Also this bullet point under "Lawful Purposes Only":

> Acting in any manner that might subject us to unfavorable regulatory action, subject us to any liability for any reason, or adversely affect our public image, reputation or goodwill, as determined by us in our sole and exclusive discretion.

I personally never understood the the appeal of Parler, be it on a technical standpoint or privacy and freedom of speech. Especially compared to Gab.

Most users of parlor are not technical people and don't understand anything about it. The reason why parlor got popular is because it was easy for disinformation to be spread and people want to believe in it.

For example when that at&t network center was bombed there was a fake image going around that it "wasn't the van that exploded". I had someone try to "prove to me" it was true by linking me to parlor and it's users creating conspiracies on top of conspiracies. The users there will accept disinformation and made up conspiracies if it benefits their team.

That's sadly the reality of it. People that don't understand tech should not be on the internet. They don't understand the concept of people can and will lie freeley behind a camera or keyboard.

A classical example of "my ignorance is just as good as your education because I don't know any better."

> People that don't understand tech should not be on the internet.

Your elitist, anti-inclusive rhetoric is unnecessary.

> They don't understand the concept of people can and will lie freeley behind a camera or keyboard.

If one of the main claims is "the media lies" then obviously they understand that.

There are valid criticisms but these are not them.

Having the ability to properly operate any machine is not 'elitist'. Computers and the internet were not made for the purposes they are used as now - and therefore they are heavily exploitable for others profit. People that don't understand how it works are significantly more suspectible to apply real world principles in ways that are entirely non applicable.

The average person trusts what others say and does not have a basic understanding of what constitutes facts and evidence. Therefore they cannot navigate truth through the internet.

The problem with social media users (and propagandas victims in general) has nothing to do with how computers work and everything to do with how people work.

>For example when that at&t network center was bombed there was a fake image going around that it "wasn't the van that exploded".

The same thing was plastered all over Twitter and Facebook... your argument doesn't hold water.

Facebook and Twitter don't go out of their way to support conspiracies and are not marketed specifically towards those that consume it.

Fact is people whom want to believe these things heavily gravitated to Parlor and call Facebook and Twitter bad/evil.

Facebook and Twitter are evil.

You're saying that one side's lies are worse than the other side's lies. There is at least as much misinformation on Facebook and Twitter as there was on Parler. What you're really complaining about is that Parler doesn't censor the people you want to see censored.

> People that don't understand tech should not be on the internet.

Do you understand the physics and engineering of all the tech you use?

There's obviously a difference between the broad understanding OP is talking about, and the low-level physics that goes into a computer.

Also, one could say that there's a stark difference between saying people who do not understand how misinformation works on a platform should not use that platform, and for example saying people who don't understand toasters shouldn't use toasters.

For the record, I don't understand the low level physics of toasters. As far as I know, they're magic bagel browning devices.

A toaster has fairly benign failure modes, so this strawman isn't really a reasonable one. Though I hope you understand toasters enough not to trigger your smoke alarm every time.

This is exactly equivalent to when people thought Reddit was something novel when they mobbed and doxed various people in their vigilante internet sleuthing of the boston marathon bomber. It's mobs being mobs: always has and always will be.

People who write 'the concept of people can and will lie freeley behind a camera or keyboard', 'it's users', and 'Parlor' should perhaps pause before accusing others of ignorance in some field.

>People that don't understand tech should not be on the internet. They don't understand the concept of people can and will lie freeley behind a camera or keyboard.

You're under the mistaken impression that people who "understand tech" are never taken in by these conspiracy theories but I've seen plenty of comments on HN supporting QAnon, "stop the steal", pizzagate, COVID conspiracies and anti-vax, scientific racism, anti-semitism, UFO woo and the paranormal, you name it someone on Hacker News believes it.

The evidence that being able to use a computer and being able to think critically or even maintain a rational grasp on the nature of reality are orthogonal skillsets is all around you.

>People that don't understand tech should not be on the internet. They don't understand the concept of people can and will lie freely behind a camera or keyboard.

This is a silly statement. Do you (whoever first said this) think widespread misinformation started with the internet? It has nothing to do with tech and everything to do with people.

People who don't understand people should not be on the internet. Their knowledge of tech is completely orthogonal.

Everything is a gradient - not absolutes. You also have to understand that, again, this is the internet and HN does have political bots.

You can't even sign up without a phone number. Never got an account or went on just for this reason alone.

My point exactly why I don't use services that do this. Signal, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and all the like.

It is plain silly to require phone number verification as a 'security mechanism'

The engineering of Gab (politics aside) is probably worthy of a front page HN post. They run on Mastodon and their entire codebase is open source.

"We have diverged from Mastodon in several ways in pursuit of our own goals. [...]"

https://code.gab.com/gab/social/gab-social/-/blob/develop/RE...

They started out as a Mastodon node, and then got blocked by the wider Fediverse.

https://blog.alexgleason.me/gab-block/

I laughed when his link to his article turned up a 404 at medium with account suspended. Not entirely sure yet if it was a morbid or cynical laugh.

At a more technical level, do we need a 4xx code for "memory holed"? Was this an oversight of the IETF, or should Medium and other discerning and socially responsible content providers use the other available 4xx codes?

Here, 404 "not found" is a pretty lie.

We could start off with the basic 400 "bad request". This is closer to the truth. In fact, it is too close to the truth because it means "client error". (Is it a crime yet to click on "not found" articles?)

So, ok, let's try 401 "unauthorized". This is still better than "not found" but, again, just a bit too honest.

But, really, Medium.com should be responding with 403 "Forbidden". This is the unvarnished truth from the mouth of the server.

403 - Forbidden: "The request contained valid data and was understood by the server, but the server is refusing action. This may be due to the user not having the necessary permissions for a resource or needing an account of some sort, or attempting a prohibited action e.g. creating a duplicate record where only one is allowed)."

"HTTP 451 - Unavailable For Legal Reasons” seems to be getting close?

I think those who think this misunderstand the type of security it is meant to provide. It's not about blocking account takeover attempts. Services mostly don't really care about that, because it doesn't affect the service as a whole. It's about reducing spam, bots, and other organized hostile activity towards the service as a whole. It's tough to create a bunch of accounts in a way that the site can't easily track if you have to provide a real phone number. Yes, everybody knows about buying phone services on the internet, and they do seem to have ways to block using those numbers.

Pretty much every service does this. Try signing up for a Google, Facebook, or Twitter account without providing a real phone number. Usually if it works at all, the account created will be rapidly blocked until you do provide one.

Then I will get spam through my phone number then each time I register it for 'SMS authentication'. Then you'll later ask how did these services not only get my phone number, but also upload my entire address book for 'security reasons'.

A captcha is more than enough.

You're right that you may get a lot of noisy authentication spam texts. Alas, none of the companies involved seem to care. Judging by their popularity, most of their users don't seem to care much either.

Is a captcha enough? I've never worked in bot/spam mitigation for a large public platform before, so I don't really know. Based on how universal phone number requirements are for these services, and how much trouble they seem to have gone to in order to block using easily purchased numbers, I'm going to guess that captchas aren't enough.

It's hard to say captchas are or aren't enough because you know most companies just want your phone number for ulterior motives.

i have simply assumed that the purpose of this requirement generally is for the platform owner to establish your real identity for monetization and/or indemnification, and that any benefit to the user is incidental.

who ever said that "security" meant yours? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's more of a bot prevention mechanism than identification, however, I believe it encourages people to be more responsible for what they post also.

Well a captcha does just that without a phone number.

People will think twice about posting threats, child porn, and other illicit things when they have some skin in the game. This definitely cuts down on moderation requirements.

It is plain silly to require phone number verification as a 'security mechanism

why?

There’s nothing secure about phone numbers, receiving secret codes via SMS, etc

It is secure enough and it is the only reliable second factor to authorize that almost everyone possess.

It is less universal than e-mail (and potentially less-secure), and certainly less secure than TOTP. It also costs money, whereas the former two can be had for free.

Isn’t email hard to set up though? As in, Gmail silently dropping your emails even with DKIM set up properly? There’s services you can pay to have more luck, but then you’re at the same downside as texting

Yes, it absolutely is (though I do still run my own). I do know that it's easier than setting up a phone provider, however, which is more equivalent to setting up one's own ISP.

A phone isn't being used alone though. It's just one part of a 2FA system, right?

Parler asks for an absurd amount of PII. I always figured it was a way for the Mercer crowd to assemble a dossier on the extreme right for use in future highly targeted mobilization efforts.

I don't want to be all conspiratorial or anything but wasn't Parler hacked during the Capitol Hill protest and a bunch of protesters where caught? To me this seems like a successful honeypot.

Which PII? I never created an account but my understanding was name, email and phone number which is no different than most social media.

Exactly, this is misinformation.

The only time they request additional PII is for verification.

(As a security & privacy advocate with a job in the space, I dug into this last summer and again just before the January shutdown. It was never true just for signing up.)

My experience was the same. I did pause at the phone number requirement, but frankly, it's not that uncommon, and is useful for 2FA.

It is not about the appeal, it is about contempt towards Twitter. Also Gab is a bit hard to approach for Parler crowd

Why is that?

My understanding was that the “first wave”, so to speak, of Gab users were the hardcore folks who genuinely had extremist views.

Free Speech and censorship resistant platforms tend to attract users in waves. The first wave is the most extreme, as those users get kicked off mainstream platforms first. Then subsequent waves of users join as less extreme views become problematic. While those waves are less radical, they still have to contend with being in the same pool as the others. Ordinary folks join for idealistic reasons and then see a bunch of radical content. I’m sure that puts a ton of people off. Parler, it seems, wants to be free speech but not that free speech, if you get what I’m saying.

> My understanding was that the “first wave”, so to speak, of Gab users were the hardcore folks who genuinely had extremist views.

> Free Speech and censorship resistant platforms tend to attract users in waves. The first wave is the most extreme, as those users get kicked off mainstream platforms first. Then subsequent waves...

I don't think that's true of social networks. Take Gab for instance: its "first wave" has solidly given it a reputation as a place for extreme racists, which repels everyone else (except maybe a handful of civil libertarians with questionable judgement). That reputation prevents "subsequent waves" of more moderate folks, who would rather go to a different platform.

Also Gab, Parler, et al are really reactions against moderation, not censorship. However, most users actually welcome some level of moderation.

>> It is not about the appeal, it is about contempt towards Twitter. Also Gab is a bit hard to approach for Parler crowd

> Why is that?

IIRC, it's even more extreme (e.g. full of outspoken and unapologetic racists talking about racist things in racist terms).

Which is a direct result of a platform which allows free speech - including speech which neither you nor I may not like.

But to me, free speech means anyone can speak their mind, no matter how ghastly others find it.

And on Gab, I have encountered some pretty unsavoury speech - however, copious use of the Block feature on those I find especially distasteful means that I encounter less of those I find as such.

I'd rather have a platform based on free speech and be able to filter 'undesirables' out myself, than have the platform itself choose the speech it prefers me to see/hear/read.

> But to me, free speech means anyone can speak their mind, no matter how ghastly others find it.

> And on Gab, I have encountered some pretty unsavoury speech - however, copious use of the Block feature on those I find especially distasteful means that I encounter less of those I find as such.

As I understand, being on Gab is pretty much seeking out "ghastly" and "unsavoury" speech. For instance, this comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26145412) described it as:

> I signed up for a Gab account purely out of curiosity. There was literally nothing but misogynistic, homophobic, racist, antisemitic trash content on the entire timeline.

So I guess the question is: what content do you see after your "copious use of the Block feature."?

> I signed up for a Gab account purely out of curiosity. There was literally nothing but misogynistic, homophobic, racist, antisemitic trash content on the entire timeline.

This is clearly not true and easily shown to be so.

There's either free speech, which will include a lot of unsavory, horrible or downright evil content, or there is censorship. It's one or the other. And while censorship might be considered a reasonable trade-off, it immediately turns the platform into a mouthpiece for the politics of the people who run it. And once someone has that kind of power, its abuse is inevitable.

> I signed up for a Gab account purely out of curiosity. There was literally nothing but misogynistic, homophobic, racist, antisemitic trash content on the entire timeline.

That's interesting. Gab.com's timeline is public and is visible to everyone (there is no need to create an account). I just took a peek at it right now and I don't see anything misogynistic, etc. As you quote this particular as a supporting reference, would you be able to share some of Gab's specific timeline content that made that comment writer think that?

> As you quote this particular as a supporting reference, would you be able to share some of Gab's specific timeline content that made that comment writer think that?

You might want to ask them.

i joined parler to follow zerohedge and dr.zelenko. both accounts were flickering on twitter ... banned/un-banned/banned/un-banned

You can follow zerohedge on their website..

their tweets too?

I sorta get it, from the standpoint of just allowing folks to speak their mind without repercussions. Unfortunately in practice that invariably drifts to being somewhere that the worst dregs of society congregate because they aren't welcome anywhere else, and then, well, your site becomes the cesspool that Parler was. :\

It seems there are only endpoints: an echo chamber or a cesspool. All the "mainstream" social media sites are converging on the former.

What can you do if you don't want an echo chamber?

I believe the "echo chamber" concept is overrated. It's really not difficult to go out and find somebody representing the other side of an argument. You can construct yourself an echo chamber if you want, but you don't automatically get one.

The narrative that reasonable points of view are being censored out of existence is part of a narrative constructed to leverage the right-wing persecution complex. There are plenty of right wingers all over social media; it's chock full of them. But that persecution complex has turned into violence, and that complex is perfectly positioned to pretend that trying to stem violence is censorship. (They didn't seem to mind when it was being used to fight anti-American terrorism.)

If you don't want an echo chamber, don't make one. Seek out sensible people with different points of view, which is no harder than taking up an interest in ballet dancing or Malaysian cuisine. They weren't being excluded from your non-ballet-mee-goreng-free circle.

You're not required to give equal time to conspiracy theorists -- and there do exist non-conspiracy-theorist right wingers to talk to, if that's what you want. Social media isn't banning them. The ones who are being banned are using that language to pretend that there's a different reason.

It's all network effect. Parler somehow got some endorsements by well known Republicans like Hannity and Trump at a time when people on the right were looking to switch to something else, so they ended up with a lot more users than Gab.

Parler is bankrolled by Robert Mercer who absolutely has the network to get those kinds of endorsements.

I always worry about the objectives and goals behind the people in the shadows injecting money into projects like this. Twitter started off as an open forum, but look at it now.

What is GB and Twitter appeal?

I strongly suspect they had conversations with SkySilk before moving their services there.

Also, that's a very standard provider clause. No company is going to promise to serve anyone, anywhere, even if they don't want to.

IPFS and MaidSAFE will

I mean, sure, there are companies trying to build a decentralized web, but I think that's different that saying an individual hosting provider will keep you online.

This feels like saying "The Tor network will keep you online". You still need someone providing hardware and electricity. Unless I'm missing something about these offerings.

> This feels like saying "The Tor network will keep you online". You still need someone providing hardware and electricity. Unless I'm missing something about these offerings.

Nobody but you knows that you're hosting hidden tor service. One need to perform a sophisticated attack to discover its location. You can buy VPS from Amazon and host your hidden tor service there and Amazon guys won't have a clue until NSA guys will come to them.

That's true but it's fairly specific to Tor and maybe Freenet. Most decentralized systems don't use onion routing so it's easy to trace any piece of public content back to where it's hosted.

On Safe Network (developed by Maidsafe) * data is self encrypted client side * IP is scrubbed and given a Kademlia or XOR address? I forget exactly * qp2p (QUIC implementation in rustlang w/extra features) encrypts traffic * nodes can’t choose their disjoint section (shard) and are randomly relocated (churn).

Nodes are made up from a ‘Safe’ (previously called ‘Vault’) executable file and some spare space on disk of everyday computers. Nodes first go through a short PoW resource proof so the network knows the nodes capabilities and how to place them. Sybil attacks are prevented in many ways including random placement in sections and random relocation, and node ageing, which is a way of incremental responsibility when a node behaves all the way into the next relocation event and that is halved if misbehaving or offline. You would have to control a significant portion of the network to cause a problem and would be cost prohibitive in most cases. In a young network the highest risk comes from a ‘Google attack’ where they deliberately allocate their resources early on and either try to control the consensus or rug pull their resources which would cause massive data loss.

Safe Network also has Safe Network Token (SN) as an digital payment/incentive layer for providing or purchasing network resources (bandwidth/cpu/storage).

If you think CRDT’s or Asynchronous Trutworthy Transfers (AT2) are neat innovations you should definitely check it out as Maidsafe is really pushing the envelope there. safenetforum.org https://primer.safenetwork.org/

Definitely love MaidSAFE. I asked them several times how they recover from corrupted section consensus and they say they don’t. Vitalik Buterin has a problem with that, as do I. But I guess churn eventually recovers it right?

If you have a lot of sleeper nodes coordinate a google attack the network is unrecoverable though...

>You can buy VPS from Amazon and host your hidden tor service there and Amazon guys won't have a clue until NSA guys will come to them.

Amazon can monitor what runs on their servers.

Encrypt filesystem. While technically they could monitor RAM traffic or even CPU instructions, I would be extremely impressed if they have necessary tools to spy on tor nodes.

They can see the processes.

It’s a server running on their hypervisor. Their hypervisor can see every single process.

Tangent: where was Silk Road hosted?

TOR’s onion services. Someone should clone it and publish to the the Safe Network. Anyone can be the next DPR.

But isn’t an onion service just a server only accessible over TOR? What I’m asking is: where was the server? Who was physically hosting the website (either knowingly or unknowingly)?

Yes.

It could have been hosted anywhere. TOR isn’t a hosting service but a means to access them.

From NYT: > It was unclear how Parler had figured out how to host its site on computer servers, the central technology underpinning any website. Many of the large web-hosting firms had previously rejected it. For other services required to run a large website, Parler relied on help from a Russian firm that once worked for the Russian government and a Seattle firm that once supported a neo-Nazi site.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/15/technology/parler-back-on...

Wondering how they reached this conclusion and based on what the report didn't even mention the company name.

>Russian firm that once worked for the Russian government and a Seattle firm that once supported a neo-Nazi site.

They just can't give it up.