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Speak, the social network popular with Trump supporters, is coming to life.
The social network went offline last week after Amazon started it from its computer servers to fail to systematically delete violent messages, an accusation that Parler denied. But after a week in which Parler executives sued Amazon and predicted their site might never come back, they expect it to be up and running again by the end of the month.
This turnaround is in part thanks to a Russian company.
Parler has done business with DDoS-Guard, a Russian company that routes internet traffic and protects websites from cyber attacks. With his help, visitors to Parler.com now find a basic web page with the promise from Parler CEO John Matze that “our return is inevitable.”
But the use of a Russian company worries some researchers studying the Internet and Russia. If Parler routes its web traffic through DDoS-Guard when its full website returns, experts said, Russian law could allow the Russian government to monitor Parler users.
Alina Polyakova, head of the Center for European Policy Analysis, a foreign policy think tank in Washington, said Russia is demanding that many internet companies in the country install technology that feeds the government a copy of much of the data passing through their computer servers.
The surveillance system, known as the System for Operational Investigative Activities, “essentially allows the Russian government to intercept all data on Russian territory and provide that data to the FSB,” said Polyakova, who studied control of Russia. On the Internet. She added that it was not clear whether DDoS-Guard would be subject to such surveillance.
The Russian Embassy in Washington and DDoS-Guard did not respond to requests for comment. In an email to CNN, DDoS-Guard has stated that it “does not provide any customer information or other data to government authorities, except as explicitly stated in the law.”
Jeffrey Wernick, COO of Parler, said in an interview that the concerns were overblown because DDoS-Guard only supported a temporary web page for Parler. He said Parler would try to find other companies to operate his full social network.
“Our preference is to have an American company,” he said. “People shouldn’t conclude that it will be this business. People extrapolate too much and with limited information. They conclude what they want to conclude. I call it spreading misinformation.
But finding willing partners has been a challenge for Parler since the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill.
After supporters of President Trump stormed the Capitol, Twitter and Facebook kicked Mr. Trump out of their services. This sent a flood of new people to Parler, pushing it past 15 million users. Then Apple and Google removed the Talking app from their app stores, and Amazon stopped hosting the Talking website on its servers because, they said, Talking did not consistently remove violent messages. In addition to denying the allegations, Parler accused the companies of collusion.
Since then, other companies have rejected Parler. Mr Matze said in a court filing Monday that “at least six extremely large potential vendors” refused to take over Parler’s business because they feared cyber attacks or believed Parler was welcoming incitement to violence.
“Parler is an Internet company that cannot access the Internet,” Parler’s attorney David Groesbeck said in a separate filing Monday. “And the longer Parler remains dead, the more difficult it will be to resuscitate.
Still, in statements to the press, Parler executives predict a full comeback by the end of January. Mr Wernick declined to say how Parler would do this, but attributed the trust to a “Herculean effort” from his team.
“We don’t sleep,” he says. “We work day and night, and every day. There is no weekend for us.
To Speak, the ideal solution would be to go back to Amazon’s servers. The network accused Amazon of violating antitrust law and asked a federal judge to force it to host Parler. After a hearing last week, companies are now awaiting a decision.
Many online observers and reporters have speculated that Talking will eventually be hosted by Epik, a company that has backed other websites that tech companies have rejected, including Gab, another popular social network in circles of right.
But Robert Davis, senior vice president of Epik, said in an interview that Epik only helped register Parler’s domain name, a basic function of the Internet. While Epik would love to help, he says, Talking’s needs are too great.
“I would expect Speaking to be an incredible force for good in the future,” he said. “I could easily see them reaching 100 million or more members in 2021 alone.”
Mr Davis said he believed Parler was trying to build its own infrastructure. On Monday, Mr Matze appeared to support this notion in an interview with Fox News, saying, “We really need to build our own infrastructure and our own technology.”
In a legal deposit the same day, Mr. Matze said Parler did not have “the technical and security expertise to host the Parler environment on its own,” adding: “It is also not possible for Talk about doing it. “
He said the computers and other equipment needed to host the Parler site would cost more than $ 6 million and take weeks to arrive. “Simply put, it would not be possible for Parler to acquire the necessary servers and associated security infrastructure on its own within a commercially reasonable timeframe,” he said.
Dave Temkin, an engineer who helped lead Netflix’s internet infrastructure team until last week, said he was skeptical of Talking’s upcoming return, given the difficulty of building his own infrastructure. and the reluctance of other companies to help.
He said that even if Parler were to build his own data center in the United States, he would have to persuade an internet provider like Verizon or AT&T to lay the fiber optic cables to connect it to the wider internet.
“It’s like having a car without a road,” he says.
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