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Saved by @CodyyyGardner

THREAD: Now that @Amazon @awscloud has announced they will no longer host @parler_app, many have speculated that they will just “find another host.”

Here is why that’s not so simple and what it will likely mean for the app’s future. First, let’s look at where things are...

 2/ Google and Apple have removed the app from their app stores, effectively terminating growth on mobile devices. People can still access the (not good) web UI until Amazon terminates them today. CEO Matze has said they may be down “up to a week” while they find new hosting.
3/ Translated to English, that’s code for “we have no idea what’s going to happen next.” No US cloud provider (Microsoft, Google, IBM, Digital Ocean) is likely to touch this, as it could be seen as providing material support for sedition. No CEO or counsel wants to get near this.
4/ They could potentially “roll their own” data center by buying servers and putting them in a co-location facility. But that’s a single point of failure, and many colo providers would be just as likely to decline their business. It would be hard and risky to pursue this.
5/ Imagine, after they sweated like pigs to get this hardware all setup, if they get told their colo provider is booting them. That’s a lot of metal to then move somewhere else. Meanwhile, the user base is deteriorating because chaos and dying apps. They will go to other venues.
6/ They also have a nascent, barely existent business model that generates little to no revenue. That means this all is nothing but *expense* for the woman who took credit for this terror network, Rebekah Mercer. There may be other undocumented funders in NDMASCENDANT too.
7/ CEO Matze has family connections to Russia. We should assume he is getting offers of hosting there. If he hosts Parler there, it becomes open to NSA surveillance. If he accepts material support from Russia in support of sedition here, it could be seen as treason. Hm.
8/ Additionally any material relationship with Russian interests would require registration under FARA § 951. And all this in the context of having dead, banned apps, with only a web UX for distribution. With users leaving in droves, and funds draining rapidly.
9/ Other bad actor hosts like the Jim Watkins/VanWaTech group are likely also offering to help. They are enabled by a company called CNSERVERS in Vancouver, WA. Guess what ‘CN’ stands for? You guessed it. 🇨🇳 Their infrastructure is sometimes backed by assets in Russia/China.
10/ Watkins/VanWa hosts a lot of awful stuff including brand-name Nazi sites, a range of MAGA stuff, and borderline child porn. They are able to keep this online because they use a Netherlands based firm to protect against distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks.
11/ It is possible that Matze and Mercer will join the Watkins portfolio of well-known Nazis and White Supremacists. But Bekah doesn’t generally enjoy that kind of limelight. I suspect she will decline to go this route.

The sane answer is to GIVE UP. Here is why.
12/ Parler can never be a viable business, realistically. Even Twitter has struggled to make money, and it’s faaar bigger and more established. In fact, Parler is so far away from being able to make money, Mercers had to know that it would never do so. So why pursue it at all?
13/ They built Parler for multiple reasons.

1: the user data; this is part of the same Cambridge Analytica data play they started years ago and which continues with firms like Gloo et al, 2: they wished to challenge § 230 of the Comms. Decency Act, 3: to radicalize people.
14/ So they now have a lot of data. Section 230 is likely to be visited for revision at some point soon. And people are now more radicalized than they were. Their app is dead. Their hosting is done. People are onto them, their funding and Russia connections. Time to stop.
15/ Rebekah Mercer is not stupid. Her sister is a professional poker player. They saw this “company” as a round of poker designed to provoke certain outcomes, with high upsides and low downsides. That round of poker is at a natural stopping point.

https://t.co/xYFJOeja8X
16/ Should Matze/Wernick/Bongino/Peikoff decide to soldier on and go full zombie mode, they can try to do that. They probably can’t do so without Mercer support. Or material help from foreign nationals. Any US person risks sedition charges. And indeed, so do they.
17/ Given the near zero possibility of survival, I assess that all involved will likely terminate this kamikaze mission, take the data they harvested, use it for future ops, share it with the Russian government in trade for something, and move on to a new venture.
18/ If for some reason they decide to do the unwise thing and try to survive this, their upstream ISP and DDOS protection vendor will become targets of derision, public pressure, and investigation by law enforcement.

For all these reasons, I think Parler ends today.

END
AND for those of you who did not see the viral thread I did in November on #Parler's improbable founding story, opaque funding, and Matze's ties to Russia, please check it out here!
https://t.co/r8V63qpzLe

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Investigating networked disinformation and influence campaigns is hard. SIGINT is often scarce, and encrypted. But people are sloppy; HUMINT is vital, and developing it requires an iterative approach. Each cycle of reporting exposes more players, which attracts more sources.
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1/ Hey guys, remember that time Steve Bannon ran an army of game virtual currency miners in Asia, for sale to westerners at discount prices, arbitraging attention for profit?

That was

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Four years ago this month, there was an uproar among analysts (and the public) about whether Cambridge Analytica was a PSYOP. The word is triggering; it tends to get people animated, makes people think of conspiracy theories, implies a grand master plan, shadowy operators, etc.

I have a good memory of that. What's happening now re: QAnon and whether it was a PSYOP and by whom is comparable. And it's a pointless debate. Any operation that 1) does target audience analysis, 2) deploys messaging against audiences, 3) tries to alter behavior, is a PSYOP.

The origin of this particular operation is complicated, networked, and muddied by people who wish to both claim and disclaim it. But it is functionally a PSYOP, has borrowed from that heritage, and can be analyzed in those terms. Miss me with claims to the contrary.

Researchers, journalists, and historians need to get to the bottom of how it evolved (and it did evolve, vs. a unified top-down plan), and we can do that if we work in good faith together. But we have to accept the fact that these kinds of operations are now commonplace.

It also helps to use the lens of emergence; information ops evolve, and incorporate DNA from everything that has come before: LARPs, ARGs, PSYOPs, the general public's participation + gullibility. In that context, one doesn't need top-down orchestration, necessarily.
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2/ First, we must help the victims, and focus on helping them restore their bonds to family and community. Second, we must hold the perpetrators accountable. Third, we must shun all those who profit from its continuance.
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@ropebelt Yes, though we have been on edge for deep fakes for a good while now, and remain constantly impressed at how well cheap-fakes and simple manipulations work. Deep fakes are the caviar of the trade, when McNuggets work just fine.
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