Free Republic

Twitter suspended several high-profile journalists Thursday evening who have been covering the company and Elon Musk. The suspensions come a day after Twitter changed its policies around accounts that track private jets, including one owned by Elon Musk. The accounts of Ryan Mac of The New York Times, Donie O'Sullivan of CNN, Drew Harwell of The Washington Post, Matt Binder of Mashable, Micah Lee of The Intercept and independent journalists Aaron Rupar, Keith Olbermann and Tony Webster had all been suspended as of Thursday evening. The Twitter account for Mastodon, a platform billed as an alternative, was also suspended early...

An emboldened cast of anonymous trolls spewed racist slurs and Nazi memes onto Twitter in the hours after billionaire industrialist Elon Musk took over the social network, raising fears that his pledge of unrestricted free speech could fuel a new wave of online hate. The flood of racist posts was among the most prominent signs of how Twitter had changed in the first hours of Musk’s ownership. But those who were expecting even bigger changes, such as the restoration of former president Donald Trump’s account and the layoff of hundreds if not thousands of Twitter employees, will have to wait...

An emboldened cast of anonymous trolls spewed racist slurs and Nazi memes onto Twitter in the hours after billionaire industrialist Elon Musk took over the social network Thursday, raising fears of how his pledge of unrestricted free speech could fuel a new wave of online hate. Twitter has struggled to enforce its rules against harassment and extremism, and the company has not yet published any broad-scale changes to its content-moderation policies. But Musk, a self-described "free speech absolutist," has fiercely criticized the company's previous leaders as overly rigid and suppressive and said he would work to overturn some of the...

Ukrainian officials have run more than 8,600 facial recognition searches on dead or captured Russian soldiers in the 50 days since Moscow’s invasion began, using the scans to identify bodies and contact hundreds of their families in what may be one of the most gruesome applications of the technology to date. The country’s IT Army, a volunteer force of hackers and activists that takes its direction from the Ukrainian government, says it has used those identifications to inform the families of the deaths of 582 Russians, including by sending them photos of the abandoned corpses. The Ukrainians champion the use...

Tesla chief Elon Musk’s corporate jet flew more than 150,000 miles last year, or more than six times around the Earth, as he raced between the outposts of his futuristic empire during what he has called “the most painful year” of his career, according to flight records obtained by The Washington Post. The billionaire executive’s frequent travel on a private plane was paid for by Tesla, the cash-burning automaker that faces billions of dollars in debt and has laid off thousands of employees within the last year, including slashing 7 percent of its workforce this month. Musk’s jet logged more...