No, they don't mean well. And it starts with the complete loss of control over content. One of the reasons Arator was appropriately shitcanned was abusing the privilege of originating content.
Currently, 2 people flood the site with MSMeowage or just straight sewage, and it is purposefully meant to drive off the Two-Decades Freeper Crew, and also intentionally driven to reduce FreeRepublic's utility as a vanguard of consitutional conservatism.
These people simply need to banned from originating content, period.
Meanwhile, their flood-the-FreeRepublic-zone-and-take-us-down has led to a horribly stagnant Breaking News sidebar, where one can peruse 10-day old headlines ("No charges for deputies in Andrew Brown Jr. shooting, district attorney says"), and at one point a month ago featured the last three "Sunday Morning Talk Show" threads -- nearly a month's worth (I like those threads btw, but none but the most-recent Sunday should ever be in "Breaking News").
Why? Because the powers that be rightfully don't want to be bothered by the stupid petty conflicts that arise from these same malicious posters who then punch Abuse and bitch endlessly about their garbage MSM article being removed, because they simply weren't "first" to post.
I got banned here in 2005 by howlin and sinkspur etc....for opposing amnesty day after Travis mcgee got zotted
Came back after the mad Ivan exodus to wideawakes where howlin went and devoured that site too including poor Ivan
Yes I know ....howlin...RIP
FREE REPUBLIC works in mysterious ways..
That explains the “breaking news” being weeks old garbage. I was wondering what the heck is going on. I would say just get rid of the sidebar news links then.