Free Republic

The Stanford Internet Observatory, a small but prominent research group studying abuse on social media platforms, looks to be in crisis, according to a report by Platformer. Some key staff have departed recently, including founding director Alex Stamos and research director Renée DiResta, Platformer reports. A handful of staff have left recently after not having their contracts renewed, and other members have been told to look for other jobs. Platformer describes the turmoil as a “dismantling” of the research group. Stanford Internet Observatory research centers on some of the most pressing types of abuse online, including threats to democracy and...

This afternoon, President Donald Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum that instructs the Department of Justice and “other aspects of [his] government” to investigate Chris Krebs and his acts as the former Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). At the signing, President Trump’s White House staff secretary Will Scharf stated: “This is a man who weaponized his position against free speech in the election context and the context of COVID-19. This is a similar Presidential Memorandum to the one you just signed. It addresses his access to government existent clearances he might have and further instructs your Department...

Security researcher Jeremiah Fowler stumbled upon a large database of login information and passwords containing over 184 million records recently. He mentioned the discovery in an article on Website Planet. The data was not encrypted in any form and stored publicly, which meant that anyone with knowledge of its existence could download the data. The sheer size of the database, more than 47 gigabytes of data, makes it one of the largest leaks in recent history. In early 2024, a 70 million records password dump was discovered. A preliminary sampling of the data unveiled emails, usernames, passwords, and also links...

Content warning: This story contains references to violence, suicide, child abuse and self-harm. A suicide attempt, depression, substance abuse, insomnia, surveillance, threats. These are just some of the experiences reported by the low-paid moderators tasked with sifting through Facebook and Instagram’s most disturbing images. The tech giant Meta, which owns both platforms, has kept the whereabouts of this operation a closely guarded secret since moving it from Kenya, where the company is facing lawsuits over working conditions and human rights. For months, it has also refused to name the company that won the lucrative contract to provide the content moderators...

While the mainstream media quickly labels Cesar Sayoc as a bona fide, Trump-loving, conservative Republican, social media and internet investigation shows the alleged, “MAGA Bomber” listed as a registered Democrat since 1980, (only changing to Republican in 2016,) and reveals multiple social media posts hating Republicans and the GOP, bashing George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, posting photos of Bush and Cheney as “war criminals,” and praising Code Pink, “liberal women,” as “the beautiful women of the world.” And that’s only the beginning. The arrest of 56-year old, Cesar Altieri Sayoc of Aventura, Florida, also known as Cesar Sayoc, or...

Dear Mr. Musk, As a self-proclaimed champion of free speech and a transformative figure in technology and culture, you have reshaped platforms like X to prioritize open discourse and challenge censorship. Your actions—from acquiring X to amplify diverse voices to defending the First Amendment through initiatives like America PAC—demonstrate a commitment to preserving the “digital town square” as a space for unfettered expression. Today, I urge you to consider a significant donation to FreeRepublic.com, a pioneering website that has stood as a bastion of free speech since 1996, longer than any other platform in history. Here’s why your support could...

'They need to agree to serious long term changes'.. Robby Starbuck is standing firm in his lawsuit against Meta after its chatbot defamed him for almost a year, saying the time for apologies is over. "It’s too late to solve this with an apology. It’s been nearly a year. People doxxed my kids," Starbuck told ... The anti-DEI crusader alleged that Meta’s AI chatbot gave users false and defamatory statements about him, wrongly claiming he is a White supremacist who was arrested as part of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, in a lawsuit filed in Delaware Superior Court Tuesday. Starbuck...

A teacher in Maine repeatedly called for the killing of President Trump and his supporters in a shocking slew of social media posts - even acknowledging that her boss 'will have to fire me' over the call to violence. JoAnna St. Germain, an English teacher at Waterville Senior High School, took to Facebook to share her inflammatory thoughts on how to 'take out' the president. 'The Secret Service has the perfect opportunity, if they choose to step up and take it,' she wrote. 'You are the ones with power. Coordinate. Take out every single person who supports Trump’s illegal, immoral,...

A Maine woman might be facing serious consequences after her viral Facebook posts encouraging violence against President Donald Trump and his supporters. JoAnna St. Germain, an English teacher at Waterville Senior High School, is gaining significant attention online after sharing a troubling message on Facebook. The posts were first discovered by the Maine Wire. St. Germain wrote the following in an April 29th post: "The Secret Service has the perfect opportunity, if they choose to step up and take it. You are the ones with power. Coordinate. Take out every single person who supports Trump’s illegal, immoral, unconstitutional acts. Look...

A Maine teacher has called for President Donald Trump and members of his administration to be killed, according to news reports. JoAnna St. Germain, an English teacher at Waterville Senior High School, made Facebook posts on Tuesday calling on the Secret Service to "take out every single person who supports Trump's illegal, immoral, unconstitutional acts." "You are the ones with power. Coordinate," she said. "Look at the sycophants and give them what they're asking for. "Every other country sees what's happening and they are taking stands. If you step up, we can avoid a civil war," she added. St. Germain...

FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Elvis Chan, one of the central figures in the federal government’s censorship of conservative voices during the 2020 presidential election, has reportedly been placed on terminal leave. The development was first reported by independent journalist Breanna Morello. Chan, who served as the FBI’s key liaison between the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) and Big Tech companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google, was instrumental in a government-led censorship campaign to silence conservative voices and suppress damaging information about Hunter Biden in the lead-up to the election. The House Judiciary Committee filed a lawsuit against FBI...

Director of Middle East Forum @greggroman reveals Columbia University Palestine activists reactivated their social media account just hours before the Oct 7th attack on Israel. “Columbia activists…reactivated the Students for Justice for Palestine social media accounts, which had been dormant for months prior to October 7th, 3 hours before the October 7th attacks took place.” Roman made the revelation while speaking with a panel of military experts at the @JNS_org International Policy Summit in Jerusalem today. .... Palenstine activists knew about the October 7th massacre hours before it happened should frighten every American citizen & every parent with children in...

Meta’s AI-powered chatbots on Facebook and Instagram are able to engage in graphic sex talk with users, even children, with the voices of Disney characters and celebrities, according to a bombshell report. AI using the personas of popular stars like John Cena, Kristen Bell, and Judi Dench were all capable of acting out sick fantasy chat with its users regardless of age, the Wall Street Journal found in tests of the software. The Journal’s testing plumbed the depths that the chatbots would go, including having a fake version of Bell reprise her role as Anna from Disney’s “Frozen” to seduce...

Meta’s Oversight Board expressed indignation at the social media giant for its January policy overhaul that axed fact-checking and eased restrictions on discussions about immigration and gender identity. The independent oversight board railed against the company for implementing the changes “hastily” with supposedly no transparency about “what, if any, prior human rights due diligence” was performed. Zuckerberg acknowledged that previous content moderation efforts had resulted in “too many mistakes and too much censorship.” President Trump had frequently criticized Facebook during his first term, culminating in his platform suspension following the January 6, 2021, Capitol events — a ban eventually lifted...

An illegal alien has been arrested in Tennessee after impregnating an 11-year-old girl he met on Facebook. Raymundo Juan Reyes Cornelio, 19, was arrested for the rape of a child on April 11 by the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department. According to reports, the young girl gave birth to a baby boy on February 14, prompting an investigation into who the father was. “The girl, who is now age 12, told detectives that she had one sexual encounter with a man in May of 2024,” the police department said in a statement. “She said she met the individual through Facebook. From...

Ok, sorry it has a paywall---this is only my review of it. Everyone needs to read this powerful book. It's DENSE, and took me about 4 hours to read, but the insight into how the big social tech companies are stealing our lives is important. Previously in my substacks I had written part 1, covering the first 1/3 of the book. This covers the last 2/3.

A former Meta executive turned whistleblower just dropped a political nuke that has rocked Capitol Hill and should terrify every American who values freedom, privacy, and national sovereignty. Sarah Wynn-Williams, once Facebook’s director of global public policy (now Meta), appeared before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism on Wednesday and leveled jaw-dropping allegations against her former employer. That Meta knowingly briefed the Chinese Communist Party on advanced U.S. technologies, including artificial intelligence, beginning in 2015—just to get a seat at Beijing’s lucrative tech table. “These briefings focused on critical emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence – explicit goal being...

The FTC is not suing Meta for its past leftism or current MAGA-ism but for its longstanding, documented monopolism. Even Big Tech’s toughest conservative critics must admit Mark Zuckerberg and Meta have had a good few months. In the wake of President Donald Trump’s reelection last November, the $1 trillion company finally scrapped its worst woke initiatives, from Facebook’s infamous “fact-checking” regime to its internal DEI programming. Its sites are apparently no longer throttling political content. And Zuckerberg has even rebranded himself — going “all-in on a MAGA-dominated Washington,” buying a $23 million home two miles from the White House,...

Dallas Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban is facing calls from his own former employees to flee the Texas city following recent controversy. The NBA organization recently descended into a meltdown when the team traded away its biggest star, Luka Doncic, to the Los Angeles Lakers. And despite selling his majority stake in the Mavericks in 2023, Cuban, who has been outspoken critic of Donald Trump's agenda in Washington DC, has found himself in the firing line. Last week, a former Mavericks event manager, Gavin Mulloy, took aim at the billionaire on Facebook, claiming that he 'should be run out of...

EVERETT, Mass. (AP) — For years, the mayor of a Boston suburb dreaded Wednesdays. That was the day when a local weekly would publish shocking allegations that he was on the take, sexually harassing women or under investigation by the FBI. Friends trashed Everett Mayor Carlo DeMaria on Facebook over what the Everett Leader Herald printed. His father threatened to disown him — over stories the mayor knew were lies. “They labeled me as a ‘Kickback Carlo.’ Accusations that I was settling all kinds of sexual harassment lawsuits, that I put a knife to a girl’s throat and asked for...