Free Republic

This week, the House of Representatives is considering a bill to radically expand the government’s power to regulate online speech platforms. Framed as a child safety measure, the KIDS Act imposes a litany of restrictions on social media apps and other platforms... The KIDS Act would fundamentally overturn this status quo by allowing the government to decide how platforms can be built and imposing restrictions that will censor the speech of adults and minors alike...

Image that’s going viral, supposed to be the boy beat to death in Narbonne The endless slaying of France by the invaders. The Southern French town of Narbonne, located in the Occitania region has been rocked by the brutal beating of a 17-year-old boy who was found seriously injured on Friday on a construction site, and later died. The public prosecutor of Narbonne, Jean-Philippe Rey, confirmed that five people, including three minors, were indicted for attempted murder and placed in pre-trial detention. Images of the attack have gone viral on social media platforms, where multiple users identified the attackers as...

They’re flipping off social media. Nostalgic ’80s tech firm Commodore is hoping to combat tech addiction by releasing a retro flip phone that banishes social media apps. Dubbed the Commodore Callback 8020, this vintage phone reboot is billed as a “retreat from Black Mirror technology” designed to “help you spend less time staring at a screen,” per the blog. This throwback perhaps marks a fitting release for a nostalgic company that kickstarted the personal computer revolution of the 1980s and released the Commodore 64 — the best-selling PC of all time. The Callback, which will be available later this year,...

I’m learning to never underestimate the sores of racial discontent. have now written two essays in which the blacks introduced new social media trends to protest the Karmelo Anthony verdict. The first was where they would randomly attack and violently assault unwitting white people and accuse them of being involved with the “jury” or “jury selection.” The second involved them using AI to photoshop themselves into a picture of Austin Metcalf’s grave, making it look like they were urinating all over it. Now, for the third time in two weeks, they’ve got a new one, and this one is called...

What began with a concerned mother calling police on her son ended in the thwarting of a terror plot involving drones and snipers aimed at members of U.S. Congress attending Sunday's UFC event at the White House, the government alleges in a criminal complaint filed against one of the plot's admitted leaders, an Ohio teen. Tycen Proper, 19, of Danville, Ohio, told federal investigators on June 11 he intended to "jump-start" a revolution in the U.S. with an attack on June 14 that would begin with drone bombings over the north side of the arena. Co-conspirators, the charging documents allege,...

The plot to attack the White House’s UFC Freedom 250 event Sunday involved at least 12 suspects across the US who adhered to an “accelerationist” ideology and hoped to bring down American capitalism, according to federal law enforcement sources. The FBI foiled their plans by infiltrating a Signal chat group planning the explosive attack — with a parent of one kid in the messaging platform reporting it to the police, sources told The Post. The suspects are in at least four states — California, Ohio, Missouri and Nebraska. They were plotting to gather in Fredericksburg, Virginia, to launch an explosive...

Britain will ban children under 16 from using a range of social media apps including Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube to protect young people from harmful content and excessive screen time, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday, Starmer told a news conference that he will fight back if technology companies resist the move, and acknowledged some teens would try to find their way around a ban. But he said he is "not prepared to compromise on the safety and happiness of our children." "Every parent can see it with their own eyes. Social media is making children unhappy," said Starmer, who...

The Supreme Court just issued a unanimous ruling, and the case behind it has everything: Twitter, Saudi dissidents, federal prosecutors, and a fake invoice. The decision came down June 11, 2026, in Abouammo v. United States, No. 25-5146. Justice Elena Kagan wrote for a 9-0 Court, reversing the Ninth Circuit and sending the case back. Legal reporter Katie Buehler summed up the ruling this way: The defendant is Ahmad Abouammo, a former Twitter employee accused of giving confidential information about Saudi dissidents to a high-level Saudi official. According to the Court, the Saudi official wired Abouammo $300,000. Later, after Abouammo...

The Brief A judge who approved a search warrant that led to the arrest of a Henderson County resident over a Facebook post concerning Trinidad's water supply says he was misled by the Trinidad Police Department. Judge R. Scott McKee sent a letter to outgoing Trinidad Police Chief Charles Gregory that questions "the accuracy, completeness, and reliability of information presented" by his officers when he approved the warrant. The woman arrested has since filed a lawsuit against the city after her charges were dropped, while the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is investigating the city's water supply. SNIP

Alice Smith reposted Nina Wysocka @realninawysocka Elon Musk to Starmer: “Murderous migrants beheading innocent people in their hometown is what’s making people angry, not social media!”

The paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, notes that the fertility rate in the U.S. has fallen by 22 per cent since 2007, when the first iPhone went on sale in the country... Until 2011, the iPhone was only available in the U.S. to subscribers of AT&T, allowing the researchers to compare birth rates in counties with near-universal AT&T coverage to counties with little or none in the four years since the first iPhone’s release. Their findings suggest a striking relationship between iPhone access and declining birth rates... As for why exactly this is, the researchers present...

The official account for the Obama White House was hacked on Sunday and spammed with bizarre memes. The unidentified hacker added some pictures to the @obamawhitehouse account, including an AI-generated image that claimed the White House was now under Shiite control, according to TMZ. He also added some posts to the page's Instagram Stories. But a representative for Meta - the parent company of Instagram - said the account has now been secured and all of the unauthorized content removed. The account had previously last been updated in 2017, when President Donald Trump took office for his first term. However,...

“Hell on Wheels” murderer Mackenzie Shirilla whined to her mother because she missed her iPad and wasn’t satisfied with the quality of prison food, demanding a cushier lifestyle while locked behind bars. Shirilla, 20, made the demands over the phone after she was jailed for intentionally driving her car into a brick wall, killing her ex-boyfriend Dominic Russo and friend Davion Flanagan back in 2023, according to the US Sun. Shirilla, then 19, was caught on camera deliberately flooring her Toyota Camry to 100 mph before it jumped a curb and flew into a brick warehouse in Strongsville, Ohio, back...

Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, is following in his father’s footsteps when it comes to attacking the Jewish state. Khamenei’s official social media account on Tuesday posted a series of posts against Israel, including one describing it as a “cancerous tumor" and one predicting the end of Israel. “The shaken Zionist regime and the cancerous tumor of Israel are approaching the final stages of their wretched existence," read one post. A subsequent post said, “By God’s grace - and in accordance with the decisive and forward-looking words of our martyred Leader ten years ago - the Zionist...

TRINIDAD, Texas - A Facebook post about problems with the city of Trinidad's water quality led to the arrest of a resident, who now says she's filed a lawsuit against the city for what she calls a "political retaliation" arrest. What we know: Police in the City of Trinidad, located in Henderson County around an hour south-east of Dallas, arrested Jennifer Combs on May 8 and charged her with felony false alarm or report. Her arrest stems from a Facebook post she made on her ‘Southern Belle Watch' account, where she claimed that the city's water issues had led to...

There’s a global war on information today, and it’s segmented by country, generation, and medium. We used to live in a world where there was a small funnel which all information was strained through. In that funnel was TV, where TV networks essentially had a couple of major news media channels that most of the population tuned into. Nowadays that funnel has been wiped and filled with countless digital platforms, podcasts, and broadcasting. They’re oftentimes populated by international actors, bots, and millions of individuals who want to share their opinions with the world. Social media has democratized influence and blown...

The error was corrected after review and the videos have been restored on the platform. TikTok has reinstated a video by Reform UK after originally being removed or restricted in error, GB News understands. The video, which was also posted to other social media platforms, depicts the party's home affairs spokesman, Zia Yusuf, warning Britain has been "overwhelmed" by mass migration. A TikTok spokesman confirmed the videos have been reinstated, following a review that found they were removed or restricted in error, and the party's account remains available on the platform. The spokesman said: "We use a combination of advanced...

PENSACOLA, Fla. (TCN) -- A woman has accepted a plea deal in an attempted murder case in which she allegedly instructed a child on how to kill a newborn. WEAR reports Tara Sykes, 37, had three homicide charges and one charge of child cruelty dropped as part of her deal. She pleaded no contest to a charge of child neglect and was sentenced to 11 months and 30 days in county jail, with 462 days credit for time served. On Oct. 18, 2024, Sykes was arrested and charged with attempted murder for allegedly instructing a 10-year-old to drop a...

FBI investigations of a heinous online child predator network have expanded to target more than 450 people, the bureau said on Tuesday. Officials continue to crack down on groups going by names such as “764” that lure children into violent online communities and induce them toward self-harm or sexual acts, FBI Dallas Special Agent in Charge Joe Rothrock said in a statement warning parents and schoolteachers. Authorities have traced similar groups’ beginnings to at least 2019, announcing more than 350 subjects of investigations by late last year. FBI Dallas is sharing information with parents, guardians, and teachers about violent online...

BREAKING UPDATE: Desiree Segari, the Florida woman who called for Trump supporters to be SHOT, has been sentenced to 13 months in prison.