Free Republic

A dozen or more teens were arrested in multiple states last week for alleged participation in a viral social media trend that stirred school shooting fears across the United States, according to reports and local police. The arrests on Thursday and Friday of male students in Connecticut, California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin came after schools increased security in response to the rumors, which spread like wildfire after the Nov. 30 school shooting in Oxford Township, Michigan, Fox News reported. The boys arrested range in age from 13 to 16, according to local media...

Kari MacRae is trying to make the best of a less-than-ideal situation. The Republican from Bourne who serves on her town’s school committee got fired from her teaching position at Hanover High School less than one month into the school year over a Tik Tok video in which she expressed conservative views; there is also an ongoing recall effort in Bourne to try to oust her from the school committee. Now, she’s running for the Massachusetts Senate in the Plymouth & Barnstable District. MacRae told NewBostonPost she’s running for state Senate because of the outpouring of support she has received...

SNIPSeveral completely factual claims about the virus are now going to be censored or no longer allowed to be shared on the platform, including the simple fact that vaccinated people CAN “spread” Covid-19.Statements like this will be labeled with “corrective information” if they are allowed to be posted at all.From Twitter’s policy:We may apply labels to Tweets that contain, for example:– “the vaccines will cause you to be sick, spread the virus, or would be more harmful than getting COVID-19”Advertisement - story continues below – “false or misleading claims that people who have received the vaccine can spread or shed...

Educators announced plans to increase security in response to TikTok posts warning of shooting and bomb threats at schools around the country Friday as officials assured parents the viral posts were not considered credible. The social media threats had many educators on edge as they circulated in the aftermath of a deadly school shooting in Michigan, which has been followed by numerous copycat threats to schools elsewhere. School officials in states including Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Montana, New York and Pennsylvania said Thursday there would be an increased police presence because of the threats. The vague, anonymous posts circulating online warned...

Massive data breaches have become so common that we’ve gotten numb to reports detailing another hack or 0-day exploit. That doesn’t reduce the risk of such events happening, as the cat-and-mouse game between security experts and hackers continues. As some vulnerabilities get fixed, others pop up requiring attention from product and service providers. The newest one has a name that will not mean anything to most people. They call the hack Log4Shell in security briefings, which doesn’t sound very scary. But the new 0-day attack is so significant that some people see it as the worst internet hack in history.......

As we have previously reported, journalist John Stossel is suing Facebook after Facebook’s ‘fact checkers’ labeled climate change information that Stossel posted as “false and misleading”. In the middle of all this is the nefarious website “Climate Feedback” which has a bunch of climate zealots that write up what they claim are “fact checks” for articles, videos, and news stories they disagree with. Facebook just blew the “fact check” claim right out of the water in court.

"Facebook has admitted in a court of law that such fact checks are not factual at all, but merely opinions. People send me stuff. As we have previously reported, journalist John Stossel is suing Facebook after Facebook’s ‘fact checkers’ labeled climate change information that Stossel posted as 'false and misleading'. In the middle of all this is the nefarious website 'Climate Feedback' which has a bunch of climate zealots that write up what they claim are 'fact checks' for articles, videos, and news stories they disagree with. Facebook just blew the 'fact check' claim right out of the water in...

LONDON (AP) — Rohingya refugees sued social network powerhouse Facebook for more than $150 billion, accusing it of failing to stop hate speech that incited violence against the Muslim ethnic group by military rulers and their supporters in Myanmar.

“Right wing builds its own echo chamber,” the far-left, fake news site Axios warned in a recent headline. They cancel us, they blacklist us, they shadow ban us, they memory-hole inconvenient truths about Hunter Biden’s laptop, Kyle Rittenhouse’s innocence, and the coronavirus lab-leak theory, and now they’re all butthurt because we refuse to sit there, shut up, and take it. Hey, can you blame them? After decades of dealing with the right’s castrated, house-trained McCains, Romney’s, Bushes, Kristols, and National Reviews, the media are still shell-shocked over this new generation’s awesome belligerence towards them (which our founder Andrew Breitbart deserves...

AWS seems to be not working. anyone else see or hearing anything? note: Amazon.com is working fine.

The special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, that announced plans to merge with former President Donald Trump’s new social media company is under investigation by federal regulators, the company disclosed on Monday. The SPAC, Digital World Acquisition Corp., disclosed the investigation in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “DWAC has received certain preliminary, fact-finding inquiries from regulatory authorities, with which it is cooperating,” the company said. It added that in late October and early November, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority requested information “surrounding events (specifically, a review of trading) that preceded the public announcement of” the SPAC’s merger...

Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann – a member of Pfizer Inc.’s Board of Directors – previously served as the Lead Independent Director at social media giant Facebook. The site has routinely censored posts relating to COVID-19 vaccines, with Pfizer in particular eliciting support from major corporate outlets. Hellman was appointed to the social media platform’s board in March 2013 and served as it Lead Independent Director from June 2015 until October 30th 2019, shortly before the first reported case of COVID-19. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO, said “Sue has been a wonderful and thoughtful voice on the board for six years,...

For all the outrage directed at Big Tech over the past decade, regulators have shied away from the nuclear option of actually breaking up a major platform. Until this week, that is. By ordering Facebook to part with Giphy, a GIF creation platform it acquired in 2020, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority broke a global taboo and ushered in a brave new world of tech enforcement.

The U.N. Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED) is now responsible for taking entire privately hosted websites offline, as they seek to take total control of the flow of information and establish their "Great Narrative." CTED notifies domain registrars of "extremist" sites -- i.e., those that promote narratives they don't approve of -- and the sites can no longer be found. This reflects a new level of internet censorship, but it is not just publishers who are in the crosshairs...it is all of us. Christian breaks it down in this Ice Age Farmer broadcast 12:00 minute video

“I still worry about the censorship that occurs,” Nunes remarked. “What happens if these companies just decide next year, ‘Well, Republicans, they’re all insurrectionists. Let’s shut off all their credit cards and banking so they just can’t raise any money.’ They could do that, all these woke corporations.”

Protecting the right of people to be censored? A federal court blocked the Texas HB 20 law against social media censorship based on political view. Texas House Bill 20 was enacted to stop platforms from censoring content merely for being the wrong political viewpoint, but U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman has put the law on ice for now. “Pitman granted an injunction filed by NetChoice and CCIA [Computer & Communications Industry Association] to put HB 20 on hold until the case is complete,” Reclaim The Net reported. “The judge argues that the law violates the First Amendment rights of social...

A federal judge in Austin Wednesday blocked Texas' social media censorship law, which prohibits large social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter from censoring users "based on their political viewpoints." The law, known as House Bill 20, was signed by Gov. Greg Abbott on Sept. 9 and set to take effect Thursday. However, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman wrote in his ruling that the measure interferes with platforms' First Amendment right to moderate content disseminated on their platforms. Pitman called content moderation "the very tool that social media platforms employ to make their platforms safe, useful, and enjoyable for users."

Police are alerting schools, parents and community members of a potentially-dangerous challenge seen on TikTok which encourages others to kick in the doors of homes. In videos shared on TikTok, young people kick doors to the beat of the song "Die Young" by musical artist Kesha before running off. Some use enough force where doors are kicked open entirely. Jennifer Pritchard of the Petaluma Police Department in Petaluma, Cali., said danger is heightened when people are unfamiliar with TikTok trends and could interpret the prank as a "a real life or death situation." Pritchard said those participating in the door-kicking...

The conservative news site I have operated for the last 15 years is undergoing persistent bot attacks which leave site unable to load and me unable to post news. Does anyone out there have experience with this?

Pic at link and I will post it below. I laughed.