But that's exactly the argument that was made this week by attorneys in Virginia federal appeals court, where judges are set to revisit the issue of whether or not a Facebook like qualifies as protected speech.

The three-judge panel heard oral arguments and is poised to deliver a ruling on the case of six former employees of the Hampton, Va., sheriff's department who say they were fired for liking their boss's political rival on Facebook during a 2009 campaign. Along with attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union and Facebook itself, the fired employees' lawyers are attempting to reverse a lower court ruling that argued Facebook likes are not substantive enough to be protected by the First Amendment.

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It looks like one of Reddit's most controversial subgroups is being targeted by the site administrators.

On Friday, ChuckSpears, one of the moderators of r/n***ers, alerted members of the white supremacist subreddit that administrators were systematically targeting and shadowbanning them, a practice in which an account is still active on the site but any submission or comments remain invisible to other users.

According to screengrabs of conversations between the subreddit's top moderator and Reddit employees, the bans were the consequence of r/n***ers subscribers acting as a "downvote brigade," systematically going to another subreddit whose views they disagree with—most likelyr/shitRedditsays and  r/subredditdrama—and downvoting their submissions and comments.

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Scouring the depths of YouTube, we’ve found 10 educational film reels from the 1940s and 1950s. These videos teach viewers everything from table manners and sportsmanship to even the benefits of popularity.

Granted, the films attempt to accomplish these lessons using horrible actors, unbelievable dialogue, and terribly outdated social constructs. But that’s a small price to pay, however, for the skill of being able to write a much better "social letter."

1) How to choose a date

Forget browsing OKCupid or stalking Facebook relationship statuses. Learn how to ask a girl out over the phone, with proper punctuality and by "leaving your boyfriend with enough money so he will ask you out again."

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Called the Unlocking Technology Act, it has a simple goal: to fix that silly section of U.S. law that says it's actually a copyright violation to use your cellphone for a purpose besides what's intended by its manufacturers.

And it's backed by an Internet all-star team in the House. The bill was written by Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), known for asking Reddit for help in creating "Aaron's Law," in honor of the site's late cofounder, Aaron Swartz. It's also sponsored by two signers of the Declaration of Internet Freedom,Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.), as well as Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).

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Why? Because in addition to being one of the most critically acclaimed writers of science fiction, Card, or OSC, as he's dubbed in sci-fi circles, is also one of the most openly bigoted. Card is the great-great-grandson of Mormon icon Brigham Young, and his politics are deeply linked to his lifelong Mormonism. Card has been openly railing against what he calls "the homosexual agenda" for decades.

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Only Mark Zuckerberg could throw a billion-dollar deal on ice to sit down with his friends and watch Game of Thrones.

We're at least a few years away from calling the 28-year-old Facebook CEO an eccentric billionaire (because a) he's not old; and b) he hasn't thrown stacks of benjamins from a hot air balloon just yet), but this is just one of the few details about the Facebook-Instagram deal that shook up the Web last year.

Writing for Vanity Fair, Kara Swisher has a comprehensive look at how the deal went down. Instagram's cofounders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger opted to sell to Facebook—rather than take a competing offer from Twitter—because, as Systrom told Krieger, “I really like Mark, and I really like his company. And I really like what Facebook is trying to achieve.”

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A high schooler outside of Boston has been arrested for announcing plans on Facebook that could be interpreted as trying to one-up the devastation of the Boston Marathon bombings.

Cameron Dambrosio, 18, of Methuen, Mass.—30 miles from Boston—is being held on $1 million bail.

As reported by the Eagle-Tribune, Methuen Police Chief Joseph Solomon said Dambrosio posted “(Expletive) the Boston bombing, wait til you see what I do. I’m going to be famous," to Facebook.

"He’s telling people to shut up and in order to get some props he’ll have to go kill somebody. He says he’ll go insane and make the news,” Solomon added. “And he said people shouldn’t cry when they see what he does because they have it coming.”

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Tsarnaev apparently used the account, @jmaister1, to like a photo of a deceased Chechen warlord. He also liked photos that used hashtags such as #FreeChechenia, #Jihad, #Jannah, #ALLAH, #Jesus, and #God.

While the account is gone, CNN was able to find some of the content posted to it using archiving tools like Google's Web cache.

In its Terms of Service, Instagram says that if subpoenaed, it will turn over users' information. However, it notes that the information might only be stored for a short time due to the volume of content that floods the service.

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The regulatory environment in Canada, however, is rather more strict, as several Bitcoin entrepreneurs have found out.

Bitcoin drew international attention through Cyprus’s banking emergency, its inclusion in the American financial regulatory framework, and increasing press coverage. The currency recently spiked to as high as $266 before crashing to a low of about $50, then rebounding to a post-crash high of $162.

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That's what the family of Carolee Sadie Ashby is finding out after her 1968 hit-and-run death was solved with the help of a Facebook post. Now, the family of the 4-year-old girl in upstate New York is grieving—online and off-—as they come to grips with the fact that nothing will be done to punish the drunk driver responsible for the death.

On Wednesday, the Fulton Police Department announced that Douglas Parkhurst, 62, of Oswego was the person who struck and killed Carolee on Halloween night nearly half a century ago. The Associated Press reported that Carolee was walking with her sister and cousin after going to the store to buy candles when Parkhurst failed to stop for the children at an intersection. Parkhurst had been drinking that night and was questioned by police but denied ever seeing the girl or hitting her. The case went unsolved for years, but police continued to track down leads.

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The former U.S. president has joined Twitter, though opted not to adopt the handle Colbert picked out for him two weeks ago. Colbert registered @PrezBillyJeff for Clinton and sent a tweet Clinton dictated to him.

That handle was a little too informal for Clinton, it seems, who eventually switched the handle to plain ol' @BillClinton and started tweeting Wednesday.

The account was quickly verified, and Clinton already has more than 288,000 followers. In his first few tweets, Clinton told Colbert he was ready to start his "Twitter lessons."

Colbert seemed pleased that Clinton decided to take the plunge, though appeared dismayed that the former president failed to turn up to his Game of Thrones party.

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Could the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act unintentionally create a safe haven for corporate hacking?

Amidst all the clamour over what CIPSA means for civil liberties, with its emphasis on allowing tech companies and the government to more easily share information about Web users, there are cries of hypocrisy about those who'd be exempted from the potential new law.

Mark Jaycox of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which opposes CIPSA, says language in the bill gives exempted companies too much leeway in deciding who can be labeled a cybersecurity threat and pursued with the new powers that would be granted by the legislation. Although an amendment added to the bill would limit companies' information gathering to their own networks, other parts of the bill would allow "wide ranging acts" to combat any potential cybersecurity threats.

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"It's ironic that people look at this link between kids and video games and decide the games are what's causing them to act a certain way," Dichtl told the Daily Dot. "For me, video games were a way to escape the things that were causing my depression."

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“For a long time I've been conscious of the fact that female protagonists are in short supply in the gaming industry, but beyond making entirely new properties, I didn't think much could be done to rectify it,” Diaz told the Daily Dot in an email.

After watching pop culture critic Anita Sarkeesian’s new series Tropes vs. Women in Video Games however, Diaz was inspired to draw concept art for a possible video game called The Legend of Zelda: Clockwork Empire.

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According to Howey, his wife told him that a story titled "The Bitch From WorldCon" (here's a cached version; here's a screengrab) wasn't the smartest thing he could post, but he ignored her and published it anyway.

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Take Connie V., an Amazon customer who claims on consumer complaints forum Planetfeedback that, despite paying extra for expedited delivery to ensure a Dec. 22 arrival date, her purchases did not come until the day after Christmas.

"My gifts didn't arrive until December 26th, which made my child question why Santa didn't bring them in his sled," she wrote. "I wrote two complaints to the Amazon site and never even received a reply."

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“You can’t crowdfund without a crowd, and you can’t start a project from scratch and get people interested in it. You need to have some degree of reach and some small starting point. You need someone to send that link to.”

Since launching in 2009, Kickstarter has gone from a last-ditch resort to the method of choice for artists looking to fund their next creative endeavor. The platform has revolutionized the entertainment industry, allowing artists to turn directly to their online audience for financial support and, in doing so, freeing them from the pressure and restraints often associated with major-label contracts. In the last two years alone, more than $55 million has been raised for roughly 8,000 music-related projects.

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But what most people don't know is that he was also in fandom. Ebert began his career as a teenager in sci-fi fandom, writing passionate letters to fanzines and eventually writing for the fanzines himself.

But he didn't just write. In a missive for sci-fi magazine Asimov's, published in 2004, Ebert recalls how "Fandom was a secret society and I had admission to friends everywhere who spoke the same arcane language."

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Professor Steve Joordens of the University of Toronto assigned more than 1,700 students the task of editing and improving two different Wikipedia articles on topics pertaining to the lectures he'd given.

The students dug in and amended the articles, but something fishy caught a site editor’s attention: Of the 1,700 students who'd been handed the assignment, an estimated 85 percent had plagiarized their edits.

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But it’s intensely time-consuming for police to personally wade through the web’s ever-growing number of white supremacist tweets and other social media postings in search of the relative handful of extremist posts indicating a possible threat.

Maybe there’s an easier way. Two researchers, J. M. Berger and Bill Strathearn, from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence (ICSR) in London, have developed an algorithm with a high rate of success in identifying extremists on Twitter, by analyzing the relationships between Twitter account holders (as opposed to analyzing the actual posted content).

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