Free Republic

Anxiety about the nation’s children, which is at a steady simmer in the best of times, boiled over in the summer of 2020, when the digital soldiers of QAnon occupied the otherwise innocuous hashtag #SaveTheChildren. Around the same time, major social-media platforms had started blocking overt QAnon accounts and hashtags. From their new beachhead, the digital soldiers were able to disseminate a cascade of false information about child trafficking on Instagram and Facebook: Children were being trafficked on the hospital ship USNS Comfort, then docked in New York City, and through tunnels underneath Central Park. As outrageous as these allegations...

In part I of this series, Internet Forums and Social Dynamics: Part I: Everybody is someone elseÂ’s weirdo, I observed that like-minded people cluster into groups on the internet. Using Free Republic as an example (as it is the only site I feel I have any right to talk about), I showed how peopleÂ’s reactions to other posters are based on observation of the other posterÂ’s opinion, and that the process used to evaluate other posters bears an analogy to statistical techniques used in industry. In this part, I consider some of the social tensions which occur during conversations /...

"People were just getting together on their own," remembers Tom. "I guess you could call it grass roots." Like thousands of others, Tom downloaded phone lists so he could cold-call potential supporters in the area. Mary spent hours typing names and addresses into Obama's national database. The first paid operatives finally arrived in the area weeks later, only to find a virtually organized Obama machine already up and running. When the campaign held its first statewide training sessions in March, some 2,000 people turned up.It has gone on like this all year for Obama as his campaign deftly exploits the...

CLINTON,Md. -- Police in Prince George's County, Md., said a man accused of walking into a mobile phone store, dousing his wife with gasoline and then setting her on fire is now behind bars. Roger Hargrave, 33, was arrested shortly after 11 p.m. Monday in District Heights, Md. Witnesses told police that Hargrave walked into the T-Mobile store in Clinton, Md., where his wife worked, and began throwing gasoline on her. Witnesses said the woman ran outside and Hargrave followed her and set her on fire with a match. Police spokeswoman Cpl. Diane Richardson said a customer who was in...

LEVITTOWN, Pa. -- The Schiavo family in Pennsylvania told NBC 10 that it has been receiving death threats. TERRI SCHIAVO Fact Sheet: Terri Schiavo Who's Who In The Schiavo Story Fla. Gov. Jeb Bush's Statement Discuss Case Living Wills The Terri-Schindler-Schiavo Foundation Legal Documents Investigators on Monday said that a man driving a white car allegedly called Terri Schiavo's sister-in-law a murderer. According to Sgt. Andy Smith, the man also said to her, "If Terri dies, I'm going to come back and shoot you and your family." After Terri's death Thursday, the brother of her husband, Michael, Scott Schiavo, told...

<p>I've been talking to some long time Freepers via email for several weeks (one in particular). His concern was over the immigration threads and how they turn out on Free Republic.</p> <p>Many times these threads turn into flame wars. There appears to be a lot of pent up hostility that various factions have developed for each other which ends up coming out, over and over, and the result is that the threads turn into a lot of crap. The moderators get hit with dozens of abuse reports over personal attacks and other silliness. Eventually, it becomes more work than is really worthwhile, and the threads get moved to the backroom so we don't have to deal with it.</p>

Since my last vanity announcement on keywords went so swimmingly (it ended up with something like 5000 keywords added to it) I thought a great idea would be to throw some propane on some other fires with a vanity. Breaking news is being abused again, big time. This goes in cycles, with sometimes people being responsible, but other times people not being very responsible. We are in one of the not-very time periods. Please, do not post something in Breaking News because you think it is something you want people to see. Place something in Breaking News only if it...

(Regarding the answer to stopping the 'in-house wars') The answer is for everyone to just stop doing it. I know that is hard for some, because things have gotten to the point where now things are personal. There are wounds in some cases, and in others there is anger. Makes it really hard for people to stand down. Unfortunately, I am pretty sure it has been planned this way. Earlier tonight thanks to a tip from someone who I wish I had listened to earlier, we discovered someone who had at least 8 different accounts. One bashed Horowitz, Swaggert, and...