Free Republic

Social media platform Bluesky has picked up more than 700,000 new users in the week since the US election, as users seek to escape misinformation and offensive posts on X. The influx, largely from North America and the UK, has helped Bluesky reach 14.5 million users worldwide, up from 9 million in September, the company said. Social media researcher Axel Bruns said the platform offered an alternative to X, formerly Twitter, including a more effective system for blocking or suspending problematic accounts and policing harmful behaviour. “It’s become a refuge for people who want to have the kind of social...

Harris / Walz Campaign BUSTED for using 2 paid actors to pretend they were former Pennsylvania Farmers & Trump Voters who switched to Kamala. A recent twitter post by user Johnny Midnight has stirred up controversy, alleging that the Harris/Walz campaign used paid actors to portray former Pennsylvania farmers and Trump voters who switched their allegiance to Kamala. According to the tweet, these supposed farmers turned Kamala supporters were not only actors but also long-time Democratic donors.

The trial of Dzhokar Tsarnaev has gripped America, but in Russia the Boston bomber’s trial has received little media coverage, with even the arrival of five Tsarnaev family members from Russia to testify receiving no attention. The relatives are staying in Massachusetts over the weekend, after a sick juror meant their testimony for the defence could not be heard on Thursday. But Russian state-controlled media has shown little interest in their trip to the US, and a decision appears to have been taken that the Tsarnaevs’ links to Russia should be played down. On 8 April, the jury convicted Tsarnaev...

Last month, Dr. Robert Honeyman lost their sister to Covid. They wrote about it on Twitter and received dozens of condolences, over 4,000 retweets and 43,000 likes. Exactly one month later, on Dec. 12, Honeyman wrote that another tragedy had befallen their family. “Sad to announce that my husband has entered a coma after being in hospital with Covid. The doctor is unsure if he will come out,” they tweeted. “This year has been the toughest of my life losing my sister to this virus. This is the first time in my life I don’t see light at the end...

The billionaire is in a protracted battle with the company over information about spam and fake accounts.After a weeks-long impasse, Twitter’s board plans to comply with Elon Musk’s demands for internal data by offering access to its full “firehose,” the massive stream of data comprising more than 500 million tweets posted each day, according to a person familiar with the company’s thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the state of negotiations. The move aims to end a standoff with the billionaire, who has threatened to pull out of his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter unless...

Tesla founder Elon Musk revealed that Twitter's sample size to review fake accounts is 100.

Report: Billie Eilish targeted by anti-Israel bots over message to Israelis Singer's Instagram page targeted by pro-Palestinian bots and inundated with "Palestine solidarity-themed comments," report says. American singer and songwriter Billie Eilish was targeted by anti-Israel bots on Instagram after promoting her new album in a video for MTV Israel, a new report by the entertainment industry group Creative Community for Peace revealed.

Last week, Fifth Third Bank revealed that it was facing a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau enforcement action over “alleged unauthorized account openings.” And Monday, the other shoe dropped when the CFPB said it is suing Cincinnati-based Fifth Third alleging the bank’s employees opening accounts in customers’ names without their consent in order to meet sales goals and earn incentives. According to the CFPB, “for several years Fifth Third, without consumers’ knowledge or consent: opened deposit and credit-card accounts in consumers’ names; transferred funds from consumers’ existing accounts to new, improperly opened accounts; enrolled consumers in unauthorized online-banking services; and activated...

Facebook has spotted a series of pages and accounts suspected of working to politically manipulate users, the social media giant announced Tuesday. The social network is ramping up its efforts to stop election meddling heading into the 2018 U.S. midterms. The company said it spotted dozens of “inauthentic accounts” on both Facebook and Instagram as part of its investigation. Facebook hasn’t tied the accounts to the Internet Research Agency — the Kremlin-linked troll factory that leveraged the platform to spread misinformation before the 2016 presidential election — and doesn’t know who is behind the coordinated accounts. “It’s clear that whoever...

Fake News CNN Has 17 Million Fake Twitter Followers No Damn Shock There

Massive collections of fake accounts are lying dormant on Twitter, suggests research. The largest network ties together more than 350,000 accounts and further work suggests others may be even bigger. UK researchers accidentally uncovered the lurking networks while probing Twitter to see how people use it. Some of the accounts have been used to fake follower numbers, send spam and boost interest in trending topics. Hidden purpose On Twitter, bots are accounts that are run remotely by someone who automates the messages they send and activities they carry out. Some people pay to get bots to follow their account or...