Free Republic

If you can't post a new status on Facebook, it's not you. Facebook and Facebook-owned photo app Instagram are down for some users on Wednesday. The social networks have been having issues since around 9 a.m. PT, according to tracking site Down Detecter. Some users have posted on Twitter that they're seeing a message saying Facebook is "down for maintenance." Other users trying to post status updates on Facebook, including CNET staff, got error messages saying "something went wrong." Facebook confirmed the outages. "We're aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps," a Facebook...

New York entrepreneur and Democratic 2020 candidate Andrew Yang wants to implement a system in which a government-run mobile app rewards Americans with “digital social credits” (DSCs) for good behavior. Americans would receive DSCs under Yang’s system for things such as “participating in a town fair,” “fixing a neighbor’s appliance” or “tutoring a student,” his presidential campaign website explains. “As individuals rack up DSCs, they would have both a permanent balance they’ve earned over their lifetime and a current balance. They could cash the points in for experiences, purchases with participating vendors, support for causes, and transfer points to others...

Breaking: @joyent, Gab’s new hosting provider, has just pulled our hosting service. They have given us until 9am on Monday to find a solution. Gab will likely be down for weeks because of this. Working on solutions. We will never give up on defending free speech for all people.

Social networking giant Facebook Inc. clarified that hackers accessed personal information of accounts of almost 30 million users. Earlier, Facebook had said that a security breach had affected the accounts of as many as 50 million people. In a statement, Facebook said that hackers accessed the name, contact details and other information of the accounts of 14 million people. It added that hackers also stole information in regard to name and contact details of the accounts of another 15 million people. This also included username, gender, locale/language, relationship status, religion, hometown, self-reported current city, birthdate, device types used to access...

Once a lofty concept, the term social justice has been hijacked and exploited by the political left to radically transform America and bully Americans into forfeiting many basic rights in deference to the left’s agenda. Intoning social justice has proven to be a sure-proof formula for silencing average Americans, thereby providing the left with endless societal victories. After all, who wants to be accused of standing in the way of social justice? Most of what passes today for social justice is actually the Marxist/Marcuse/Gramsci leftist playbook wrapped in appealing religious phraseology and platitudes, a framework for never-ceasing revolution and rebellion....

It seems that a smart lawyer could create a class action lawsuit to sue Facebook, Twitter, and maybe others for shadow banning and otherwise interfering with conservative users of the sites. For example, while I don't care for Milo's lifestyle, I liked following him on Twitter. His posts generated traffic to the site. I own some Twitter stock and I want more traffic on the site. By banning him there is less traffic on the site. The likelihood of "conservative" social media sites (other than the best one, FREEREPUBLIC.COM) being created is slim. How can the existing social media sites...

Teens are snorting condoms for the latest viral social media challenge, health officials warn. The 'Condom Challenge' involves inhaling an unwrapped condom through one's nostril and pulling it out of the throat through the mouth. The challenge has been around for several years but is reportedly making a comeback on the heels of the Tide Pod Challenge that made headlines earlier this year. Experts warn that snorting condoms not only poses a serious choking risk but could also lead to infection.

Can a low-tech phone replace a smartphone for less-essential tasks and times – and peace of mind? ‘$85 later I was up and running … and then my excitement was stopped cold, with a stern smack back to 2003.’ Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian My wife and I have two young children. On a good night, we’re lucky to get a couple of hours together. More often than not, you’ll find us on the couch, in silence, each staring into a phone. And yet, one night not so long ago, a handful of my enslaved brain cells sparked unexpectedly...

Hundreds of millions of Facebook users are likely to have had their private information harvested by companies that exploited the same terms as the firm that collected data and passed it on to Cambridge Analytica, according to a new whistleblower. Sandy Parakilas, the platform operations manager at Facebook responsible for policing data breaches by third-party software developers between 2011 and 2012, told the Guardian he warned senior executives at the company that its lax approach to data protection risked a major breach.

Social justice warriors believe in an extreme left-wing ideology that combines feminism, progressivism, and political correctness into a totalitarian system that attempts to censor speech and promote fringe lifestyles while actively discriminating against men, particularly white men. They are the internet activist arm of Western progressivism that acts as a vigilante group to ensure compliance and homogeny of far left thought.The true definition of SJW is up for debate, but most generally it has become a catch-all term that describes feminists and liberals who actively try to solve the perceived social injustices of modern society by organizing in online...

Declaring your relationship on Facebook used to be enough to solidify your online bond with a partner. Not anymore. Now, couples are forced to navigate the murky waters of Twitter faves, Snapchat streaks, twinstagramming, subgramming, going Instagram official, and more. While it’s long been expected that good romantic partners will dutifully like and comment on their other half’s best selfies, it’s no longer enough to simply throw digital hearts on your partner’s Instagram posts. You must also Story Watch.

Another former Facebook executive has spoken out about the harm the social network is doing to civil society around the world. Chamath Palihapitiya, who joined Facebook in 2007 and became its vice president for user growth, said he feels “tremendous guilt” about the company he helped make. “I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works,” he told an audience at Stanford Graduate School of Business, before recommending people take a “hard break” from social media. Palihapitiya’s criticisms were aimed not only at Facebook, but the wider online ecosystem. “The short-term, dopamine-driven...

This is the moment an internet star known as 'China's first rooftopper' fell to his death from the top of a 62-storey skyscraper. Wu Yongning, 26, was doing pull-ups at the top of the Huayuan International Centre in Changsha, the capital of Huan Province, when he lost his grip and fell.

More than 100 artists and academics call on the city of New York to censor public art memorializing figures they dislike. The petition sent to the Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers cited the Big Apple’s professed “tolerance and equity” in justifying the censorship. The signatories include members of the faculty of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, as well as CUNY, Barnard, NYU, and other schools located in the city. The statues the group seeks to remove include ones of Christopher Columbus and Theodore Roosevelt.

What Are My Healthcare Rights? What are my rights in health insurance?The Affordable Care Act (or “Obamacare”) prohibits most health insurers from discriminating based on gender identity and transgender status. Insurance companies that receive federal funding or that have one or more plans on a federal or state Marketplace have to comply with this requirement. That includes all major insurance companies and the majority of smaller insurance companies, but some small health insurance companies may not be covered.Here are some policies or practices that would be illegal under the ACA: Excluding transition-related care from coverage: Insurance companies can’t have automatic or...

So my daughter came home from college a few weeks back saying they're teaching "White privilege, social justice, inequality and income inequality" at her college....a Christian college. There's a white privilege survey that she did, discussions on inequality, unfair advantages, etc--- I was appalled as was my daughter. However, she stood up in class calling out these lies and the teacher let her speak at the end to make her point but ran out of time. The "professor" said she could continue the next day---which she did, but there was a student that was brought into that particular class that's...

In a social-media workshop with staff members on Friday, Sudeep Reddy, a managing editor at Politico, said that the organization discards “dozens” of job applications and referrals over inappropriate, partisan or puerile tweets. “We are deliberately nonpartisan in the kind of journalism that we pursue,” Reddy told the Erik Wemple Blog after the meeting. Politico vets “hundreds” of possible hires per week, said Reddy. “We have found on Twitter feeds revealing insight into how people write.”

Director of public prosecutions announces plans for more prosecutions and stiffer sentences for online abusers Prosecutors will be ordered to treat online hate crime as seriously as offences carried out face to face in plans announced by the director of public prosecutions. Alison Saunders said the Crown Prosecution Service will seek stiffer penalties for abuse on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms. Saunders says the crackdown is needed because online abuse can lead to the sort of extremist hate seen in Charlottesville in the United States last weekend, which left one person dead. Writing in the Guardian, Saunders said:...

Instagram is the most detrimental social media platform to young people's mental health, according to new research out of the U.K. Researchers from the Royal Society for Public Health in conjunction with the Young Health Movement published the report entitled #StatusOfMind, which looks at the positive and negative effects of social media on young people's health and well-being.

The President will be meeting Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull this evening as part of the commemorating of the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Coral Sea during WWII.