Free Republic

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Neighbors are tattling on neighbors for wasting water and some are taking their drought shaming to social media. If you’ve ever had the feeling you’re being watched while you water your lawn, there’s a good chance you are during this historic drought. In Sacramento, water wasters can face fines, and the enforcer may be someone who lives right next door. Terrance Davis with the city department of utilities says he’s seeing a trend of drought shaming. “Our water use complaint calls have gone up exponentially from the last 2 years,” he said. Karen Halbo lives in River...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is protecting consumer rights in a bold new way–by policing companies’ Facebook pages.Zarbee’s Naturals, a producer of “safe and effective natural [cough] remedies” for children, was sent a warning letter by the FDA for liking comments on its Facebook page implying that its products “are intended for use as drugs.”Zarbee’s products were designed specifically for children too young for FDA-approved medications and have not been reviewed by the FDA. Happy customers posted their approval on the company’s Facebook page, saying things like “Love Zarbee’s this is the only medicine we use for our 2...

Full Title" "Facebook: Yeah, we removed Kendall Jones’ hunting pics, but feel free to visit the ‘Kill Kendall Jones’ page" Facebook has standards. And 19-year-old Kendall Jones’ hunting photos violate those standards, a spokesperson for the social network told Mashable. Specifically, the pictures were deemed to break a rule about “graphic images shared for sadistic effect or to celebrate or glorify violence,” as outlined in this page on Facebook Community Standards. “We remove reported content that promotes poaching of endangered species, the sale of animals for organized fight or content that includes extreme acts of animal abuse,” a Facebook spokesperson...

NORFOLK Jury selection began this morning in the federal trial of a Virginia Beach man accused of offering women money to produce child pornography for him. Robert H. Scott Jr., who also went by Mike Pyro, faces 28 counts of production, distribution and receipt of child pornography and related charges. Three women who are expected to testify previously admitted that they took sexually explicit videos of very young children and sent them to Scott by phone and email, according to court filings. One victim was 1 year old. Others were 2, 3, and 5. Scott met the women on Facebook...

A Black pro-life organization has had three Facebook images flagged as “graphic violence!”One of those images depicts a father loving his unborn child: LifeNews blogger Ryan Bomberger is an Emmy® Award-winning Creative Professional who founded The Radiance Foundation (TRF), a life-affirming 501(c)(3), along with his wife, Bethany. Working in conjunction with noted national civil rights leaders like Dr. Alveda King (niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.), Ryan is involved in national efforts to expose and defund Planned Parenthood and document how abortion is destroying the Black community. Sometimes Ryan’s thoroughly researched and pointed remarks rile establishment folk, like the...

... The Professor of Communication and Information Science, Jeffrey Hancock, who Mr. Rosen mentions above, has a history of working with the U.S. military, specifically the Minerva Institute. ... A US Department of Defense (DoD) research program is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies. The multi-million dollar program is designed to develop immediate and long-term “warfighter-relevant insights” for senior officials and decision makers in “the defense policy community,” and to inform policy implemented by “combatant commands.” Launched in 2008 – the...

My colleague Kashmir Hill just reported that Facebook conducted their news feed manipulation four months before the term “research” was added to their data use policy, she writes: However, we were all relying on what Facebook’s data policy says now. In January 2012, the policy did not say anything about users potentially being guinea pigs made to have a crappy day for science, nor that “research” is something that might happen on the platform. Four months after this study happened, in May 2012, Facebook made changes to its data use policy, and that’s when it introduced this line about how...

EPIC Challenges Facebook's Manipulation of Users, Files FTC Complaint EPIC has filed a formal complaint to the Federal Trade Commission concerning Facebook's manipulation of users' News Feeds for psychological research. "The company purposefully messed with people's minds," states the EPIC complaint. EPIC has charged that the study violates a privacy consent order and is a deceptive trade practice. In 2012, Facebook subjected 700,000 users to an "emotional" test with the manipulation of News Feeds. Facebook did not get users' permission to conduct this study or notify users that their data would be disclosed to researchers. In the complaint, EPIC explained...

Two years ago, on the morning of the 2012 election in the United States, I got an email with an urgent subject line: "You should write the story of how Facebook blew an opportunity to turn out 300k voters." The sender, a veteran progressive online activist who would prefer to remain anonymous, was upset for good reason. The election was bound to be close, and as of 10am that morning he hadn't yet seen an "I'm Voting" button on his Facebook page, nor had another colleague of his. Nor was one on my own Facebook page. Given that when Facebook...

YUKON, Okla. - A vigilant mother helps authorities nab an alleged internet predator, just hours after she discovered her teenage son’s conversations with the man on Facebook. The Canadian County Sheriff’s Office says Michael Goddard, 23, of Oklahoma City, pretended to be a teenage girl on Facebook to lure in a 14-year-old Yukon boy and admitted to possibly hundreds of other victims. He was arrested Friday night. Goddard allegedly used the name “Nicole Tinner” and used a fake photo to flirt with hundreds of juvenile boys on Facebook.

Joe Geoghagan is a 31 year old veteran and he’s begging the VA not to let him starve to death. Let me repeat that. Joe Geoghagan is a 31 year old veteran and he’s BEGGING the VA not to let him starve to death. Joe first came to my attention because he wrote the Right Wing News Facebook page asking for help. Imagine that: a veteran who did three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan reduced to writing the owner of a Facebook page because he doesn’t know where else to turn to get basic medical attention. After doing some basic...

Website publishes details of experiment in which users can be made to feel better or worse through 'emotional contagion' It already knows whether you are single or dating, the first school you went to and whether you like Justin Bieber or loathe David Cameron. But now Facebook, the world's biggest social networking site, is facing a storm of protest after it revealed it has discovered how to systematically control users' emotions making them feel happier or more sad at the stroke of a few computer keys. The Californian internet giant has published details of a massive experiment in which it...

Over 600,000 Facebook users have taken part in a psychological experiment organized by the social media company, without their knowledge. Facebook altered the tone of the users’ news feed to highlight either positive or negative posts from their friends, which were seen on their news feed. They then monitored the users’ response, to see whether their friends’ attitude had an impact on their own. “The results show emotional contagion,” wrote a team of Facebook scientists, in a paper published by the PNAS journal—Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists of the United States. …

by Jason DeWitt | Top Right NewsOne thing we love about Mike Rowe, the former “Dirty Jobs” TV host and current head of Mike Rowe Works, is that he always speaks his mind. Monday, he did so once again — and took on a lawyer in doing so.Mike hit his local liquor store last week and noticed a picture near the front of the shop: a man in a white shirt that the store was identifying as a shoplifter. “Good for you,” Rowe says he told the owner, as he retold the story on a Facebook post: “I wish every store in the country did...

A Minnesota man is in jail because he logged on to Facebook. Police say 26-year-old Nicholas Wig checked his profile from a home he broke into, and then he didn’t log off. It happened June 19 in South St. Paul.

The wife of a Northern California man whose mug shot for an arrest on felony weapons charges went viral on social media due to his widely admired looks is upset that people are taking her husband's arrest as a joke, a woman who says she is a friend of the couple told CBS Sacramento. "She's furious. Her man is in there and people are taking it as a joke, thinking it's funny talking about his looks, saying all kinds of crazy things," friend Simone Johnson told the station. Jeremy Meeks, 30, an ex-con, was arrested last Wednesday, June 18 on...

As a very young man, your humble author thought to experiment around with psychedelic drugs. The utter lack of connection to reality was very profound, and very scary. However, when the drugs wore off, reality returned. These days, American reality is so bizarre as to be similar to the psychedelic unreality experienced so many decades ago. In many ways, it is very similar to Alice in Wonderland, and her journey down the rabbit hole. "Curiouser and curiouser," we observe, as America spirals into a state of being in full flight from reality. The example I am focusing on, today, is...

So you're a professional, right? Perhaps you're a CEO, CTO, product manager or co-founder of a startup? Maybe you're a senior developer and you volunteer on weekends teaching disadvantaged kids how to code? Maybe you're a stockbroker; an accountant? An angel investor on weekends? You've been in the trenches. People come to you for advice, and you give it. Good, solid advice. Advice people could make some money on, if they'd just pay attention. Advice people could take to heart. Maybe change someone's life for the better. You should be sharing your thoughts to the world on Facebook.

Facebook promptly shut down a cluster of pages that peddled T-Shirts, hoodies and action figures touting the murderous terror organization ISIS after FoxNews.com contacted the social media giant to ask why they had not been flagged.

Air Force Staff Sergeant Rowan Coash was on his way to Texas to report for duty when his car broke down unexpectedly. More than 1,000 miles from his destination, he was left on the highway outskirts of Price, Utah. While waiting for a tow truck, he called his friend Erica to tell her about his setback. Erica chose to take action by reaching out to the Facebook community. Anybody out there in Facebook Land near Price, UT and willing to help a soldier? Hundreds of people shared Erica’s post; and Leslie Holmes, a “Good Samaritan” in Price, saw the post and helped...