vaccine...

Despite their pressure on Georgia and other states, woke business, big tech, corporate media, and sports leagues do not hold veto power over legislation any more.Shortly after Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed Georgia’s new voter-integrity law on Thursday, the squeeze play against the southern state began, with a representative of the Major League Baseball Players Association suggesting players would support moving the summer’s all-star game from Atlanta. That followed demands by the National Black Justice Coalition that the PGA Tour and Masters Tournament pull upcoming events from Augusta National Golf Course. Other activists are calling for boycotts against Georgia-based corporations...

Amazon uses leftist politicking to provide damage control for its clear pattern of dangerous and derogatory working conditions in its facilities all around the world.Amazon, the most powerful e-commerce company in the world, has a weak history of trying to correct its dangerous labor practices that often lead to the exploitation of blue-collar workers.Not only is the e-commerce company using its power to censor and deplatform content and organizations it doesn’t agree with, but the corporate giant also engages its influence, which it claims to dedicate to “improving lives” and financially supporting leftist movements such as Black Lives Matter with...

Video on YouTube Edward Snowden discusses our loss of agency and the 'click' to OK glass screens.

Conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation has declined donations from Google and Facebook because of the companies’ censoring of persons and groups with conservative points of view. Outgoing foundation president Kay C. James sent letters to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai explaining that the Heritage Foundation could “not in good conscience accept money” from companies that suppress conservative speech and content. Heritage turned down a $225,000 donation from Google and returned a $150,000 donation from Facebook in October 2020. James made it clear to the Big Tech companies that her organization is assisting Congress to revise...

You won't find this show on YouTube because, as fate would have it, we're on a "time out" for the very thing that we're talking about here. Big Tech really, really, REALLY doesn't want anyone bringing up logical questions or making fact-based statements about vaccines if they go against the accepted narrative. That should worry you.With Covid-19 lockdowns slowly but surely falling off, the newest push is for vaccine mandates. We haven’t heard too much about it from the federal government but state and local governments are looking into things like “vaccine passports” and other ways to mandate compliance with...

In the days after the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, Big Tech moved against a conservative alternative social media platform, Parler, based on the premise that the rioters has used Parler to plan the attack on the Capitol and that Parler had failed in its responsibility to prevent such coordination. Based on this narrative, Apple and Google removed Parler from their app stores and Amazon removed Parler’s internet hosting. Yet on Thursday, Parler flipped the narrative on its head.On Thursday, Parler sent a response to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s request for documents regarding the riot, the...

Google is turning over user data to US law enforcement, even when requests for that come without a warrant, in the form of requests that are not court-ordered. That emerges from information shared with the LA Times by an anonymous Google user, who said they were notified about this in an email from the tech giant, who said the request came from the Department of Homeland Security, without including the request itself in the email. When this Google user asked to see the document, it turned out to be an administrative subpoena issued by the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE),...

John Matze, the co-founder and former CEO of free speech platform Parler, is suing the company for wrongful termination and the alleged theft of his 40% ownership of the company. Matze was ousted shortly after Parler’s trouble following the Jan 6 riot at the US Capitol. In the lawsuit filed at the Clark County District Court, in Nevada, Matze is seeking “millions in compensatory damages.” The suit alleges that Parler’s main funder, Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of conservative billionaire Robert Mercer, and other board members, engaged in a scheme to steal his ownership in the company he founded. We obtained...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is once again calling for reform of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) Section 230 – as he once is again appearing before a US Congress committee. Zuckerberg’s testimony on Thursday before the House Energy Committee revealed that Zuckerberg is proposing replacing automatic immunity from prosecution for user generated content with platforms like his own demonstrating that they have implemented “adequate” moderation and censorship systems. He said that these systems would be used for “identifying unlawful content and removing it.” The thought behind this seems to be to convince critics that tech giants are doing everything to...