Talking seems to come back on the internet, but not on mobile

The right-wing social media platform Speak, which has been offline since Amazon Web Services dropped it like a hot potato last week, has reappeared on the web with the promise of returning as a fully functional service. “soon”.

Although the platform’s Android and iOS apps are still out of date, this weekend its URL again started resolving to an actual website instead of an error notice. The site at the moment consists only of the home page, which contains a message from the CEO of the company John Matze.

“It looks like now is the time to remind all of you – in love and hate – why we launched this platform,” the post read. “We believe that the protection of privacy is paramount and that freedom of expression is essential, especially on social media. Our goal has always been to provide a non-partisan public place where individuals can enjoy both and exercise their rights. We will resolve any challenges that come our way and plan to welcome all of you back soon. We will not let civil discourse perish! “

Speaking, however, was misrepresented in the first place explicitly because the content it allowed to flourish was anything. But “Civilian”, and as several reports have clearly shown, the backend of the service has been designed without any consideration for privacy. Meanwhile, the path Parler seems to take to reach the internet is a shady one, paved by other explicitly extremist and white nationalist platforms that have lost access to more traditional services after being linked to terrorism.

Three strokes

Parler’s deformity began following the insurgency riots on the U.S. Capitol the previous week, as it became clear that a number of Parler users who had used the platform to make threats were in. made present in the crowd which stormed the building.

Insurgents who gathered in the District of Columbia on January 6 not only planned their attack using social media platforms, but also used those platforms – especially Speak – while they were on Capitol Hill. Many mainstream media reported before, during and after the events of January 6 that the rioters were using Talk to organize.

Google started Speaking from the Android App Store on January 8, citing its failure to explicitly remove “blatant content” that incites violence. Apple followed suit hours later, suspending Talk from the iOS App Store for its failure to remove “threats of violence and illegal activity” under the Apple Developer Agreement.

The final blow to Talk followed this weekend, when AWS stopped providing web hosting services to the platform and called it a “very real risk to public safety.”

“It is clear that Parler does not have an effective process for complying with the AWS Terms of Service,” the company wrote in an email to Parler. “You remove some violent content when contacted by us or others, but not always urgently. Your CEO recently said publicly that he doesn’t feel responsible for any of this, and neither does the platform.” … We believe that this budding project of using volunteers to quickly identify and remove dangerous content will not work given the growing number of violent messages. “

Parler turned around and sued Amazon for the ban, asking the court for immediate reinstatement. So far, however, this lawsuit has only clarified the amount of violent content Talking was apparently willing to host, as Amazon, in its legal response, has brought in (truly vile) receipts showing the type of content that he had explicitly warned Parler for months.

About this privacy …

In the roughly 24 hours between when Amazon warned Parler that it was going to end service for the company and when the platform was finally taken offline, a quick researcher managed to scratch and archive almost all of Parler’s public content – which due to Parler’s poor coding choices allowed her to access not only some deleted messages but also a wealth of metadata, including precise GPS locations for videos users.

Researchers, journalists and law enforcement have since been able to use this data to paint a fairly comprehensive picture of what was going on inside the Capitol that day – and who was there. to do.

Gizmodo quickly used the GPS data to put together a map showing there were hundreds of videos posted to Speaking from the Capitol Park or inside the building on January 6. Another researcher created an interactive map linking the videos to location pins for easy viewing. And over the weekend, ProPublica released a full timeline featuring over 500 Talking videos to show the day’s events, from President Donald Trump’s speech near the White House to the eventual crowd disbandment at the start of this month. evening.

Federal authorities have already made more than a hundred arrests linked to the attack on the Capitol. Court documents show that many suspects currently under arrest were using social media, including Talk, to share images, videos or live broadcasts of their alleged crimes.

The road back to visibility

Parler apparently got hosting from Epik to get back online. Epik is best known for helping far-right platform Gab come back online shortly after a Gab user committed a mass murder in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018; it also provided services to other white nationalist, anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi platforms including 8chan (now known as 8kun) and The Daily Stormer.

Many security researchers also have highlighted that Parler appears to have obtained the services of DDoS-Guard, a Russian-based cloud services company.

Cyber ​​security expert Brian Krebs published an analysis last year of the potential legal liabilities that DDoS-Guard could incur in the United States due to its client list. Krebs called the list “revealing”, noting that it includes “a large number of phishing sites and domains related to cybercrime services or forums.”

Most notably, DDoS-Guard also provides hosting services to Hamas, which the United States has classified as a terrorist organization for more than 20 years.