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- Parler’s new static web page uses an Internet Protocol address owned by DDoS-Guard.
- The Russian tech company has been linked to racist, far-right and conspiratorial sites.
- Parler’s critics said being dependent on a Russian company posed a potential security risk.
- Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
Speak, a website and social media app popular with America’s far-right, partially returned online on Sunday – with help from a Russian tech company.
Talk was discontinued by the Amazon Web Services (AWS) website host on January 11. AWS said the platform “poses a very real risk to public safety.” The site has since registered its domain with Epik and returned on Sunday as a static page containing a brief note from CEO John Matze.
The internet protocol address used is owned by DDoS-Guard, which is controlled by two Russian men and provides services including protection against cyber attacks known as distributed denial of service attacks, the infrastructure expert told Reuters. Ronald Guilmette.
DDoS-Guard has worked with racist, far-right, and conspiratorial sites.
Matze and representatives for DDoS-Guard did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Read more: Talking reportedly spent $ 300,000 a month on Amazon’s cloud before its ban, and that’s a sign it won’t be so easy for the far-right social app to come back online
On Wednesday, January 13, Matze told Reuters the company was in talks with several service providers, but declined to give further details.
Matze has since said he was “confident” that Parler would be fully operational by the end of January, and that the platform had successfully recovered its data from Amazon.
Evgeniy Marchenko, one of the two founders and owners of DDoS-Guard, told The Guardian that the company is a global information security service and said it hosts “thousands of websites.” This includes the Russian government sites and the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer site.
He has also previously worked with controversial Washington-based internet provider VanwaTech, which hosts the 8kun website, a social media site popular with QAnon supporters and used by rioters to plan the siege on Capitol Hill.
“We are not tied to any political issues and in no way want to be associated with clients hosting toxic sites like QAnon / 8chan,” Marchenko told The Guardian.
Critics of Parler said that depending on a Russian company was a potential security risk, as well as an odd choice for a site popular with self-proclaimed patriots.
Russian propaganda has stoked political divisions in the United States, supporting incumbent US President Donald Trump and amplifying false rhetoric about electoral fraud and protests against police brutality.
Speak, which describes itself as a “non-partisan” haven for free speech, had become a hub for supporters of President Donald Trump after many of their Twitter accounts were purged from the social media site, alongside Trump’s.
In the days following the siege on Capitol Hill on January 6, it has become a haven for far-right activity and disinformation due to its lax stance on moderation of content. Trump himself considered joining the site as “Person X,” Matze had previously said.
After the siege, Google and Apple quickly banned the app from their app stores, and AWS took Talk offline. Talk has since attacked the tech giant with an antitrust lawsuit, challenging Amazon’s claims that it has repeatedly warned Talk about violent content.
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