Free Republic

Media figures are treating two new porn bans as complete opposites. But they should be celebrating both – for the same reason.On Dec. 3, Tumblr declared that it would ban porn and other adult content beginning Dec. 17. The decision closely followed headlines announcing Starbucks will block pornography and illegal content from its Wi-Fi starting in 2019. But while media commentators applauded the coffee chain, many of them condemned the blogging platform. They’re wrong.To begin with, Tumblr and Starbucks came to their conclusions under different circumstances. Tumblr had faced consequences for child pornography leaking onto its site, reported CBS News,...

Over the years, we at DuckDuckGo have often heard a flawed counter-argument to online privacy: “Why should I care? I have nothing to hide.”As Internet privacy has become more mainstream, this argument is rightfully fading away. However, it’s still floating around and so we wanted to take a moment to explain three key reasons why it's flawed.1) Privacy isn’t about hiding information; privacy is about protecting information, and surely you have information that you’d like to protect.Do you close the door when you go to the bathroom? Would you give your bank account information to anyone? Do you want all...

To anyone who insists that the left-leaning, anti-Trump bias reflected in the latest leak of internal Google communications has no bearing on the way the tech giant builds or operates its products, there is hard evidence that proves otherwise, contends a Harvard-trained researcher who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Robert Epstein – who was famed behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner’s last Ph.D. student at Harvard – told WND in an interview that the revelation Friday of a Google engineer’s vow in an email to “reverse things” politically “in four years” confirms his extensive, peer-reviewed research over the past half decade....

Google employees debated whether to bury The Daily Caller and other conservative media outlets in the company’s search function as a response to President Donald Trump’s election “Let’s make sure that we reverse things in four years,” one engineer wrote in a thread that included a Google vice president Google employees similarly sought to manipulate search results to combat Trump’s travel ban Google employees debated whether to bury conservative media outlets in the company’s search function as a response to President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, internal Google communications obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation reveal. The Daily Caller...

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday unsealed charges against eight individuals in an alleged widespread digital advertising fraud that reportedly used botnets to give the appearance of billions of humans looking at online ads. https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/418575-doj-unseals-charges-in-alleged-massive-online-ad-fraud

NEW YORK — A state lawmaker is proposing a change to New York’s gun laws to allow authorities to search social media for potential red flags before approving a handgun license. State Senator Kevin Parker’s bill would mandate that applicants provide investigators with their Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram passwords and access to their Google, Yahoo and Bing searches. The Brooklyn Democrat wants investigators to look at the last three years of an applicant’s social media postings and a year of their search histories for “any good cause for the denial of a license,” such as racial slurs, threats of...

The Chinese are making doubly sure public displays of displeasure with their totalitarian regime such as occurred in Tiananmen Square in 1989 will never be repeated. They are instituting a technological surveillance program so pervasive that when completed -- quite soon, it seems -- it will enforce conformity throughout their giant country on a scale that would stupefy Orwell and Huxley. China’s plan to judge each of its 1.3 billion people based on their social behavior is moving a step closer to reality, with Beijing set to adopt a lifelong points program by 2021 that assigns personalized ratings for each...

lleged Nazi collaborator George Soros is best understood by playing him backward. His organizations mean the exact opposite of their names. The Democracy Alliance is a plot to undermine democracy by a handful of wealthy oligarchs and special interests. His Open Society's goal is a closed society. Social media makes it too easy to have an open society. As opposed to a consolidated corporate media. So George Soros allegedly plotted to regulate Facebook until it was as controlled as the media. His war on Facebook, run by astroturfed activists is bearing fruit, with the backing of the media. But Soros...

What does it take to friend a U.S. senator? If you’re Facebook, all you need is about $50,000 in donations – and a cushy job for the politician’s daughter. Facebook employees, including some at the top of its corporate pyramid, have helped fill Schumer’s campaign coffers – and he’s returned the favor by carrying water for the social media giant in Congress, according to a recent report. And Alison Schumer, the senator’s youngest of two daughters, works as a Facebook product marketing manager – which pays an average of $160,000, according to Glassdoor.com. “It sure looks hinky,” political strategist Susan...

How to go “Dark” on the Internet How to Commit Internet Suicide and Disappear from the Web Forever Sick of horribly embarrassing things showing up when potential employers Google your name? Tired of everyone knowing you live in a garden level dungeon apartment? Perhaps you just don’t like the fact the internet makes you easy to find. Thankfully, it’s not that hard to delete yourself entirely. Here’s how to do it.For mildly famous (or infamous) individuals, disappearing is essentially impossible, but for the average person it’s surprisingly easy. It just depends on much info is already out there.Step 1: Delete Your...

Facebook investors have called on the company’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to step down as chairman, following reports that the company hired a public relations firm to smear its critics by drawing links to George Soros. The attack on Mr Zuckerberg is set to complicate the daunting challenge facing Sir Nick Clegg, Facebook's new global head of policy and communications, who joined last month and has been asked to conduct a review of Facebook's use of lobbying firms. Jonas Kron, a senior vice president at Trillium Asset Management, a US investor which owns an £8.5m stake in Facebook, last night...

Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline (D) sharply criticized tech giant Facebook on Twitter on Wednesday evening, arguing that the social media company can't be trusted any longer to regulate itself. In a series of tweets, the lawmaker ripped into Facebook executives over a New York Times report detailing how the company used a Republican opposition research firm to link public detractors of the company to billionaire Democratic donor George Soros amid criticism of Facebook for its use by Russian operatives to influence Americans during the 2016 election. The report was based mainly on anonymous, insider accounts. "We’ve known for some...

People's connections in the US to Google – including its cloud, YouTube, and other websites – were suddenly rerouted through Russia and into China in a textbook Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) hijacking attack. That means folks in Texas, California, Ohio, and so on, firing up their browsers and software and connecting to Google and its services were instead meandering through systems in Russia and China, and not reaching servers belonging to the Silicon Valley giant. Netizens outside of America may also have been affected. The Chocolate Factory confirmed that for a period on Monday afternoon, from 1312 to 1435 Pacific...

WARNING - DISTRESSING CONTENT: The men were dragged out of a jail cell and killed as hundreds cheered Two innocent men were dragged out of a jail cell and burned alive by a cheering mob as rumours of child abductors spread rapidly on WhatsApp. The message talked of a "plague of child kidnappers" and three children, aged four, eight and 14, had been found murdered. It claimed the criminals were involved in organ trafficking, as the children were found with their abdomens sliced open and their organs removed. But the two men - an uncle and his nephew - who...

Facebook's website has crashed for users around the globe. Users trying to access the site are being shown a message saying 'Sorry, something went wrong. 'We're working on it and we'll get it fixed as soon as we can.'

Amazon is hiring its own fleet of full-time drivers to deliver packages to Prime customers. Amazon will manage these drivers directly, meaning the company will set their wages, provide them delivery vehicles, and schedule their routes. Amazon has previously relied on delivery services provided by UPS, FedEx, and the US Postal Service, as well as contractors employed through its Flex delivery program and third-party courier companies it calls delivery service partners. At a recent Amazon training for the new program, drivers were told the company "didn't want people peeing in bottles," a source told Business Insider. Amazon is launching a...

Despite all the convenience and quality of Google's sprawling ecosystem, some users are fed up with the fishy privacy policies the company has recently Since Google owns some of the best and most-used apps, websites, and internet services, making a clean break is difficult -- but not impossible. We're going to take a look at how to leave the most popular Google services behind, and how to keep Google from tracking your data. We've also spent serious time researching and testing great alternatives to Google's offerings, so you can leave the Big G without having to buy new devices or...

Parliamentary bodies from five countries are now calling on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify about the problem of fake news on Facebook. And Zuckerberg is saying no to all of them. The concept of an international grand committee is unprecedented, but it underscores the concern over the effect of disinformation on free elections. Given Facebook’s role in the spread of fake news during the 2016 U.S. elections, many nations have pressured the company to discuss the steps it is taking to prevent future spreads.

The legal fight over a 2016 lower court ruling upholding Obama-era net neutrality regulations aimed at ensuring a free and open internet - rules that have since been repealed by President Donald Trump’s administration - came to a formal end on Monday, with the U.S. Supreme Court declining to take up the matter. The Trump administration and internet service providers had asked to justices to wipe away the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that had temporarily preserved the net neutrality regulations championed by Democratic former President Barack Obama. But the justices refused...

The domain Gab.com has landed at Epik. This post will summarize why Epik welcomed Gab.com. It will also address why I believe the operators of the site have the right to be online. De-Platforming is Digital Censorship. Blacklisting is Digital Shunning. For those not familiar with the case, Gab.com’s ability to operate was abruptly terminated by Godaddy, among other vendors, who deemed Gab to have violated their terms of service. This de-platforming of Gab generated much discussion in the mainstream technology press. It also prompted a lively discussion in the professional domain name community, including at the popular discussion board...