> What I find astonishing is that—at least according to that heat map—it appears that bordering on 100% of the people using Parler in DC that day we’re part of the riot / coup / insurrection.

These are location from pictures. Of course almost all pictures are of the riots instead of some boring random street in Washington DC.

Even people who are not part of it will take pictures simply because it is a major event and nowadays, every time something interesting happens, there are people to take pictures. You are probably going to find similar heat maps on more mainstream social networks.

> at least according to that heat map—it appears that bordering on 100% of the people using Parler in DC that day we’re part of the riot / coup / insurrection.

Are you sure it's not just a heat map of only those videos?

DC voted 93-5% for Biden. Not gonna be many native Parler users there.

OPSEC 101: blend in, don't look suspicious. By banning these communities from the regular media (Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, ...), they need to gather via "anything goes" path where 'freedom of speech' protects their hate speech, such as bulletproof hosting. Which is expensive, and of which all traffic to/from is suspicious by default. Its essentially akin to Bitcoin mixing, or avoiding Monero.

This was exactly my take away from the heat map. If that's all the GPS coords from video taken on Parler that day than it looks to be exclusively used by those supporting/participating/sharing the riot on the US Capital.

Some people stayed just outside of the capital and didn't necessarily do anything wrong.

I mean, look how DC voted in the last election.

The same way it has since I’ve been alive. What’s your point?

that a DC citizen is exceedingly unlikely to be a Parler user unless they're an external protestor or a congressperson (or congressional staff, I guess).