Free Republic

US Senate Endorsement: Kathy Barnette About a year ago I met with Kathy Barnette, a homeschooling Christian mom and veteran who had a big vision for the state of PA. Kathy was relatively unknown at the time, but I knew there was something special about her when I learned that Kathy filed a federal lawsuit related to mail-in ballot issues before the chaos of the 2020 election even happened. Kathy is also a Gab user and even wrote a guest post for our blog last year. Kathy’s testimony is incredibly powerful. She is the “byproduct of a rape” and celebrates...

Top House Democrats wrote letters to the chief executives of four major social media platforms on Wednesday, urging them to preserve and archive content related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that could be potential evidence of war crimes. The lawmakers asked Meta, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok to preserve and archive posts related to the conflict “that may provide evidence of war crimes or human rights violations,” establish a mechanism with human rights-specific organizations to share that content and create a way for content depicting a possible war crime to be flagged by the platforms’ users.

SNIP TikTok, as we know it today, is only a few years old. But its growth is like nothing we’ve seen before. In 2021, it had more active users than Twitter, more U.S. watch minutes than YouTube, more app downloads than Facebook, more site visits than Google. The app is best known for viral dance trends, but there was a time when Twitter was 140-character updates about lunch orders and Facebook was restricted to elite universities. Things change. Perhaps they have already changed. A few weeks ago, I gave a lecture at a Presbyterian college in South Carolina, and asked...

The advent of social media has brought a dilemma — we want the benefits it brings so badly, but at the same time it is destroying our mental health with all the hate and criticism. The old saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words may never hurt me,” has finally become outdated, because whoever coined it never predicted a constant barrage of hate 24/7, seven days a week. Our bodies aren’t meant to handle this level of insults and criticism, which increases with more “friends” and platforms (Are they really friends if they’re constantly criticizIng you, bringing...

In a proposed class action filed in Delaware Chancery Court, the Orlando Police Pension Fund said Delaware law forbade a quick merger because Musk had agreements with other big Twitter shareholders, including his financial adviser Morgan Stanley and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, to support the buyout.

Will Elon Musk change Twitter’s political policy on banning advertisements for anything they perceive as a weapon? The list is broad and purely political. Elon Musk has been making headlines with his acquisition of Twitter. Twitter has become famous for taking sides during the 2020 election by banning the New York Post, after it released the bombshell article about the Hunter Biden laptop and Biden family corruption. After the election, they banned sitting President Donald Trump. Some surveys have claimed the ban on the news of Biden family corruption allowed President Biden to take the presidency. Some polls show the...

The US Federal Trade Commission is reportedly reviewing Elon Musk's $44 billion Twitter buyout for potential antitrust concerns. The FTC now has 30 days to consider the deal and decide whether to issue a second request to probe the matter further, although most experts believe there are no antitrust concerns that could block the takeover, according to Bloomberg. However, the anti-monopoly activist group Open Markets Initiative, where Democratic FTC Chair Lina Khan used to work, has urged the agency to block the deal, saying that it 'poses immediate and direct threats to American democracy and free speech.'

Victoria Hammett was goofing off while watching a live stream of The Met Gala on Monday night when she saw the news. Politico published a leaked draft opinion indicating the Supreme Court would overturn the constitutional right to abortion enshrined in Roe v. Wade. Within minutes, Hammett, 23, the deputy executive director for non-profit activist group Gen-Z For Change, was on a call planning how she and others could fight back. The group is made up of members from the Gen-Z generation, which Pew Research defines as anyone born after 1997. “We were all texting each other immediately," Hammett said....

(CNN)Some of the nation's biggest brands including Coca-Cola (CCEP), Disney (DIS) and Kraft (KHC) are facing calls to boycott Twitter if the company's soon-to-be owner, billionaire Elon Musk, rolls back content moderation policies limiting hate speech and election misinformation. In a letter sent to brands Tuesday ahead of the 2022 NewFronts digital advertising conference, more than two dozen civil society groups said marketers should secure commitments from Twitter to retain its most critical policies, including on civic integrity and hateful conduct, and threaten to withdraw funding if Twitter does not comply.

Weibo showed Bill Gates as being in Henan, Messi in ShanghaiChinese social media platforms began rolling out geolocation features in late April, triggering heated discussion among the country’s netizens. Using their IP address, Weibo started displaying the location of users from Thursday, April 28, for the sake of creating a “healthy online environment,” according to WhatsonWeibo. In the days that followed, Douyin, Toutiao, Xiaohongshu and Zhihu all followed. The user’s location is not only visible on account pages, but also alongside any comments or posts they make. The function cannot be turned off in the settings section. The new...

Jankowicz wears many leftist hats, and is wrong in all of them. Within the space of a week, Nina Jankowicz has gone from being an unknown to a media wunderkind, featured in countless media accounts. But it’s fair to say the coverage has been less than fawning. Referring to her Disinformation Governance Board, to which she had been appointed to head, Jankowicz claimed in a tweet that “one of the key reasons the Board was established, is to maintain the Dept's committment [sic] to protecting free speech, privacy, civil rights, & civil liberties.” (And why the Orwellian name, Disinformation Governance...

Tech mogul Elon Musk has hinted that he is planning to fire Twitter’s “censorship chief,” who earns $17 million per year at the company. Twitter’s top lawyer Vijaya Gadde is seen as the leading advocate for censoring conservatives at the social media giant. Gadde, who earned $17M last year as Twitter’s top legal counsel, has been put on notice that she is among the highly paid executives who stand to lose their job once Musk completes his takeover of the company. Musk is reportedly planning to slash jobs and reduce executive pay as part of his plan to shake up...

Following the announcement of his "Disinformation Governance Board," Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas found himself scrambling to spin the hideous new speech enforcer, claiming it was not as Orwellian as any normal person would think. Speaking with Fox News, Sunday he told Bret Baier: "This is a working group that takes best practices to make sure that, in addressing disinformation that presents a threat to the homeland, our work does not infringe on free speech, does not infringe on civil rights, civil liberties," he continued. "It's not about speech, it's about the connectivity to violence. SNIP Not one word of...

All about stopping criticism of disastrous Joe Biden. Exhilarated after retaking both houses of Congress and the presidency, the Democrats are behaving as though they have carte blanche to destroy all vestiges of their political opposition by whatever means necessary. Progressive liberals want to completely eradicate anyone with an incompatible vision. “Democrats are literally beginning to sound like ISIS,” tweeted conservative commentator Candace Owens. “‘Recite the Quran or get your head chopped off, now!’ Absolutely psychopathic,” Owens said. Conservative positions are attacked as disinformation and the purveyors are canceled. If you suggest that global warming is a hoax, you are...

In his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas revealed a startling, heretofore secret, initiative within his agency to police the online speech of American citizens. Mayorkas, whose infamous abandonment of border security has rendered his official title an oxymoron, divulged (conveniently on the heels of Elon Musk’s planned liberation of Twitter from censorship and in time for deployment during the November 2022 mid-term elections) that DHS had initiated a “Disinformation Governance Board” to be chaired by left wing activist Nina Jankowicz. Jankowicz favors government regulation to rid conservative voices from media and endorses as fact two...

Democrat senators on Friday will weigh whether or not Elon Musk should testify about how he intends to reform Twitter. The senators’ deliberation comes after the Biden administration on Wednesday created a “Disinformation Governance Board” just two days after Musk’s inked the deal with Twitter. It appears Democrats are gearing up for a two-pronged attack on any changes Musk makes to the platform.

Insane as it is that the Department of Homeland Security has created a Disinformation Governance Board, it’s utter madness that the woman running it is Nina Jankowicz, who’s a veteran disinfo spreader. She embraced and promoted the bogus Clinton-campaign-created Trump-Russia dossier. And she waged war on The Post’s true and accurate reporting of Hunter Biden’s laptop. As our first laptop stories ran, The Associated Press reported: “Disinformation experts say there are multiple red flags that raise doubts about their authenticity, including questions about whether the laptop actually belongs to Hunter Biden, said Nina Jankowicz.” She also told the AP: “We...

On Wednesday, it was announced that the Department of Homeland Security would be launching a "Disinformation Governance Board," which will be headed by executive director Nina Jankowicz. Jankowicz herself though has been revealed to have spread disinformation on a number of topics. In screenshots of old tweets posted to Twitter, she was seen dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian misinformation, slamming free speech, and bashed Twitter’s decision to stop taking action against 2020 election posts. Jankowicz has on numerous occasions discredited the Hunter Biden laptop story, saying it's a "fairy tale" and disinformation. In one tweet, she said that...

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Thursday unveiled an international “Declaration for the Future of the Internet” with 50 other countries, slamming the policies of “authoritarian” governments — while endorsing efforts to curb online “disinformation” and “harassment.”

I want to send flowers and chocolates to the Twitter employee who permanently suspended The Babylon Bee. Maybe a car. Apparently, it was the inanity of that decision that incensed Elon Musk, whereupon he decided to purchase the entire platform to stop the censorship. Liberals, until five minutes ago: Elon Musk is a climate hero! Electric cars! Solar power! He loves Obama! Liberals, five minutes ago: He believes in free speech? Fascist! Loads of liberals are threatening to leave Twitter if Musk's deal goes through. To those who will miss The New York Times' Charles Blow, I understand. I will...