Trump/Republican Coup Thread

[Solauren]

That's basically how the PirateBay, and other 'Jolly Roger' sites operate too.

Fortunately, most Trump supporters have the technical skill of a retarded goat tripping on PCB and Acid.

[bilateralrope]

The thing with hosting the servers overseas is that you still need someone to pay for them. If he's in the US, the feds can still hit him with a search warrant and/or obstruction charges.

If he's overseas, then the question becomes "will this foreign country be happy to shelter someone aiding and abetting an insurrection ?"
Because something like that will come with consequences. Maybe the US messes with that countries trade, maybe an invasion.

[Solauren]

With a 'payer' being in the United States: Absolutey True.
But they'd have to prove it was him before they could get the warrant. That might not be easy if all the data is overseas.

For an overseas payer, all that would be needed is the Platform being members only, with limited (and carefully monitored) public content. Then the host country (and even host service) can say 'We had no reason to search them, so we didn't know'.

The risk is minimal.

Why do you think online criminal enterprises are so hard to shut down? An Alt-Right-Wing Platform calling for insurrection is just a criminal enterprise. They just don't think like one. Yet

[Gandalf]

Cheers for the feedback all.

So is Twitter going to be held responsible for recent events in any way? They've enabled Trump from the start of this whole mess, and the last week or so is really a culmination of said half decade or so.

[Broomstick]

Parler may not stay dead that long. All they need to do is move to a foreign webservice, and they'll be back up.

Of course, the question is, how would it's users react to it being hosted in say, China?

Pardon my ignorance, but why a foreign webservice?

I would think that a rich enough benefactor could set it all up in the US, and just shout "freedom of speech!"

Apparently, oligarchs and super-wealthy break out in hives around bloodthirsty mobs or something.

Those wealthy enough to benefit from the US system don't want to see it overturned by a mob that installs and infantile dictator such as Trump would be. It's not in their self-interest.

On the other hand, some foreign countries, like Russia or North Korea or some others would be delighted to fund an angry rabid mob intent on destroying the US. That would be in their self-interest.

That's why.

[Broomstick]

That's basically how the PirateBay, and other 'Jolly Roger' sites operate too.

Fortunately, most Trump supporters have the technical skill of a retarded goat tripping on PCB and Acid.

Please do not disrespect mentally challenged handicapped goats battling a drug problem by comparing them to a Trump supporter.

[Broomstick]

Cheers for the feedback all.

So is Twitter going to be held responsible for recent events in any way? They've enabled Trump from the start of this whole mess, and the last week or so is really a culmination of said half decade or so.

The US tends to be as nutty about free speech as about guns.

When it was not more than talk Twitter could hide behind "free speech".

Once it became action they couldn't, and that is the real reason they dropped Trump like a hot potato.

[bilateralrope]

Here's a video of a Trumper cying because he's now on the no-fly list

Showing everyone what he really thinks about personal responsibility.

[Broomstick]

I'd say let the fucker walk home but I'd rather the FBI arrest his snowflake ass.

[Jub]

So Parler was so poorly designed that it failed to scrub identifying metadata from uploaded media. This means that a lot of people could potential get a knock at the door from a 3 letter agency in the not-so-distant future.

EDIT: IT GETS EVEN BETTER!

Here is a description of what went down according to someone with far greater technical knowledge than me:
"so a group of developers latched onto the Press Release that Twilio put out at midnight last night. In that Press Release, Twilio accidentally revealed which services Parler was using. Turns out it was all of the security authentications that were used to register a user. This allowed anyone to create a user, and not have to verify an email address, and immediately have a logged-on account.

Well, because of that access, it gave them access to the behind the login box API that is used to deliver content -- ALL CONTENT (parleys, video, images, user profiles, user information, etc) --. But what it also did was revealed which USERS had "Administration" rights, "Moderation" rights.

Well, then what happened, those user accounts that had Administration rights to the entire platform... The hackers, internet warriors, call it what you will, was able to use the forgot password link to change the password. Why? Because Twilio was no longer authenticating emails. This meant, they'd get directly to the reset password screen of that Administration user.

This group of Internet Warriors then used that account, to create a handful of other ADMINISTRATION accounts, and then created a script that ended up creating MILLIONS of fake administration accounts.
Now that they had a way of creating admin accounts without interruption, they created a Docker Image (basically a virtual machine) called a Warrior, that anyone could download, and when fired up, would immediately start collecting data off of Parlre, in a coordinated fashion.

Consider it like SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) that people used to load up as screen savers when their computers were not being used. Same concept, crowdsourcing.

All of this data, the videos, the images, the posts, the metadata (including the GEO location of all images and videos, and the connections to the accounts that posted it, has been (since midnight) being uploaded to various cloud drives and storage arrays for the purposes of Archiving this information, for later retrieval by law enforcement, by the public, by Open Source Intelligence communities.

And the kicker.. is this: all of this information was thought to be secure and private by individuals who were making the posts. A significant number of those individuals went through the process of being a "Verified Citizen" on Parler. What does that mean?

It means they uploaded a picture of the front and back of their REAL State Driver's License........ Let that sink in for a second.

I am positive the FBI has been actively soaking in this information along with the Internet Warriors, but this is how they are going to officially track down.

And it's how the FBI, DHS, and FAA have been able to immediately and exhaustively create no-fly lists. Every verified attendee of the Capitol riot where they can find a real name has been placed on No-Fly Lists.

It might seem like a small geeky glitch or hack.. but in the age of Information warfare... this is the silver bullet for the people who used Parler as a place to organize their efforts.

Also, a lot of posts were deleted by Parler members after the riots on the 6th. Turned out... Parler didn't actually delete anything.. just set a bit as deleted.

Guess what has access to all "deleted" content?
Administrator accounts."

[bilateralrope]

With a 'payer' being in the United States: Absolutey True.
But they'd have to prove it was him before they could get the warrant. That might not be easy if all the data is overseas.

True.

For an overseas payer, all that would be needed is the Platform being members only, with limited (and carefully monitored) public content. Then the host country (and even host service) can say 'We had no reason to search them, so we didn't know'.

That works right up until the FBI or some random journalist goes "we infiltrated the place, here's what we found".

The risk is minimal.

Why do you think online criminal enterprises are so hard to shut down? An Alt-Right-Wing Platform calling for insurrection is just a criminal enterprise. They just don't think like one. Yet

There is also the matter about how much one country is willing to do to force another into taking down the site. Organisation of an armed insurrection is going to be pretty high up there. The Pirate Bay, not so much.

[Eternal_Freedom]

There is also the matter about how much one country is willing to do to force another into taking down the site. Organisation of an armed insurrection is going to be pretty high up there. The Pirate Bay, not so much.

Leaving aside taking down a website, wasn't "X nation supporting/inciting an internal insurrection" a historical casus belli on several occasions? Given how trigger-happy the US has been over the last two decades, I think that would make countries think twice.

[Ralin]

Leaving aside taking down a website, wasn't "X nation supporting/inciting an internal insurrection" a historical casus belli on several occasions? Given how trigger-happy the US has been over the last two decades, I think that would make countries think twice.

If hosting a right-wing social media site is enough to qualify then a whole lot of countries have grounds for war against the US.

But I'm sure many people will rush to remind me that doesn't matter because none of them are strong enough to do it.

[Broomstick]

Maybe smaller countries.

Russia and China could probably get away with it.

And yeah, on the international stage strength really does have a large say in what happens.

[Solauren]

That works right up until the FBI or some random journalist goes "we infiltrated the place, here's what we found".

True.
However, depending on the country, that effect could be anything from 'We investigated and found no support of your claims', to 'okay, we've verfied it, and sent a take down order, they have 72 hours to comply, then we send in law enforcement', to 'okay, we arrested the web host', and a lot in between.

The first two, gives the platform lots of time to relocate providers, or even out of country. The later is not likely, as no country is going to ignore their own rule of law.

Combine that with the methods people in China use to get around government censorship, it could be done.

[bilateralrope]

Looks like there isn't anybody willing and able to host Parler. So that means desperate lawsuit time.

Parler goes dark, sues Amazon to demand immediate reinstatement

Bereft of other options, Parler is trying to petition the courts for resurrection.
KATE COX - 1/12/2021, 10:26 AM

In less than three days, social networking service Parler has gone from darling of the right wing to a has-been service that can no longer be accessed online. In response, the company is now suing its former Web host, Amazon, alleging the hosting giant intentionally colluded with rival social service Twitter to knock a competitor out of the market.

Amazon Web Services' decision to cut Parler off "is apparently motivated by political animus," Parler writes in its suit (PDF). "It is also apparently designed to reduce competition in the microblogging services market to the benefit of Twitter."

Parler asks the court to grant a temporary restraining order against Amazon and "order AWS to maintain Parler's account until further notice." The company also seeks damages "in an amount to be determined at trial."

Parler's accusation that Amazon broke antitrust law is certainly driving attention, especially as Amazon is, in fact, under investigation for multiple potential violations of competition law. But for all Amazon's alleged antitrust flaws, competition seemingly has little to do with the reality of Parler's demise.

What was Parler?
Parler launched in 2018 as a "free speech" alternative to other social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. In the past two years, it drew mostly politically conservative and right-wing users who felt other platforms, particularly Twitter, were overly oppressive.

While many Parler users were drawn from the "mainstream" right, as it were, over recent months, the platform has also drawn an increasing number of alt-right, fringe, and extremist users who have explicitly called for violence. Parler also drew more extremist users in the wake of President Donald Trump's permanent bans from Twitter, Facebook, and several other social platforms.

Posts on Parler calling for increased bloodshed in the aftermath of the riot at the Capitol—including leading into the upcoming inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden—have not been difficult to find. Several Twitter and Reddit accounts dedicated to aggregating examples of such overflowed with examples over the weekend.

In the wake of last Wednesday's Trump-incited insurrectionist events at the US Capitol, those posts are now being taken extremely seriously. In the face of criticism, Parler CEO John Matze doubled down on his "anything goes" stance rather than agreeing to introduce content moderation. The dominos fell from there.

Things fall apart
Google was the first to act: it pulled Parler from its Android app store on Friday. "We're aware of continued posting in the Parler app that seeks to incite ongoing violence in the US," a company spokesman told Ars at the time. "In light of this ongoing and urgent public safety threat, we are suspending the app's listings from the Play Store until it addresses these issues."

Apple followed suit over the weekend, saying in a statement late Saturday, "We have always supported diverse points of view being represented on the App Store, but there is no place on our platform for threats of violence and illegal activity. Parler has not taken adequate measures to address the proliferation of these threats to people’s safety. We have suspended Parler from the App Store until they resolve these issues."

While Google's and Apple's actions took Parler out of mobile app stores, they didn't actually stop Parler from providing service through its website or to people who already had installed the app. Amazon did that, however, when it announced on Saturday evening that it was going to terminate Parler's AWS hosting services as of midnight on Sunday, January 10.

After that, just about everyone from whom Parler obtained services bailed.

"Every vendor, from text message services to email providers to our lawyers, all ditched us, too, on the same day," Parler CEO John Matze complained in a Sunday interview with Fox News.

For example, user-authentication platform Okta confirmed overnight Saturday that Parler had been using a "free trial" of its product and that Parler's account was terminated as soon as Okta found out. "While we support organizations across the political spectrum," the company said, "our platform will not be used for threats of violence and illegal activity."

"We will likely be down longer than expected," Matze wrote in one of his last messages posted to Parler before it went dark. "This is not due to software restrictions—we have our software and everyone's data ready to go. Rather it's that Amazon's, Google's and Apple's statements to the press about dropping our access [have] caused most of our other vendors to drop their support for us as well. And most people with enough servers to host us have shut their doors to us. We will update everyone and update the press when we are back online."

But the Internet never forgets...
Parler may be offline, but its content will not be forgotten. One quick-thinking researcher, who goes by the Twitter handle @donk_enby, launched an archiving effort on Saturday to preserve as much Parler content as possible. She began with content from January 6, she told Gizmodo, but was able rapidly to expand her scope.

Eventually, she ended up capturing 99.9 percent of all the publicly available content on Parler, she said Sunday. Although some of the content donk_enby pulled may include videos from deleted or private posts, reports of a Parler "hack" that have been circulating on Reddit and Twitter are false, she said.

"Only things that were available publicly via the web were archived," she clarified in a tweet today. "I don't have your e-mail address, phone or credit card number unless you posted it yourself on Parler."

The massive tranche of data will eventually be hosted by the Internet Archive, donk_enby told Gizmodo, where it will be available for researchers. That means the data will also be easily available to law enforcement, who haven't had to look far to find and identify many of the perpetrators of Wednesday's attack on the Capitol because they discussed the attack publicly on social media platforms, including Parler.

Does this lawsuit have legs?
Legs? That seems unlikely at best.

For starters, Amazon's terms of service, across all its AWS services, are pretty explicit that it can boot customers who allow for certain kinds of content on their sites:

If we reasonably believe any of Your Content violates the law, infringes or misappropriates the rights of any third party, or otherwise violates a material term of the Agreement (including the documentation, the Service Terms, or the Acceptable Use Policy) ("Prohibited Content"), we will notify you of the Prohibited Content and may request that such content be removed from the Services or access to it be disabled. If you do not remove or disable access to the Prohibited Content within 2 business days of our notice, we may remove or disable access to the Prohibited Content or suspend the Services to the extent we are not able to remove or disable access to the Prohibited Content. Notwithstanding the foregoing, we may remove or disable access to any Prohibited Content without prior notice in connection with illegal content, where the content may disrupt or threaten the Services or in accordance with applicable law or any judicial, regulatory or other governmental order or request. In the event that we remove Your Content without prior notice, we will provide prompt notice to you unless prohibited by law. We terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances.

Parler alleges that Twitter and Amazon colluded in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. That's the big trustbuster statute, which reads, in part, "Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal."

However, the effort to deplatform Parler does not appear to have been a concerted act of collusion on the part of other social media platforms or, in fact, any platforms. Far more likely is that every company involved with Parler took a look at the way the winds are blowing in the wake of an actual, literal, violent attack on the US Capitol that left five people dead and decided it would just as soon avoid further ties.

"There is no merit to these claims," an Amazon spokesperson said about the suit. "It is clear that there is significant content on Parler that encourages and incites violence against others and that Parler is unable or unwilling to promptly identify and remove this content."

I'll highlight one bit:

"Every vendor, from text message services to email providers to our lawyers, all ditched us, too, on the same day," Parler CEO John Matze complained in a Sunday interview with Fox News.

The lawyers bailed and they think that now is the time to file a lawsuit. Are they trying this without a lawyer or with Rudy Giuliani ?

[Gandalf]

Apparently, oligarchs and super-wealthy break out in hives around bloodthirsty mobs or something.

Really? Nowadays the angry mobs in the US seem to be cool with oligarchs. Hence the Trump flags and their generally voting Republican.

I'm keen to see how far down this incitement thing can go. Will they apply it to message boards like this? Politicians using (for example) Fox News to spread lies and drum up support for something illegal?

[Solauren]

You know, their own statement basically kills there lawsuit.

EVERYONE ditched them at the same time. That shows that everyone, not just Amazon, dropped them as a client. This establishes a non-competition based pattern. Amazons statement that it was due to it's content, lines up with this.


Also, even if a judge ordered Amazon to reinstate them, all Amazon would have to do is limit their bandwidth to see, 1 kilobyte per hour, and they have actually obeyed the court order.

[Broomstick]

Apparently, oligarchs and super-wealthy break out in hives around bloodthirsty mobs or something.

Really? Nowadays the angry mobs in the US seem to be cool with oligarchs. Hence the Trump flags and their generally voting Republican.

The mobs don't care - re-read what I said. It's the oligarchs that get nervous when the peasants get uppity. The high and mighty start remembering how vastly outnumbered they are or something.

Although a bit less so in the past, what with the wealthy and powerful having access to private jets and all. Louis XVI might have actually gotten out of France if he had had one.

[bilateralrope]

You know, their own statement basically kills there lawsuit.

It's a lawsuit from someone who had their own lawyers ditch them. Competence would be a surprise.

Also, even if a judge ordered Amazon to reinstate them, all Amazon would have to do is limit their bandwidth to see, 1 kilobyte per hour, and they have actually obeyed the court order.

That sounds like an easy contempt of court charge against Amazon. Even if the court order didn't have something specifying the level of service Amazon was to provide.

[Solauren]

Since I can't really see this lawsuit working anyway.... (shrugs).

However, here's the question - how hard would it be for Amazon to move the webhosting 'offshore', under a new legal entity, and that new legal entity go 'fuck you.' Amazon then reveals it's webhosting is now based in India. When when they try to sue them in india, sorry, we moved to Saudia Arabia.

It's not like it's hard to do something like that on paper with a competent lawyer.

[bilateralrope]

I think US courts have ruled previously that if a US entity controls a foreign subsidiary, then the courts can order the US entity to give orders to their subsidiary. Though I can't find a source right now.

Even if your plan would work, there is still the matter of cost. If Amazon keeps any servers in the US, your plan fails because the courts can order Amazon to use them. So they would have to shift all their data centers, without disrupting any of their customers. Then there is the matter of customers who want to keep all their data within the US because they don't want to expose it to foreign laws. Responding to the lawsuit seems much cheaper.

In golf news:
'Incredibly disappointed': Golf dumps Donald Trump to leave his empire in ruins

James Corrigan
13:00, Jan 12 2021

Golf has finally dumped Trump. The outgoing US president is "incredibly disappointed" that his National Golf Club has been stripped of the right to stage next year's US PGA Championship – and will presumably be just as upset that the R&A has all but removed Turnberry from the Open rota while he is owner.

The PGA of America voted on Sunday night (Monday NZT) to rip up its contract with the president's course in Bedminster, New Jersey, in the wake of last week's storming of the Capitol, in which five died and which Trump has been widely accused of inciting.

"The PGA of America board of directors voted tonight to exercise the right to terminate the agreement to play the 2022 PGA Championship at Trump Bedminster," Jim Richerson, PGA of America president, said in a statement.

"It has become clear that conducting the PGA Championship at Trump Bedminster would be detrimental to the PGA of America brand and would put at risk the PGA's ability to deliver our many programmes and sustain the longevity of our mission."

Seth Waugh, the PGA of America chief executive, laid out the reasons why, essentially explaining why the Trump brand is now toxic in the professional game.

"We find ourselves in a political situation not of our making," Waugh said. "We're fiduciaries for our members, for the game, for our mission and our brand. And how do we best protect that? Our feeling was given the tragic events of Wednesday (Thursday NZT) that we could no longer hold it at Bedminster. The damage could have been irreparable."

The Trump organisation was quick to respond. This was to be the first male major to be hosted at one of his 17 courses, that also includes Turnberry in Scotland. A legal tussle may well ensue.

"We are incredibly disappointed," a spokesperson said. "We have had a beautiful partnership with the PGA of America. This is a breach of a binding contract that they have no right to terminate.

“As an organisation we have invested many, many millions of dollars in the 2022 PGA Championship at Trump National Golf Club, Bedminster. We will continue to promote the game of golf on every level and remain focused on operating the finest golf courses anywhere in the world."

PGA of America
@PGA
"The PGA of America Board of Directors voted tonight to exercise the right to terminate the agreement to play the 2022 PGA Championship at Trump Bedminster." — Jim Richerson, PGA of America President
4:01 PM · Jan 11, 2021

The news got worse for Trump when the R&A reacted to the PGA of America's move by all but excluding Turnberry from hosting the Open in the "foreseeable future."

The spectacular Turnberry links has not staged the British major since 2009 and in the years following Trump's purchase in 2014, the R&A has inferred it is precluded from playing host because of the ownership's identity. But in a statement released on Monday afternoon (Tuesday NZT), chief executive Martin Slumbers went further in making this official.

"We had no plans to stage any of our championships at Turnberry and will not do so in the foreseeable future," Slumbers said.

"We will not return until we are convinced the focus will be on the championship, the players and the course itself and we do not believe that is achievable in the current circumstances."

Trump's standing in the sport is left in ruins. Bedminster hosted the 2017 US Women's Open, while Turnberry in 2015 featured the Women's British Open. On both occasions, Trump turned up, with his associated circus casting a huge shadow over the tournaments.

That plainly will not be allowed to happen again and many experts believe Trump now has little option but to break up a golfing empire in which he has invested well over US$1 billion (NZ$1.4 billion).

His divisive rhetoric had long posed a problem for a game he has been identified with. The US Golf Association resisted calls to move that 2017 US Women's Open following comments on females made by Trump during his election campaign.

The previous year had seen the PGA Tour moving one of the World Golf Championship events to Mexico from its home at Trump's famed Doral course in Miami. But professional golfers have continued to accept his patronage.

Last week, the day after the violent scenes in Washington DC, greats Gary Player and Annika Sorenstam came in for criticism when they accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump in the White House.

Golf Digest, while noting that 15-time major champion Tiger Woods had also accepted the honour in May, called it a "tone deaf" gesture in an editorial calling for the sport to distance itself from Trump. Now, those ties seem almost threadbare.

A replacement for the US PGA, set to take place in 16 months' time, has yet to be decided with Liberty National, also in New Jersey, emerging as favourite.

Meanwhile, the Honda Classic plans to welcome back a limited number of fans at Palm Beach Gardens, Florida from March 18 to 21.

I'm almost disappointed that I won't get to read Trump tweeting about this.

[LadyTevar]

This has been making the rounds of Facebook: Parler Archived

Every Deleted Parler Post, Many With Users' Location Data, Has Been Archived

In the wake of the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by scores of President Trump’s supporters, a lone researcher began an effort to catalogue the posts of social media users across Parler, a platform founded to provide conservative users a safe haven for uninhibited “free speech” — but which ultimately devolved into a hotbed of far-right conspiracy theories, unchecked racism, and death threats aimed at prominent politicians.

The researcher, who asked to be referred to by her Twitter handle, @donk_enby, began with the goal of archiving every post from January 6, the day of the Capitol riot; what she called a bevy of “very incriminating” evidence. According to the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, among other sources, Parler is one of a several apps used by the insurrections to coordinate their breach of the Capitol, in a plan to overturn the 2020 election results and keep Donald Trump in power.

Five people died in the attempt.

Hoping to create a lasting public record for future researchers to sift through, @donk_enby began by archiving the posts from that day. The scope of the project quickly broadened, however, as it became increasingly clear that Parler was on borrowed time. Apple and Google announced that Parler would be removed from their app stores because it had failed to properly moderate posts that encouraged violence and crime. The final nail in the coffin came Saturday when Amazon announced it was pulling Parler’s plug.

In an email first obtained by BuzzFeed News, Amazon officials told the company they planned to boot it from its clouding hosting service, Amazon Web Services, saying it had witnessed a “steady increase” in violent content across the platform. “It’s clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service,” the email read.

Operating on little sleep, @donk_enby began the work of archiving all of Parler’s posts, ultimately capturing around 99 percent of its content. In a tweet early Sunday, @donk_enby said she was crawling some 1.1 million Parler video URLs. “These are the original, unprocessed, raw files as uploaded to Parler with all associated metadata,” she said. Included in this data tranche, now more than 56 terabytes in size, @donk_enby confirmed that the raw video files include GPS metadata pointing to exact locations of where the videos were taken.

@donk_enby later shared a screenshot showing the GPS position of a particular video, with coordinates in latitude and longitude.

The privacy implications are obvious, but the copious data may also serve as a fertile hunting ground for law enforcement. Federal and local authorities have arrested dozens of suspects in recent days accused of taking part in the Capitol riot, where a Capitol police officer, Brian Sicknick, was fatally wounded after being struck in the head with a fire extinguisher.

@donk_enby describes herself as hacker, in the sense that she’s “someone with a creative, but skeptical attitude toward technology,” to paraphrase a definition offered by the Chaos Computer Club, Europe’s largest hacker association. “I want this to be a big middle finger to those who say hacking shouldn’t be political,” she said. @donk_enby work has aided other researchers, including one at New York University’s Center for Cybersecurity.

@donk_enby, whose efforts are documented on the website ArchiveTeam.org, said the data will eventually be hosted by the Internet Archive. (The two sites are not affiliated.)

@donk_enby told Gizmodo that she began digging into Parler after the company issued denials about an email leak unearthed by the hacktivist Kirtner, who has been credited with founding the hacker group Anonymous. @donk_enby said she was able to independently locate the same material herself at the time.

Kirtaner, creator of 420chan — a.k.a. Aubrey Cottle — reported obtaining 6.3 GB of Parler user data from an unsecured AWS server in November. The leak reportedly contained passwords, photos and email addresses from several other companies as well. Parler CEO John Matze later claimed to Business Insider that the data contained only “public information” about users, which had been improperly stored by an email vendor whose contract was subsequently terminated over the leak. (This leak is separate from the debunked claim that Parler was “hacked” in late November, proof of which was determined to be fake.)

In December, Twitter suspended Kirtaner for tweeting, “I’m killing Parler and its fucking glorious,” citing its rules against threatening “violence against an individual or group of people.” Kirtaner’s account remains suspended despite an online campaign urging Twitter’s safety team to reverse its decision. Gregg Housh, an internet activist involved in many early Anonymous campaigns, noted online that the tweet was “not aimed at a person and [was] not actually violent.”

@donk_enby said she believes Twitter has been relying too much on its automated moderation tools, which have led to dubious suspensions of users not actually violating of its rules. This has the effect of “driving people to toxic echo chambers like Parler,” she said.

Parler investor Dan Bongino, a Fox News commentator and former NYPD police officer, said in a Parler post on Saturday — shared on Twitter by BuzzFeed reporter John Paczkowski — that the company was “not done with Apple and Google” and encouraged users to “Stay tuned to hear what’s coming.” One user replied: “It would be a pity if someone with explosives training were to pay a visit to some AWS Data Centers - the location of which are public knowledge.”

On Sunday, CEO Matze sharply criticized the tech companies’ actions, claiming on Fox News that Amazon, Apple, and Google were attempting to “actually destroy the entire company.” Matze added that the company had also been “ditched” by its lawyers.

In an interview last year, Matze said that Parler — which has also taken money from Rebekah Mercer, a deep-pocketed, pro-Trump Republican donor — had planned to generate revenue using an “influencer” model. Prominent users would be tapped to post organic-looking posts promoting outside companies and products. Users could then “boycott” the influencers they didn’t like. On Tuesday, @donk_enby posted images of what the influencer panel looked like, as well as a function that enabled Parler to conceal the capability from certain users.

Parler is unlikely to rebound quickly, if at all. As the Duckbill Group’s Corey Quinn recently explained on Twitter, migrating a large product off AWS can take months of staging and possibly years to execute. Apps that integrate AWS’s wide array of services cannot be easily transposed onto a different hosting environment, Quinn said.

[bilateralrope]

The privacy implications are obvious, but the copious data may also serve as a fertile hunting ground for law enforcement. Federal and local authorities have arrested dozens of suspects in recent days accused of taking part in the Capitol riot, where a Capitol police officer, Brian Sicknick, was fatally wounded after being struck in the head with a fire extinguisher.

I'm thinking the police got their copy of the data directly from Amazon.

[His Divine Shadow]

a platform founded to provide conservative users a safe haven for uninhibited “free speech” — but which ultimately devolved into a hotbed of far-right conspiracy theories, unchecked racism

But you repeat yourself.