Last night Amazon announced that they would stop hosting Parler tonight. This comes on the heels of Apple banning Parler from the App Store, and Google banning them from the Google Play Store.
The short answer of what this means for Parler is that they’ll probably be down for a few days until they find a new host, and there will never be a Parler app on a mobile device. In other words, their status on the Internet — meaning how they will be treated by other tech companies and potential investors — has been demoted from something like Twitter or Facebook to a porn site. I don’t mean that as a joke, and if you want to understand why, read on.
In order to be a first-class Internet social media company, one that investors are willing to think can make them billions instead of millions, you need (at least) four things, in roughly this order:
- High Quality Cloud Host Provider – This is essentially access to computers installed and maintained by Amazon or a similar provider (like Google). This allows your tech staff to increase capacity at essentially a push of a button, and a number of time-consuming things like backup, redundancy, etc. are handled by the host, not you.
- A Mobile App – Only mobile apps allow usable push alerts, an easy way to post pictures and video, etc. These are approved and distributed by either Apple or Google on their app stores.
- Advertising and, more importantly, Advertisers – Specifically, mainstream advertisers who participate in ad networks, because they pay better than, say, My Pillow.
- Credit Card Acceptance – This might not be obvious, but a good number of social apps charge a small fee for higher tier services. Reddit Gold is one example.
Until a few days ago, Parler had all these things. Today, they have none of them. But that doesn’t mean they won’t be able to function as a social network, but they will do so in exactly the same way that porn sites do:
- Hosting – None of the big cloud providers will host porn. I assume (it isn’t well reported) that they pay second tier data centers to co-locate servers. This adds expense and inconvenience, but that’s it.
- Mobile Apps – There are no mobile porn apps, since they violate the terms of service of the app stores. The best that Parler will have is a mobile-friendly website.
- Advertising – Tide and GM do not advertise on porn sites. Parler will have to find advertisers willing to have their ads appear next to violent calls for insurrection. A lot of the ads will probably be for right-wing scams.
- Credit Cards – This is precarious. Pornhub recently purged 2/3 of their videos because MasterCard and Visa stopped processing their transactions after a Nick Kristof story broke that they were hosting revenge and child porn.
Pornhub got a lot of attention from that Kristof piece recently, and it turns out that (surprise) their owners are very shady (I know, shocked face!) Parler is financed in part by Rebekah Mercer.
Whether or not the Mercers or the Kochs or whatever other big money Republicans who are thinking about starting up “Instagram for Insurrectionists” or whatever will be deterred by the fact that it will now cost more and probably won’t make them much money. But they will still exist and they will still spread hate.
tom
They are going to be down for much longer than a few days, even if they find a new host in that short of a time – which is doubtful. This is an excellent thread explaining why by someone who knows what they are talking about. https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig/status/1348116976019771392
germy
Rebekah Mercer…. Now there’s a name I haven’t seen in ages. She and her dad really decided to lay low these past few years.
Can Trump get an Etsy account? Maybe he can sell his merchandise there, and then supplement with an onlyfans account.
tom
@tom: wow, first time at the number one spot!
Gin & Tonic
Whether Parler is down for a few days or a few weeks or months is largely dependent on how they built (programmed) the site. If they used the AWS API’s extensively (they say they didn’t, but you can’t know for sure) then moving the site will require time/money to rebuild.
germy
germy
@tom:
I’ve been there a few times, and believe me it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The glory fades. The sun sets and rises the next day, and life’s struggles remain.
Zinsky
Very interesting — thanks for the analysis and all the links. I think Trump’s tiny brain must be squirming over his inability to get his vile, hate-filled missives out to his minions over Twitter. I am personally enjoying the mere thought of the obese, orange spray-painted thug fuming over his cellphone, his hideous mottled skin becoming more and more red and venous. Removing his Twitter account is the closest we will get to the visceral satisfaction of castrating this monster.
Wag
@tom: Ah, the glory days of “Frist!”
satby
@germy: 😆😆👍
tom
@germy: well, you’re just a ray of sunshine, aren’t you :)
Quinerly
Thank you for this.
catclub
@germy:
I would expect Trump to use GoFundMe.
The Other Bob
The expertise of BJ commentators serves us well once again. Thanks
MattF
I think one should assume that the Parler spokesliars are lying. My question is, how to get the truth here?
Spanky
@catclub: ABC. Always Be Closing.
MoCA Ace
@germy:
Yup. just ask Kanye. Same thing.
Chyron HR
ElectionsAttempts to overthrow the US government have consequences? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯Betty Cracker
I read somewhere that the Mercers owe $7 billion (yes, with a B) in back taxes. Maybe a beefed up IRS enforcement unit focused on wealthy tax cheats could focus the Mercers’ attention on matters closer to home. I’m not suggesting selective prosecution of right wing lunatic tax cheats, just enforcement of current rules across the board.
debbie
@germy:
A fucking Republican commissioner has learned nothing. Prison for every fucking one of them.
p.a.
Hope reporters track down Grassley and Pompeo and ask them if it delegated to them, would they have ‘authorized’ the EVs as delivered. Let’s put a target on a few more.
trnc
CNN reported that Nikki Haley and Pompeo are VERY CONCERNED about “The President” not being able to tweet, and then pointed out that previous presidents got by without twitter and have other ways of communicating while showing an empty WH press briefing room.
Fair Economist
@germy:I doubt Etsy would accept a Trump account at this point. They already banned QAnon.
Ella in New Mexico
@germy:
I so hate that frigging guy. I have no idea how he manages to remain on the Otero County Commission.
Sitting on top of his pony like he’s a real cowboy he inserts his nasty, kooky, bigoted rhetoric into every single divisive right wing event he can. He’s been banned from the Mescalero Reservation in nearby Lincoln county for degradation of sacred grounds and spreading lies about their leaders.
He’s as dumb as a rock but he’s as dangerous as a rattlesnake, and he’s a stain on my otherwise beautiful state. But to be honest, as extreme as he is he reflects the “Texas” side of New Mexico’s extreme MAGA/Redness, (which extends into rural areas in our western side too). Their numbers statewide are tiny, but our district is drawn to include practically ALL of them. It’s why we recently lost a classy, effective moderate Democrat in our district who was replaced by a trashy, dishonest and totally MAGA trailer park queen who believes that the only job she has is to support Donald Trump. Our last was Steve Pearce, another POS who now runs the NM Republican party.
I’m hearing rumbles in the Roundhouse they’re thinking of redrawing our district to reduce the 60/40 ratio of Red to Blue. It won’t come fast enough for me. They’ve done enough damage.
Roger Moore
The question to me is whether Parler will continue in business or whether it will be immediately replaced by a new app named Sprach that looks and functions identically and just happens to be funded by the same group of ultra-rich right wingers.
trnc
I’m all for enforcement of current rules across the board but with a large focus on billionaire tax cheats. The bang for the buck would help fund enforcement across the board. Also, any billionaire who has decided to cheat in our unbelievably billionaire-friendly tax system really deserves to be highlighted. I’d say shamed, but we know they have none. One of my biggest tax-related gripes about republican law and policy makers is that they don’t say, “We cut your taxes. We expect you to be good corporate citizens and pay them,” but I realize it’s because that doesn’t fit the all-grievance-all-the-time assholes.
trnc
I get the question in general toward any republican, but why Grassley in particular? Did he make some kind of insurrection friendly comment that I missed?
Ken
@MattF: If you mean the truth about how long it will take them to get back up, in a thread yesterday I mentioned an old software joke. At least, I think it’s a joke, but it often works.
Take the estimate, double it, and bump the unit up a notch. So “up in one week” becomes “up in two months”.
WhatsMyNym
Android allows you to get apps outside of their store, it only requires a settings change. So no major road block there.
Baud
@trnc:
Grassley is the President of the Senate if Pence is killed. Pompeo is after Pence, Pelosi, and Grassley in presidential succession.
piratedan
@trnc: he’s got an entire infrastructure to get his message out to his peeps, it’s called a News Conference. He shows up and talks and can even answer direct questions if he chooses to do so. Again more coddling for a tyrant/toddler from his political enablers.
p.a.
@trnc: Just going by next in line if the mob got to Pence & Nancy. EVs still had to be counted: pro-forma democracy would have been good p.r.
ETA: ^What Baud said^
Ken
@Roger Moore: AWS terms of service remain the same. One thing we need to make sure of is that AWS, Google, Apple, etc. keep enforcing those terms.
People were calling out Trump on Twitter years ago, but Twitter’s response was to carve out a special “but he’s the president” exception. So theoretically they might have dropped him on the 20th, but this timeline will never know.
trnc
How do we start to clamp down on calls to violence without running afoul of free speech? One way will be to actually make the platforms responsible for their content, which I know is already under discussion. They shouldn’t be able to rake in billions and then say they have no way to monitor. I’d also like to see a violent action become prima facie evidence of any violent rhetoric that led to it. That would allow realistic calls “Let’s spill blood on the House floor” to be prosecuted if followed by an insurrection (and maybe for some period after), while allowing obvious satire like “Let’s fly a helicopter over the Capitol, cut off the top of the dome, vaporize all the democrats and put the top back on so no one knows we were there.”
Hmm, someone with a badge is knocking at my door. GOTTA GO! (No, not really).
catclub
My understanding is that if their outer limits tax avoidance scheme is rejected, then they will owe $7B, and the decision is still pending.
As to funding more audits of rich people, because that is where the tax cheating is, I agree.
catclub
You mean repealing section 230, that Trump vetoed the NDAA over?
Strange bedfellows.
artem1s
Thanks for this post. Helps a lot.
@tom: thanks for the link. it was also very good. especially where he answers questions
https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig/status/1348116976019771392
different-church-lady
Appropriate, since everything Trump does is just political pornography.
artem1s
@Roger Moore:
given what went on Wednesday, they should have started with Sprach.
different-church-lady
@germy:
If you’re Christian you’re supposed to do that EVERY DINGDONG DAY, even if you didn’t do anything wrong, were you not paying attention in church all these years?
different-church-lady
@Roger Moore: “Sprachr”
MoCA Ace
I cannot fathom the epic shitshow this would become. In his reported mental state I think the baseline would be incoherent screaming, uncontrolled wailing, and loss of bodily functions. Were he not a coward I would guarantee direct physical attacks of the press corps.
different-church-lady
I just realized: they’re all going to be hanging out on the dark web, just like the “deep state” they keep yammering about.
kindness
I thought I read that Rebekah Mercer was part owner of Parler, She has deep pockets. But these developments probably change the amount of money she’s willing to dump on the investment.
Calouste
@WhatsMyNym: We’re talking about people here who keep their work badge around their neck while committing crimes. Side loading an app is going to be a major obstacle for that kind of intellect.
Barbara
They will basically work the way chat boards used to work and a few blogs still do. It’s only slightly amusing that these hurdles pertain much more to monetizing than engaging in speech.
dexwood
@Ella in New Mexico: This New Mexican thanks you for what you wrote. Fake cowboy Griffen is a real fascist who needs to suffer consequences for his words and actions. He’s a dangerous pro 2nd Amendment Solution asshole.
sdhays
@different-church-lady: If he goes to a prosperity gospel church, he’s supposed to be praying for the baby Jesus to make it rain
ETA: Well, really he’s just supposed to be figuring out how to hoover up as much money as possible, regardless of how, and the baby Jesus will smile on him. The proof will be all the money he has.
O. Felix Culpa
@Ella in New Mexico: @dexwood:
This New Mexican agrees. (Waves from CD-3)
dexwood
@O. Felix Culpa: Waving back from south of you.
Haroldo
@different-church-lady:
My assumption from the git-go is that’s where the nastier and more savvy types do the real organizing/planning.
kirbster
I tried watching a couple of the Sunday shows, but quit in disgust after about two minutes. On Face the (GOP) Nation, Senator Roy Blount was infantalizing the President, comparing his incitement to “touching a hot stove,” as if he were a four-year-old, and assured Margaret Brennan that he would behave himself for the next 10 days, so it’s all good. On Meet the (Conservative) Press, Mick Mulvaney was whining to Chuck Todd about how all of the MSM have always been so mean and unfair to the President. Sure, he did a bad thing, but we just don’t try to understand…
Parfigliano
@Ella in New Mexico: Chaves County New Mexican couldnt agree more on need need to re-district down here
O. Felix Culpa
@dexwood: Howdy, neighbor!
@Parfigliano: Here’s hoping! I wonder if Xochitl would consider running again in 2022.
matt the somewhat reasonable
The analogy I’d use is Stormfront.
wombat probability cloud (previously "askew")
@Baud: I’ve been thinking about Pompeo with regards to succession. Must pain him greatly to see his window closing on the possibility of using nukes to bring on the end times. Wonder if he had an active hand in the coup attempt; Pence, Pelosi, and Grassley all were in the Capitol.
wombat probability cloud (previously "Askew")
@Baud: Pompeo came to mind last Wednesday when I thought about Pence, Pelosi, and Grassley all being in the Capitol under siege. The possibility of getting control of nukes to bring on the end times must have occurred to him, especially given that his window of time is closing. Or maybe he isn’t that nuts? Dunno.
Major Major Major Major
Censorship by low level parts of the Web stack like this is very troubling to me. Things like this are why I support net neutrality, which is far from an exact parallel but close enough for an analogy.
Ella in New Mexico
@dexwood: @O. Felix Culpa: @Parfigliano:
I’ve lived in Southern NM since 1986 and now spend my workweek as an NP at UNMH in Albuquerque so I’ve got feet and heart in both CD1 and CD2. Even with all their various flaws I love them both but will still be voting down in Las Cruces until the hubby finally decides to retire from White Sands and we move up here permanently, which is in about 3 years…
Seriously, the only way we’re going to tamp down on this bizarre road the MINORITY party R’s are going down, both here in New Mexico and around the country, is to re-balance their presence and thus power to overwhelm our election system. CD 2 is as gerrymandered their way as a district possibly could be—I was amazed how Xochitl Torres managed to physically cover it’s geography to canvass it during her campaigns and tenure, much less find a way to address many of its diverse needs. (I still find it amazing that she managed to pull off being elected in 2018 by a few thousand votes then lost by 20k this fall, but that’s for another thread…
Anyway, we got a lotta good work to do in our state. Let’s pray for a great legislative year!!!
debbie
@Major Major Major Major:
Then what’s your solution?
Miss Bianca
@dexwood:
@Ella in New Mexico:
I feel for you both. My county commissioners are Republicans, but even the craziest one isn’t that actively evil. My new US “representative” Lauren Boebert, on the other hand…
different-church-lady
@Major Major Major Major: Ironic, ain’t it?
Major Major Major Major
@debbie: I don’t have to have a solution to say we should maybe not cheer this on. There are no particularly good options.
theturtlemoves
@WhatsMyNym: Start side-loading apps on your phone and see how long it takes for it to get completely bricked. Particularly the average Parler user who is quite likely not a mobile app developer.
boatboy_srq
Knowing a little about cloud services and hosting providers, and about conservatists and how they handle disaster preparedness, I have a few things to add.
It’s unlikely that Parler or other conservatist platforms have done much in the way of backups or offsite storage for their platform. They’ve been relying on AWS or whoever to handle that for them. Ransomware propagators are, in perverse sense, distant allies; Parler haven’t been especially careful about recovery from their attacks since they think they’re targeting the same people. With their cloud environment down and the vendor in no way obligated to provide them their data back out of that space, they’ll have lost a LOT of information and at least the last three versions of their platform. Even if they have tried to extract their environment, data egress charges (the cost of downloading your stuff out of a cloud environment) can be fierce, and paying for those will be problematic in the near term.
Finding new hosting space in the West is going to be difficult. Even with new datacenters and cloud servicers coming online regularly, demand – especially from the public sector and from public sector contractors – is such that they will be looking 6 to 12 months out for new hosting space. And with none of the major players willing to allocate space for them, negotiating a new datacenter, cloud-provider-hosted or not, will take time – and resources they at the moment do not have income to supply. There may be datacenters in some emerging market – Bulgaria, Ukraine and Russia come to mind – that would have capacity they would be willing to supply at rates that undercut US or EU providers, but those come with even less defensibility and far more rickety infrastructure.
It is also unlikely they have much in the way of cash reserves. Outfits like these still run right on the edge, relying on venture capital and favorable lending practices. Both of those are about to dry up: the former from bad publicity and the latter due to the vastly increased risk. It’s entirely possible that they will fold before replacement hosting becomes available.
What deprovisioning will not do is inhibit individual consumer-grade resources. With residential broadband Internet service growing ever more affordable, and servers becoming cheaper, faster and more energy-efficient, hosting in your basement is becoming more practical. Parler could, with a few hundred thousand, stand up minicenters in its key investors’ basements and hang them off residential gigabit connections. They would be vastly below the capacity of the cloud providers, and they would rely on things like Nutanix’ Acropolis hypervisor (free with Nutanix hardware) instead of the cloud resource, but they could resume some percentage of their old business this way in a matter of two or three weeks. People like the Mercers would probably be willing to give up a basement game room for a few seasons to support such an effort, and it’s likely that the people willing to do this would have some of the resources – broadband, HVAC, generators, underused floor space – required for a stopgap operation. This would not be a durable situation: one by one they would be shut down and moved as rackspace in a real datacenter becomes available. And it’s unlikely that anyone providing such capacity will have any meaningful understanding of the climate controls, energy consumption, site security, data security, or other considerations necessary to running such a space normally requires: expect some of these sites to overheat, to get disconnected by their electric utility, to get breached by some electrician or other serviceperson, or have their service interrupted for extended periods (consumer-grade service is prioritized below business service).
I also disagree with the mobile app evaluation in the post. They may not get Apple or Google to host an app for them, but it is possible – and practical – to host an iOS or Android app offsite as a third-party application. A number of more-risque social networks have the family-rated versions of their apps on Apple/Google and the unrated ones hosted elsewhere for the more adventurous to obtain. The dunces that subscribe to outfits like Parler will not think twice before downloading and installing apps not verified by either Apple or Google stores, or bypassing verifications and accepting the risks: in a sense the external nature is an incentive and not a deterrent here. However, it will slow down readoption, because without the big players there to keep their apps searchable and potentially recommended by the platform fewer people will find the replacement right away.
boatboy_srq
@Major Major Major Major: Expect the Reichwingnuts to discover a love affair with Internet Neutrality in a matter of days, maybe hours. Profit motives for providers only work when your shtick is making money, and repealing 230 is only attractive when it’s Those People’s comments that are quashed; the moment the funding stream dries up and their own posts face bans, then it’s time to protect that sweet sweet Free Speech.
Bill Arnold
@trnc:
You are saying that these BJ comment sections should go away.
Bill Arnold
@Major Major Major Major:
Likewise. AWS is infrastructure, like electricity and sewage. And the US is not the only jurisdiction that will demand deplatforming. It’s similar to deplatforming by breaking DNS; very easy to normalize.
Just Chuck
@WhatsMyNym: 99.9% of Android users aren’t going to sideload their apps, and even fewer iPhone users will jailbreak their phones. The mobile app is toast for good. Plus they still have nowhere to host the backend of the app. Sure as fuck GCP and Azure aren’t going to take them. Most likely their domain registrar will kick them off next, which means they kiss their website bye-bye no matter where it’s hosted, or suffer really sporadic access at least. The zone is already hosted on AWS Route53, so they could shut it down right now, at least temporarily.
I predict Parler will go out of business within a year, though it’ll probably be replaced by something else even more pathetic. Probably move on to Mastodon or something, splitting the network in two as operators blacklist their nodes en masse.
unique uid
@boatboy_srq:
Good post, I’m in general agreement with your comments. But I don’t see it being that easy to load an app on IOS without using Apple’s store?
Android is trivial to side load. All my devices are pre-Android 7, so I’m not going to try it, but it seems to be four easy steps.
(honey, just doing those google searches so I could reply here!)
Parler has an additional problem – sounds like their AWS hosting goes down at midnight. If they successfully migrate something somewhere else, odds are background things will change and the existing installed mobile apps will cease functioning. Maybe if they don’t lose DNS registration? Seems like the feds should take that over immediately if they are serious about putting down the insurrection.
Bruuuuce
@boatboy_srq:
Last time I looked (admittedly, some time ago), residential internet service contracts forbade establishing commercial entities (because the providers want to sell more expensive commercial connections). Is that not still the case, or would these somehow not be considered commercial enterprises? (Or, conceivably, these momzers would simply be trying to cheat and do it anyway.)
Villago Delenda Est
@germy: An “evangelical Christian”. That is, a racist Mammon worshiper.
LongHairedWeirdo
@tom: That is correct, I can tell you, sight unseen.
First, there’s a lot of data to move. Unless you’re a big company, just the bandwidth to move that data in a reasonable amount of time can be expensive. Next, a new cloud services provider will have subtly different offerings of hardware, services, etc., which means a lot of testing, and, of course, *reloading* all that data you had to move away from Amazon. And they’re probably toxic to all other major cloud services providers too.
I’ve been thinking that the Capitol riot can’t help but break the back of the Republican movement. (Not “conservative” – Republicans haven’t been conservative for a long time. “Right wing” works, of course.)
@Roger Moore:
I’m now hopeful that a new app wouldn’t last very long; people will be watching for sedition, violent revolution, and so forth, now.
(Does everyone else realize how crazy it is, that the previous sentence had to be written?)
LongHairedWeirdo
@different-church-lady: It seems to me the dogma of evangelicals is “we’ve accepted Christ’s sacrifice to wash away our sins, so we’re already forgiven; no need to beg for something we already have!”
I assume this is why they have no problem bearing false witness against so many of their neighbors.
BigJimSlade
@Wag: “Frist!” – that takes me back!
Earl
The only thing I disagree with for this analysis is that they may not care much about advertisers. Suppose the Mercers are willing to burn $100m/year on this.
Also, much of the design challenges of, eg, a Twitter are due to scale. And what non-engineers may not understand is that perf and design challenges are exponential in scale, not linear. eg when you can fit everything in a single database, stuff is a hell of lot easier. Going distributed is 10x effort. Going distributed and fixing your hot spots — eg a super high follow account with tons of replies — may be another 10x effort on top.
I think the real endgame is more like Trump starts up some Trumpy blog and charges $10 – $50/mo from a whole bunch of suckers for access. Though to the aforementioned point, who exactly is processing the credit card payments for this?
MisterForkbeard
@tom: They could be up again in a week. I run some services on Oracle’s equivalent software (OCI), and depending on the complexity of the software and whether or not they’d made any preparations ahead of time, then you can do this relatively quickly.
By all accounts Parler is a mess, code-wise. If they just threw a bunch of shit together and didn’t use AWS-specific calls, it’s possible they can just lift-and-shift the code over to another set of VMs and servers. Then they just need to move their databases, change the configurations and so on.
If they had plans for this sort of thing knowing they might get shut down, that’s the optimal scenario and it might take well under a week – especially if they have a high tolerance for bugs and failures once they go live.
If they’re heavily AWS integrated it’s going to take them a long time. If they didn’t have any disaster prep or succession plans, it’s going to take them a long time. But sure, it’s possible they could up again in a week, particularly if they don’t mind bad performance, no failover protection, and know there will be a significant amount of bugs to resolve and hotfix.
Adam Lang
FYI there is no reason that they will not have an Android app. There are plenty of places to sell Android apps besides the Google Play store.
MisterForkbeard
@Major Major Major Major: It’s come up in prior conversations here, but I really wouldn’t call this censorship.
All of these services had specific terms of service and guidelines on what you could and could not do with the service. They’d been ignoring and carving out exceptions for conservatives for YEARS, and it’s been well documented.
In this case, applying the same standards they apply to everyone else isn’t censorship at all. That there’s the potential for censorship is absolutely correct – these tech groups could totally decide that criticism of the President is out of line and turn off services for liberals tomorrow, theoretically. And one of two of them doing it gives political cover for all the rest to do it.
It’s sort of like saying that the police could arrest you for no reason and then get a judge to go along with it and throw you in jail. Absolutely. But I don’t know what you do about that, since it’s built into the infrastructure of the system.
MisterForkbeard
@Bruuuuce: My own concern is that they could use old-school datacenters pretty easily.
Traditional DCs have been getting retired at a breakneck pace for years as companies move into AWS/OCI/Azure space. There’s a LOT of old defunct datacenters running on 3-10 year old hardware that are deprioritized and being phased out.
Assuming good connections (and you know these guys have them) it wouldn’t be hard to find and move into a physical DC. You’d have a fair amount of bugs, performance problems and disaster recovery issues while doing so, but the hardware IS available.
@boatboy_srq: Regarding the app, I think everyone is forgetting something. There won’t be an OFFICIAL parler app on the appstore. But existing users will probably be able to continue to use it, and there’s absolutely no reason we won’t get a billion and a half unofficial parler apps, even if some of them are just pass-throughs for a mobile web browser.
If Parler has a public API, this gets even easier to do.
MisterForkbeard
@Earl: The thing is, you’re talking about building a quality program with good performance metrics that’s scalable and agile enough to handle high demand.
There’s no particular evidence that this is what Parler wants to be. Their program is crap, has a lot of bugs and already has performance issues. I can completely believe that they’d be willing to stand up an even-shittier version of their software with lots of bugs in it and then blame it on Tech Giants for forcing them into it. They’d be right in this case, too. It would even help their victimization complex.
boatboy_srq
@Bruuuuce: Rules don’t mean much to wingnuts. Sane with best practices or due diligence. And EULAs are for suckers.
There are regulations on what you can hang off residential service, but the penalties are bandwidth throttling and eventual (temporary) disconnection, much like going over your data allotment on your mobile phone plan. Not a lot of teeth in the enforcement.
My guess is that if they follow that model, they won’t pay much attention to the fine print, because they are Speshul™ and the telcos won’t go after them. And short term they will likely be correct.
burnspbesq
@catclub:
‘The basket-options scheme is before the U.S. Tax Court in a case brought by a hedge fund called GWA Associates. The IRS likely won’t move against Renaissance until the GWA case is resolved, unless Renaissance forces the agency’s hand by refusing to extend the statute of limitation. My guess is it will be at least 2023 before anything is resolved re the Mercers.
https://www.bloombergquint.com/markets/irs-decision-is-bad-omen-for-rentech-tax-dispute-worth-billions
boatboy_srq
@MisterForkbeard: Not sure the app will work without having known endpoints to talk to. Unless it resolves names for resources, and those names come back up someplace, the clients won’t have anywhere to connect to. And IF Amazon hosted Parler’s DNS as well as its server farm, that will take at least a couple days to recover elsewhere. I don’t think Parler is like some of the headless apps like BitTorrent that can run without a central resource. And if the endpoints are hardcoded in the app then all the old ones are useless until the next update.
burnspbesq
ETA: interesting that the counter-party in the basket-options transactions is none other than … wait for it … Deutsche.
J R in WV
@MisterForkbeard:
When I first worked on a project to move databases, I had a team of 4 very sharp developers, and it took months to develop and test extract programs that could also insert data into the new DB.
Second time we wrote routines to extract IBM IMS mainframe DB data into flat files, and used DB utilities to insert data into Oracle tables. The jobs ran for hours, and we had arranged to run the jobs right next to the mainframe supporting the production databases, during evening off hours.
I think Parler is screwed. They won’t have access to their data, it was acquired against the rules of their host.
If I was with Amazon Services I wouldn’t answer their phone calls, I would transfer them to the local FBI office to talk to a helpful FBI agent with a tech background. No telling what the FBI would learn, huh?
boatboy_srq
@LongHairedWeirdo: Agreed. For FundiEvangelical Xtianists, Forgiveness™ seems to be something you only need provided once.
boatboy_srq
@MisterForkbeard: Dunno about the rest of the country, but NOVA can’t build datacenters fast enough to keep up with demand. Conventional users are being replaced by AWS, Azure, GCP, IBM and the rest. The historical use case may be waning but demand is at least constant.
Major Major Major Major
@MisterForkbeard: as you note, terms of service are patchy in both construction and enforcement, and at any rate they shouldn’t be slavishly followed since these services should retain discretion above all or else they will be gamed. This was not a decision driven by ToS violations.
LongHairedWeirdo
@MisterForkbeard: I’d suggest that you’re assuming that Parler isn’t viewed as being toxic from a PR perspective. Sure, there are data centers, but co-locating for Parler isn’t going to appeal to major businesses; and, they still need to get the hardware, which is a non-trivial process.
Remember, that’s why cloud services are so popular. They handle the hardware; the network connections; the actual *network itself* – no need for routers and switches, much less network cabling, and even if those commodities are cheap, you have to hire a pro to build a good network and string cable. They provide internet access. They repair the hardware when it is no longer working, without having to send someone to the data center and they do that on the fly – the old hardware just gets replaced, and restarted.
I’ve boggled at some of AWS’s prices, not because I thought they were expensive, but because I’d never thought all that stuff was *that* valuable in the past. And then, well…
You know how you can build out an international website quickly on AWS? You can offload the non-text content to S3, which will take a huge load off of your hardware. If they used S3, they have to edit every website page or the equivalent, to change how they are pointing to images/etc..
I’ve seen someone talk about AWS “APIs” but really, a bigger question is services. Did they build a load balancer, or use AWS’s prebuilt ones? Did they use Amazon to accept payments? Did they use Amazon to centralize authentication and authorization? Do they think it’s as easy to build a local network, and keep it secure with various firewalls, etc., versus spinning up a VPC and locking it down with security groups and ACLs?
I’ll be the first to admit, I’m sometimes caught by surprise at how competent people can build out something incredibly complicated quickly. But remember: grifters usually grift because they *don’t* have that raw competence, that would set them up nicely through honest work. And anyone who thought that Parler was needed because of Twitter “censorship” has already shown a deficiency in critical thinking that makes me strongly suspect their competence.
boatboy_srq
@LongHairedWeirdo: You’re making me think that Parler in the cloud was a “lift’n’shift” from on-prem, and that the folks running it were racking up huge usage charges because they didn’t redesign for SaaS. If that is the case, reconstructing will be easier provided they still have source code, but data will be harder to extract. If not, then they’ll have a slightly easier time getting their data out, but reconstructing to match a different infrastructure will be a bear. And there’s still a good likelihood of actual server names and internal (therefore compromised) IP addresses the app is talking to that will need to be completely replaced for clients to reconnect, not to mention all the new DNS and Internet registrar updates that will be needed.
Earl
@MisterForkbeard:
Can’t debate the humanity of african americans if Parler keeps crashing tho. Or more importantly, act as a focal point for eg Trump and his successors to broadly distribute their message.
Others, I do think that bringing parler up on on-prem hardware will not be horrifically complex. They’re going to have to learn how to admin their own databases, but they can use either postgres or mysql just like on RDS. And folks like James Damore have some downtime to help… Haproxy etc are still there; all the tools that existed to build high-load sites 10 years ago are even more polished. I think the biggest thing that may hold them back is the indelible resume stain this would create for most of the employers in the valley.
Arclite
@Adam Lang:
Amazon also delisted their app. They can still sideload the .apk file, if they can find a place where it’s available. It still raises the problem of having no database to connect to once AWS pulls the plug.
LongHairedWeirdo
@boatboy_srq: Actually, I was trying to talk about the opposite.
I’d bet they built it in AWS, for AWS. Building it on prem would take a heck of a lot more work, and cost a heck of a lot more money.
If I’m right – if it was built in AWS – they may have no flippin’ idea how to move it to on-prem.
If I’m wrong – they still had to make a lot of changes to move it to AWS, and now, they’re probably so used to being kids in the AWS candy store, that they don’t have the resources to move it back as it is. So they again have to redesign it, either to move back to on-prem (an extraordinary process in itself, and, requiring big up-front capital expenditure) or to a competing web provider (need to review, and possibly modify, *everything*).
Again, I’ve seen amazing people do amazing things, so if this was, say, Twitter, I wouldn’t be too surprised if they got it moved quickly. (I mean that literally: sure, I’d be surprised, but not, you know, *REALLY* surprised.) For Parler? I’d offer pretty good odds against them getting back up and running quickly, if I was a betting man.
boatboy_srq
@LongHairedWeirdo: I’m seeing hints that they avoided Amazon-specific constructs. Which is possible, but also says they are kinda stupid with money (we already know they’re kinda stupid with politics and really stupid with insurgency, so that tracks) because building in AWS without using the native tools makes for ugly configurations and higher bills. They already have an off-store app posted to replace the Google Play offering for Android at least. If they are this prepared, they probably have their data on its way down – and equally probably either don’t know or don’t care about data egress fees (yet).
The next couple weeks will be interesting to watch. Will they find another hosting provider? How reputable will such an entity be – and how reliable and resilient? Did they move to an on-prem farm someplace? What format? And where? Who is still selling them connectivity?
boatboy_srq
@LongHairedWeirdo: Afterthought: By the “lift’n’shift” reference I meant that they had originated on-prem and moved it to AWS without redesigning for cloud, not that they were actually running on-prem.
Another Scott
[ whomp, whomp ]
(via TheRealHoarse)
Cheers,
Scott.