Parler is back online now by routing 100% of its user traffic through servers located within the Russian Federation.
Raise your hand if you understand the very significant impact this has on the ability to surveil and target insurrectionists who organize on Parler.
— Chris Vickery (@VickerySec) January 18, 2021
There are two interesting takeaways here.
The first is that anyone in the US planning further acts of low intensity warfare and political violence in the US on Parler are now going to be much, much, much, much easier for US intelligence to track. Because Parler’s now being hosted in Russia. MORONS!!!
The second is that this supports the theory that Parler was always a Russian data collection, surveillance, misinformation, and disinformation op to begin with. As this detailed Twitter thread, which I’ll excerpt, seems to suggest:
So let’s talk about Parler. Where did it come from? Founder John Matze met his now wife, Alina Mukhutdinova, in May 15, 2016 in Las Vegas. Alina is from Kazan, Russia. She was on a two week road trip “vacation” across the USA with a friend.
— Dave Troy (@davetroy) November 13, 2020
(This sounds a lot like this USA road trip taken by Anna Bogacheva and Aleksandra Krylova in 2014.) https://t.co/xBBwAoqQXl
— Dave Troy (@davetroy) November 13, 2020
John and Alina were married December 2, 2017 in Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia. They were married in a government facility overseen by Alina’s mother, Gulnara Mukhutdinova, a longtime government functionary. Gulnara’s mother was an “Honored Builder of Russia” in Soviet times.
— Dave Troy (@davetroy) November 13, 2020
John and Alina traveled in Russia and in Europe extensively between December and July 2018. They returned to Vegas and launched Parler with Jared Thomson in August 2018. Almost no one joined between August and December 2018; it was in early alpha stages.
— Dave Troy (@davetroy) November 13, 2020
Now let’s talk money. Parler LLC is owned by two member entities: John Matze and NDMASCENDANT LLC. There is no public record of who comprises NDMASCENDANT LLC. It is a Delaware corporation. The company has not raised any traditional VC rounds that we can see.
— Dave Troy (@davetroy) November 13, 2020
However none of this passes the sniff test: any company aiming to challenge firms at Twitter scale needs a massive supply of funds to hire employees competitively and pay for rapidly scalable computing infrastructure.
— Dave Troy (@davetroy) November 13, 2020
Additionally, flooding the zone with shit noise about the company’s ownership would seem to be a way of deflecting attention away from valid questions about that exact question. Who does own it? Where is the money, tech talent and infrastructure coming from? Follow the money.
— Dave Troy (@davetroy) November 13, 2020
Much more at the Twitter thread. It doesn’t mean that The guy with the Russian wife, whose mother in law who is a long time Russian government functionary, and who can’t provide a straight answer about his funding is getting his funding from Russia, but that is a question that needs to be answered.
Open thread!