Free Republic

News broke recently that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would sever ties with the shadowy consulting firm Arabella Advisors and its “nonprofit network closely associated with the Democratic Party.” The Arabella network has received over $450 million in grants from Gates over the years, so this announcement comes as a devastating blow to Arabella’s billion-plus dollar network. But it may also be a sign that our hyper-politicized charitable sector has reached an inflection point. An institutional realignment may be coming that will leave the left in the lurch and change American philanthropy for the better. My organization was the...

If you can't resist the urge to check your phone over and over, even if you're out with friends, Meta has a solution: check your glasses instead...Meta's Reality Labs division burns cash at an alarming rate, which has concerned investors over the years...Meta has had its fair share of flops, like the entire promise of its social metaverse...But with the Meta Ray-Ban Display, Meta has created a remarkable piece of technology, unlike any other consumer-facing product on the market -- we have yet to test it ourselves, so we can't quite say just how groundbreaking this really is, but it...

The Harris-Biden administration’s campaign to censor COVID-related content on Facebook during the height of the pandemic – as revealed by a remorseful Mark Zuckerberg this week – was so aggressive that it even cracked down on lighthearted memes, satirical posts and regular old jokes. On Monday, Zuckerberg admitted in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) that “senior Biden administration officials, including the White House, “repeatedly pressured” Facebook parent Meta to “censor” pandemic-related content in 2021, as well as The Post’s exclusive reporting on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop. The takedown requests included posts that Zuckerberg considered...

A shadowy for-profit company and its nonprofit counterpart provide free services to at least 40 far-left prosecutor offices, raising questions about whether it’s working on behalf of taxpayers or of donors who have essentially bought government. The Wren Collective is a shadowy group that emerged from a Cold War-era initiative aimed at promoting Soviet films in the United States. Its current iteration — funded by a former Enron executive and host of other leftist megadonors — claims that America’s “system of policing and mass incarceration is deeply flawed and intractably racist.” The group has intervened on specific criminal cases, written...

Mark Zuckerberg’s $300 million superyacht Launchpad burned more than 528,000 gallons (2 million liters) of diesel in nine months, releasing over 5,300 tons of carbon emissions, before docking this week at France’s La Ciotat shipyard for maintenance. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has faced growing criticism over the environmental impact of his 387-foot Feadship superyacht as it toured destinations from the South Pacific to Europe. It will now undergo servicing at one of the world’s top superyacht facilities, the same yard that previously handled Jeff Bezos’ yacht Koru. Months of travel draw scrutiny The yacht’s journey has drawn attention not only...

Hollywood Actress Kathy Griffin uploading an extremely disturbing video depicting decapitated heads of President Trump, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg.

No Kings” “nationwide day of defiance” protest’s official partners have bagged $114.8 million since 2019 from the Arabella Advisors dark money network and how professional protest organizations use tax dollars as a force multiplier. The expected worldwide mobilization of protests .. tumult is a carefully plotted production organized by The Indivisible Project and financed by the progressive dark money network Arabella Advisors, which has perfected the mounting of made-to-order protests. Since 2019, Arabella has dumped more than $100 million into the coffers of the official “No Kings” protest partners—including the creator of the official protest song book. ... The Arabella...

HONOLULU (KHON2) — Recently, there was an expose on Mark Zuckerberg’s Kauaʻi compound where he and his partner have been making waves in the local community. As sea levels rise, you’re probably asking yourself why he’s investing so much money into a compound that will be impacted by beach erosion, rising ocean levels and a disappearing island. One article that gives a bit of insight into why Zuckerberg is sinking so much money into the property comes from a tech futurist writer with The Guardian. This writer was asked by the world’s biggest tech leaders to a meeting to explain...

Apple (AAPL) announced Monday that it will spend and invest more than $500 billion in the US over the next four years, including plans to build a new manufacturing factory, double its advanced manufacturing fund, and hire 20,000 people. "We are bullish on the future of American innovation, and we're proud to build on our long-standing U.S. investments with this $500 billion commitment to our country’s future,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. "From doubling our Advanced Manufacturing Fund, to building advanced technology in Texas, we’re thrilled to expand our support for American manufacturing. And we’ll keep working...

After an internal Q&A with CEO Mark Zuckerberg made headlines over the tech tycoon’s pro-President Trump commentary, Meta threatened to fire staffers for leaking information to the media — in a memo that then also got leaked. Meta “will take appropriate action, including termination,” for any leakers, Meta’s chief information security officer, Guy Rosen, said in a memo obtained by the Verge. “When information is stolen or leaked, there are repercussions beyond the immediate security impact,” Rosen said. “Our teams become demoralized and we all waste time that is better spent working on our products and toward our goals and...

President Donald Trump has signed an agreement in which Meta would pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit he brought against the company after being suspended from Facebook in 2021 following the January 6 riot. Trump signed the settlement papers Wednesday in the Oval Office, his attorney John Coale confirmed to Business Insider. He said much of the $25 million settlement paid by Meta would go toward Trump's presidential library.

DeepSeek AI has disrupted the AI landscape in the US. In just a few weeks after the launch of its AI model, DeepSeek overtook ChatGPT to become the number one free app on the App Store. Not only this, DeepSeek's rise in popularity sent shockwaves to the tech industry, leading to a $400 billion in market cap loss for NVIDIA in the US. Recently, DeepSeek launched its Janus-Pro 7B, a groundbreaking image generation model that started making headlines, as it outperformed the likes of OpenAI's DALL-E, Stability AI's Stable Diffusion, and other image generation models in several benchmarks. The popularity...

...former Facebook diversity executive Bärí A. Williams criticizes Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to disband the company’s DEI programs, signaling a shift in priorities as he aligns with the incoming Trump administration. Williams, author of Seen Yet Unseen: A Black Woman Crashes the Tech Fraternity and the founder of Facebook's Supplier Diversity Program, published an opinion piece on MSNBC on the shutdown of Meta’s DEI initiatives. Williams expressed her disappointment in the abandonment of Meta’s Supplier Diversity Program, an initiative she spent countless hours developing. She writes, “From October 2014 to October 2016, I spent nights, weekends and even part...

Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement could encourage others to stop pretending they believe in the cultish ideology of “systemic racism” and race-based guilt. Last week, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, formerly Facebook, made a stunning announcement. He was abolishing the company’s DEI programs and discontinuing its relationship with fact-checking organizations, which he admitted had become a form of “censorship.” The left-wing media immediately attacked the decision, accused him of embracing the MAGA agenda, and predicted a dangerous rise in so-called disinformation. Zuckerberg’s move was carefully calculated and impeccably timed. The November elections, he said, felt like “a cultural tipping point towards...

* Meta is set to cut about 5% of its workforce, focusing on the company’s lowest-performing workers, CNBC confirmed Tuesday. * CEO Mark Zuckerberg informed employees about the decision to “move out low performers faster” in a memo posted on the company’s internal Workplace forum on Tuesday. * Zuckerberg told employees 2025 will “be an intense year.” Meta is set to cut about 5% of its workforce, focusing on the company’s lowest-performing staffers, CNBC confirmed Tuesday. CEO Mark Zuckerberg informed employees about the decision to “move out low performers faster” in a memo posted on the company’s internal Workplace forum...

The tech industry is on the verge of a major transformation, with artificial intelligence (AI) stepping into roles traditionally held by human software engineers. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently revealed that AI could soon take over coding tasks previously handled by mid-level engineers, signaling a dramatic change for the profession. During a conversation on The Joe Rogan Experience, Zuckerberg shared that Meta, along with other tech giants, is working on AI systems that will handle coding duties. He predicted that by 2025, AI would be capable of performing tasks typically done by mid-level engineers. This shift marks a major turning...

Just hours after Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg announced last Tuesday that the social media giant would eliminate its US-based fact-checkers, the iconic hills above Los Angeles began to smolder. As fire crews scrambled in vain to contain the resulting firestorm, the fact-checking partners, still working for Meta, took on their own fight: trying to slow viral misinformation rapidly spreading around the wildfires. Rumor and speculation about the disaster began to swirl online like glowing embers, before eventually becoming a wild blaze of vast conspiracy theories. “Cutting fact checkers from social platforms is like disbanding your fire department,” said Alan Duke,...

Some employees of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, are so discouraged by the removal of tampons from the men’s bathroom they are engaging in their own form of protest by bringing their own.

Mark Zuckerberg announced on Friday that his Meta company, which operates Facebook and Instagram, had abandoned its DEI practices. As part of that move, the company told facilities managers to remove the tampons from the men's bathrooms. "That same day at Meta’s offices in Silicon Valley," The New York Times reported, "Texas and New York, facilities managers were instructed to remove tampons from men’s bathrooms, which the company had provided for nonbinary and transgender employees who use the men’s room and who may have required sanitary pads, two employees said." Some people could hardly beleive that this had been the...

Meta and Amazon are axing their diversity programmes, joining firms across corporate America that are rolling back hiring and training initiatives criticised by conservatives, citing legal and political risks. The move comes just days after Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, said it was ending a fact-checking programme criticised by President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans. In a memo to staff about its decision, which affects, hiring, supplier and training efforts, Meta cited a "shifting legal and policy landscape". Walmart and McDonalds are among the other companies to have made similar decisions regarding diversity efforts since Trump won...