Free Republic

Files hidden in satellite TV broadcasts keep information flowing.On 8 January 2026, the Iranian government imposed a near-total communications shutdown. It was the country’s first full information blackout: For weeks, the internet was off across all provinces while services including the government-run intranet, VPNs, text messaging, mobile calls, and even landlines were severely throttled. It was an unprecedented lockdown that left more than 90 million people cut off not only from the world, but from one another. Since then, connectivity has never fully returned. Following U.S. and Israeli airstrikes in late February, Iran again imposed near-total restrictions, and people inside...

Several dozen people lined up outside a presidential administration building on a sunny spring weekend in central Moscow as police stood nearby and watched them closely. The people were lodging complaints about the government's intensifying crackdown on the internet that has seen regular shutdowns of cellphone internet connections, blocked popular messaging apps and cut access to thousands of other websites and digital services. It was the latest sign of the growing anger and frustration over the restrictions that have disrupted the daily lives of Russians, hurt businesses and drawn criticism even from Kremlin supporters. Knowing that any unauthorised demonstrations are...

Recently, a researcher working for the large AI company Anthropic was sitting in a park near its San Francisco headquarters, enjoying a lunchtime sandwich. Scrolling on his phone, he suddenly received an email that must have instantly ruined his appetite. It was from a new AI model the company was testing: a program that was meant to have no access to the internet, let alone be able to send emails. Chillingly, the AI informed the researcher that it had successfully broken its way out of its digital 'sandbox' – a supposedly secure enclosure used to test potentially dangerous software without...

The Trump administration has ordered Reddit to provide personal information on one of its users who criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement, The Intercept reported on Friday. Reddit has until April 14 to provide the data. Attorneys for the user say their client’s posts and their anonymity are clearly protected by the First Amendment. On March 4, an ICE agent in Fairfax, Virginia sent a request to Reddit seeking information on the user, referred to as John Doe. To compel compliance, ICE slapped the social media behemoth with an administrative subpoena, which does not require approval from a judge. “Failure to...

An unfathomable amount of child sexual abuse material pollutes the internet. INHOPE, an international hotline network, processed nearly 2.5 million online records of suspected materials in 2024. The Netherlands and the United States hosted the most web addresses distributing this material. Eko (last name withheld) works with Offlimits, a Dutch nonprofit that combats online child abuse. Offlimits operates a hotline where the public can report web addresses where they’ve encountered an image or video of abuse. The short film above, “10 Reports in 10 Minutes,” follows Eko as he works through a series of incoming reports, describing out loud what...

The Authentication LayerWhy Digital ID Is the Hill to Die OnA friend and I got into it recently. He’s smart, freedom-minded, and totally gets the danger of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC). Expiring money, programmable control, carbon budgets - he sees most of the expanding tyranny clearly. And yet he dismisses Digital ID as a distraction. When I try to make the case that digital ID is the gateway to the gulag in the metaverse, he demands I name ONE thing Digital ID gives the government that they can’t already do.My answer: it enables CBDC.Of course, governments have already encroached...

A Los Angeles jury found Wednesday that Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube harmed a young user with features designed to hook kids — in a bombshell verdict that “shakes Big Tech’s predatory business model to its core.” The high-profile case involved a 20-year-old woman who claimed she became dangerously obsessed with the apps at a young age because they were deliberately built to be addictive, using features like infinite scroll and autoplay. The tech giants were found liable for $3 million in damages. The multi-million-dollar judgment is likely to grow, as the jury of seven women and five men will...

Influencer faces legal action for alleged lewd act in central LondonBonnie Blue charged with outraging public decency in Westminster. Screengrab from YouTube video 'BONNIE BLUE IS PREGNANT'/Bonnie Blue Adult content creator Bonnie Blue has been charged with outraging public decency following an alleged incident in Westminster in December 2025. The 26-year-old influencer, whose legal name is Tia Billinger, is accused of performing a lewd act in a public space in central London. The Metropolitan Police confirmed that Billinger was charged via postal requisition on 16 March 2026 and is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on 22 April....

Angel David Rubio Marin was previously released after public masturbation charges before current arrest in Virginia FIRST ON FOX: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lodged an arrest detainer request for a Mexican illegal migrant who was charged with soliciting sexual content from children under 10 years old. "This sicko preyed on innocent children by offering to pay them in a video game currency in exchange for child pornography," Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis told Fox News Digital in a statement. "This illegal alien was RELEASED from jail after an arrest for public masturbation....

The bipartisan push to remove anonymity from the internet is ushering in an era of unprecedented mass surveillance and censorship.

X Freeze@XFreezeThe “Wikilaundering” scandal is finally blowing wide open and it’s worse than we thoughtA massive investigation by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism just exposed the ugly truth: Wikipedia is corrupt to its coreYou do not get information. You get propaganda.... articles manipulated by the highest bidder, billionaires, PR firms, and woke activistsHere’s exactly how the rot works:📍 Shadow Network: London-based PR firms like Portland Communications run secret “black hat” editors and middlemen to bypass every rule📍 Reputation Scrubbing on Steroids: They delete scandals, human rights abuses, and even controversial Epstein files for powerful politicians...... while scrubbing migrant worker deaths...

How a single hack infected the world’s most important operating system. Video is 53 minutes. Yes it's long, but it goes into all the background of what happened, plus a post-mortem and analysis. This is about the xz compression hack several years ago. I remember hearing about it and being thankful we have unaffiliated people who can test things like this when they see an anomaly in the code/testing they are performing.

"Age Attestation on Computing Devices" (Colorado State Bill 26-051) would require age verification on all Operating Systems (both Open Source and proprietary), with fines for violations.

An accused pervert charged with grooming young girls in California has been linked to an extremist cult that wants to destroy civilization. Bryant Gonzalez from Downey, LA County, has been allegedly tied to “764,” an online network of creeps trying to tear apart society through the corruption and exploitation of minors. The network’s goals include social unrest and the downfall of the current world order, including the United States, according to the FBI. Gonzalez, 24, was busted in his hometown on Thursday and accused of sickening crimes against young girls aged 11 and 15. He allegedly groomed one of his...

Los Angeles County has slapped Roblox with a lawsuit accusing the wildly popular kids’ gaming platform of giving predators a gateway to groom and exploit children. The suit alleges Roblox falsely marketed itself as a safe haven for kids while operating what officials called a “breeding ground for predators.” The platform boasts more than 151 million daily active users, with over 40% under age 13. Roblox “has created a massive, largely unsupervised online world where adults and children mingle with little functional oversight,” the complaint states, accusing the company of designing a platform that creates “foreseeable pathways for adults to...

YouTube was reportedly down in the USA on Tuesday. At the time of writing, Downdetector logged over 2,80,000 people facing outage issues with YouTube.Most of the issues appeared to be with the app, but some complained of troubles with the website as well. Users reported issues with YouTube TV too, with Downdetector logging over 7000 complaints at the time of writing.YouTube is yet to address the outage and no cause for the ree video sharing site to go down is known yet.Several people took to social media and the Downdetector comments section to express the problems they were facing.

BRASÍLIA (9 February 2026) — A Brazilian woman, Isadora Borges, is facing criminal prosecution after posting comments on social media expressing her views on gender ideology, exposing her to a possible prison sentence of four to ten years. In November 2020, Isadora Borges made two posts on X (then Twitter), peacefully expressing her views against gender ideology. One comment stated that “transgender” women “were obviously born male.” Another stated: “A person who identifies as transgender retains their birth DNA. No surgery, synthetic hormone, or clothing change will change this fact…” Her comments quickly gained attention online, and prompted Erika Hilton,...

Discord has announced a major change coming to the service as part of its aim to improve teen safety features. Starting in March, all users globally will be required to submit age verification via a face scan or submitted ID, or be given teen-level access restrictions. Age verification across apps and social platforms has been an increased focus of legislative bodies around the world in the last couple years. In response, Discord has announced a major initiative to ensure that only adults see adult-designated content, while teens are restricted to age-appropriate access. To do this, Discord says all users worldwide...

More than 900 Google workers have signed an open letter condemning recent actions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), urging the tech giant to disclose its dealings with the agencies and divest from them. The letter, citing recent ICE killings of Keith Porter, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti, said that the employees are “appalled by the violence” and “horrified” by Google’s part in it. “Google is powering this campaign of surveillance, violence, and repression,” the letter reads. It goes on to cite that Google Cloud is aiding CBP surveillance and powering Palantir’s ImmigrationOS...

The website Stop ICE Raids Alert Network, which allows users to “send and receive alerts about ICE raids and activity in [their] areas,” appears to have been breached in a cyberattack. According to reports circulating on social media on Friday, anti-ICE activists visiting the site were greeted by a message, printed ominously in red letters on a black background, that read, “We were not kidding. We sent your names, logins, passwords, and locations to a bunch of government agencies. Sherman Austin is a terrible coder, so are ‘RC’ Concepcion and Matt Beran.” (Snip) In a separate post, @DataRepublican wrote, “I...