facebook

The Saudi Arabian government has sentenced seven men to prison on charges they used Facebook to incite protests and encourage illegal gathering, according to Human Rights Watch. Their sentences range from five to 10 years.

"Sending people off to years in prison for peaceful Facebook posts sends a strong message that there's no safe way to speak out in Saudi Arabia, even on online social networks," Human Rights Watch deputy Middle East director Joe Stork said in a statement.

The seven men were originally arrested in September 2011 and have been in jail ever since. When they … Read more

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have emerged as two of the more steadfast advocates for the digital currency Bitcoin.

What is the Winklevoss' interest with the cryptic digital currency that is under scrutiny by governments around the world? Apparently, money.

The twins are best known for suing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg with claims that he stole the idea of the social network from them. But, they've now moved on to new endeavors. The Winklevoss twins filed a trust registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.

The "Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust" aims to give commodity buyers more … Read more

You know you have a hidden inbox on Facebook, right? The "other" message folder is reserved for those people who message you and aren't one of your Facebook friends.

There's a chance some messages from nonfriends will go to your main inbox (depending on your settings), but most of the time these messages make their way to your other messages, without you ever being notified of a waiting message. Unless the sender decides to pay $1 to guarantee the message ends up in your main folder.

Up until recently, the only way to access your other … Read more

Long forgotten 8-year-old social network Bebo, which AOL bought for $850 million in 2008, is escaping near death once again.

Original Bebo co-founder Michael Birch said in a tweet Monday that he has purchased the property from owner Criterion Capital Partners (CCP) for $1 million with plans to reinvent the site. AOL sold Bebo to CCP three years ago for reportedly less than $10 million.

We just bought Bebo back for $1m. Can we actually re-invent it? Who knows, but it will be fun trying...

The social property never got close to accumulating a … Read more

Honestly, that free speech thing can be tiresome.

People end up endlessly expressing themselves and, every second of the day, someone's going to get hurt. Online, that is.

It's too easy to take out your iPhone and type "you liberal pig Euro a***ole," or some other type of spontaneous flattery.

The island of Grenada has decided that it has had enough. Its lawmakers wish to designate the country a decorous online enclave in the midst of the vile, open-mouthed free-for-all that is the Web.

So they have passed a law that makes it a criminal … Read more

Opponents of Facebook's settlement of a lawsuit involving "Sponsored Stories" -- an ad feature that displays images of users of the social network -- spent Friday morning in a San Francisco court trying to convince a federal judge that the settlement's terms fail to protect the privacy of minors.

Facebook, of course, believes otherwise and if users who are objecting to the settlement don't agree, they should just leave the class-action lawsuit, according to Michael Rhodes, the attorney hired by the social network to handle the case.

"If it's such a terrible action, … Read more

Go ahead, pour yourself a cold frosty glass full of Twitter. Mmm, that's good stuff. Scottish craft brewery BrewDog turned over the reins of its latest creation to fans on Twitter and Facebook. The resulting brew, #MashTag, came about after several rounds of voting on the various elements that make it up, from the type of brew to the label design.

Over the course of several days, BrewDog offered up three options at a time to a vote. For example, the "#MashTag" name won out over its competition of "CrewDog" and "Crowd Control." Fans also chose to make it an American Brown Ale, rather than an Imperial or Session Brown Ale.… Read more

When is a joke not a joke? When the police say so.

This seems to be the indication in the case of Justin Carter -- 18 years old at the time of the alleged incident -- who has reportedly been sitting in a Texas jail since March.

It all began after a game a "League of Legends." An argument is said to have spilled over to Facebook.

During this argument, Carter was allegedly accused by another gamer of being insane. Gamers say those kinds of things.

Carter's father Jack told KVUE-TV that his son replied: "Oh … Read more

Secret documents describing the National Security Agency's surveillance apparatus have highlighted vulnerabilities in outdated Web encryption used by Facebook and a handful of other U.S. companies.

Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden confirm that the NSA taps into fiber optic cables "upstream" from Internet companies and vacuums up e-mail and other data that "flows past" -- a security vulnerability that "https" Web encryption is intended to guard against.

But Facebook and a few other companies still rely on an encryption technique viewed as many years out of date, which cryptographers … Read more