The Internet in general, and social media in particular, has changed everything. Here are the actual facts of the incident in which a bloodied Kentucky doctor – Dr. David Dao – ended up being dragged off United Airlines flight 3411 in the bump heard ’round the world, along with the full text of the apology comment from United CEO Oscar Munoz.

Three principals of Canadian clothing company High on Life, who trespassed at Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone, as well as other locations, in order to post their deeds on social media, have been convicted of misdemeanor criminal trespassing and disorderly conduct, and sentenced to 5 years probation (all of them) and a week in jail (two of them). In addition to the trespass on the fragile Grand Prismatic Spring, Charles Ryker Gamble, Alexey Andriyovych Lyakh and Justis Cooper Price Brown all pleaded guilty to trespass violations in Zion National Park, Mesa Verde National Park, and Death Valley National Park. Additional trespasses on behalf of High on Life occurred at Corona Arch and Bonneville Salt Flats.

This article is going to be controversial. Whether or not you should follow everyone who follows you on Twitter is a topic which engenders strong emotions and heated debate. In fact, just last week I was accused of “game playing” because I have 1600+ people who follow me on Twitter, while I ‘follow’ fewer than 50.

Google Buzz hit the world this week, but just what the heck is Google Buzz, how do you use Google Buzz, and why should you care? Google Buzz is yet one more social networking service plus social network aggregator. Imagine Facebook if Facebook also republished all of your public Google stuff – your Google Chat stream, your Picasa Links, etc.. Now imagine that you can also add your Twitter feed to that stream, and even add the RSS feeds for some websites that are under your control. That’s Google Buzz.

This morning many large, widely used Internet sites, including Twitter, Spotify, GitHub, Etsy, Vox, Paypal, Starbucks, Airbnb, Netflix, and Reddit, just to name a few, were taken down and offline owing to a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) against DNS provider Dyn. Below is a list of all of the sites that we know have been affected – and may still be being affected – by the Dyn DDoS outage. Also, until it’s all fixed, here is a workaround. [UPDATE: It has been confirmed that this was the result of hackers taking advantage of unsecured Internet of Things devices, probably using the Mirai malware.]

Using social media and the Internet to reunite homeless people with their family and other loved ones? Brilliant! That’s what Miracle Messages is doing, and their stated goal is to reunite 1% of the world’s homeless population with loved ones.

A new proposal by the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) division would revise their current information collection system for foreigners applying to enter the United States by requesting information about the individual’s Facebook, Twitter, and other social media accounts. CBP is proposing that “Please enter information associated with your online presence – Provider/Platform – Social media identifier” be added to the applications for entry to the U.S..

Snapchat is being sued for curating sexually explicit material and making it available to minors. The class action lawsuit against Snapchat is over the Snapchat ‘Discover’ service. Snapchat Discover curates content from “top publishers”, such as Vice, Cosmo, Buzzfeed, CNN, and People. It’s the first, Vice, among others, which has lead to this lawsuit, as Vice contains content that is clearly R (some would say X) rated, and so not suitable for children (Snapchat rates itself as being for age 13 and up).

We’ve been telling readers for years that you need to be very careful about what you say and post on social media, whether Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, or other sites. It can be used against you in divorce proceedings, in lawsuits and criminal trials, and, of course, in the court of popular opinion. Now add another place it can be used against you to the list: during the background check for your Federal security clearance. (Full text of directive below.)

New York teenager James Charles has done something that many people twice his age haven’t been able to achieve: established himself as a moving force to be reckoned with in his professional niche of choice. At just 16 years old, James Charles, who goes by @JCharlesBeauty, has built up an online following of over 200,000. To make it even more impressive, his niche of choice is as a makeup artist (MUA).

In case you haven’t heard, social media prenups are a thing now. (What is a social media prenup? It’s a prenuptial agreement spelling out what you can – and more importantly what you can’t – post about the other person on social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc..)

The United Kingdom has passed a law that recognizes ‘domestic violence over social media’, and makes it a punishable offense. According to the new law, threatening or even monitoring someone via social media counts as domestic violence. So how do they distinguish between the average act of ‘following’ someone on Facebook or Twitter, and monitoring? Good question.

By now you’ve undoubtedly heard of how Martin Shkreli and his Turing Pharmaceuticals acquired the rights to Daraprim, and immediately jacked up the price of Daraprim from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill. And you may have heard that Shkreli backed down yesterday and said that the price on Daraprim (generic name pyrimethamine) would not go up quite so dramatically (although he hasn’t announced the new price yet). But you may not realize just how much of a role the Internet has played in this story.

Now that they have trained us to fit all of the relevant information into 140 characters, Twitter has announced that they are removing the character limit and lifting the length restrictions on private, direct messages.

There has been a lot of chatter this week about Instagram banning certain hashtags. A list of recently banned Instagram hashtags include #EDM, #goddess, and #curvy (EDM, goddess, and curvy, respectively – “EDM” stands for Electronic Dance Music). But why? Here’s why.