Free Republic

The Democrats’ Biggest Expert Accusing Republicans of Russian Trolling Was a Russian Troll They invented the Russian conspiracy, then they faked the crimes. December 31, 2018 Daniel Greenfield Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. When the Democrats and the media wanted to prove that Russian trolls were everywhere, and supporting Republicans, they turned to Jonathon Morgan and Renee DiResta. Morgan and DiResta had originally been part of Obama’s futile effort to fight ISIS on social media, before discovering a much more lucrative...

The 2016 presidential election wasn’t just a political battle, it was spiritual warfare. If you doubt it, recall that Satanists were among those who protested in Washington, DC, against Donald John Trump’s presidential inauguration on January 20, 2017. ... According to Wikipedia, with a networth in February 2018 of $1.54 billion, Mark Pincus, 52, is an Internet entrepreneur who was a founding investor of Twitter and Facebook. He is also the founder of Zynga, a mobile social gaming company; the startups Freeloader, Inc., and Support.com; incubator SuperLabs; and the co-founder of Win the Future (WTF), the “progressive left wing” insurgency...

Billionaire LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman put $100,000 into an experiment that adopted Russia-inspired political disinformation tactics on Facebook during last year's special Senate race in Alabama, The New York Times reports. Hoffman did not immediately comment on the report. One of his partners told the Times that Hoffman does not “micromanage” the political projects he funds, and may not have been aware of the project’s tactics. During the 2017 special Senate race in Alabama, the project’s organizers created a fake Facebook page designed to attract conservative Republican voters. Once they had built an audience, the page criticized Republican candidate Roy...

The names of the tech workers in this story have been changed.Ten thousand miles from Silicon Valley, in a room near the Black Sea, Yegor Karpenchekov dreams of money. At night, while the rest of Odessa sleeps and cocaine smugglers drift in and out of the port under cover of darkness, Yegor logs onto FaceTime and talks to a 70-year-old woman in San Francisco. Her name is Sally Faubion, and five months ago she recruited Yegor from the freelancer marketplace UpWork to code her apps. She believes "divine intervention" brought them together; for Yegor, it was likely $20 per hour...

Obama Wrapping Up California Fundraising Trip October 11 2014 DARLENE SUPERVILLE President Barack Obama on Saturday wrapped up a week that saw him raise campaign money for Democrats on both coasts. Obama attended a "round table" discussion at the home of Democratic donor and Zynga founder Mark Pincus and his wife, Ali, with about 25 supporters who paid up to $32,400 for the privilege, according to Democratic officials. It was Obama's fourth California fundraiser in three days and was closed to media coverage. This coming week brings more of the same for the president, including his long-anticipated, first appearance at...

After taking a heavy blow in December when the Chinese government effectively blocked its citizens’ from buying bitcoin with yuan, the price of the digital currency has started out 2014 on a fresh push upward. For that, bitcoin owners can partly thank online gaming company, ZyngaZNGA +1.73%, whose quiet announcement over the weekend that it is testing a system to allow players of certain online games to purchase items with bitcoin was portrayed as a vote of confidence in the digital currency. Coming after online retailer Overstock.com last month outlined plans to allow customers to transact in bitcoin later this...

Facebook has been dealt another blow after the gaming company responsible for much of its revenue announced that it was slashing its outlook for the year. Shares in the social network had slipped by 2.5 per cent to $21.41 by Friday afternoon after Zynga announced that its number of paying customers had fallen. Analysts have once again reduced their expectations for Facebook over fears that the company is overly dependent on the struggling maker of FarmVille and Mafia Wars. At one point Zynga's shares fell by 20 per cent to just $2.21 - a fraction of the $15-plus they were...

Woman shook infant because it interrupted her playing Farmville on FacebookA north Florida mother has pleaded guilty to shaking her baby to death after the boy's crying interrupted her game on Facebook. Alexandra V. Tobias pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on Wednesday and remains jailed. The Florida Times-Union reports that she told investigators she was angered because the boy was crying while she was playing the game FarmVille. The paper also reports that she told investigators she shook the boy, smoked a cigarette to compose herself and then shook him again. She will be sentenced in December. State guidelines call...

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that 10 popular Facebook applications have been transmitting users' personal identifying information to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies. The newspaper said today that the breach also includes users who set all their information to be completely private. And in some cases, it says, the apps provided access to friends' names.

Virtual meat hooks, flame throwers, and propane bombs are OK, but attack dogs are not: social-gaming behemoth Zynga has removed pit bulls from its roster of virtual weaponry in the Mafia Wars game after a complaint last month on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. PETA's reasoning is that promoting a domestic animal as a weapon will only encourage misunderstanding and abuse of pit bulls, which have been routinely used in illegal dog-fighting activities and are often subject to horrific conditions as their owners attempt to toughen them up. The breed of dog has gotten bad press...