Not sure why they wouldn't just host it in the USA. Certainly there are datacenters or providers operating enough private rack space in one who'd take them on. They'd be a pretty big client and the media and the social just mob will forget about them eventually.

Sounds like better news for the users privacy than US hosting.

Quoted in the article:

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)

I'd rather be spied on by Russia than the US government for sure. Russia has no interest in oppressing me and they're on the other side of the globe. I guess the worst thing Russia might want to do with the info is influence me with targeted political ads or something.

Parler doesn't quite look like they're ready for prime time again. Their homepage is a bunch of quotes.

It only gives Russia more control. Pretty weird. Doesn't the first amendment exist?

Doesn't the first amendment exist?

Yeah, but too many companies are afraid to stand up for it because they don't want to deal with the backlash from a very vocal minority it appears.

From what I've seen of Parler it's just republican talking points and bible quotes. I've seen more vile content on reddit and Facebook.

That is true. I don't think Putin is a fan of free speech though.

He is mainly concerned with the speech of Russian citizens, especially if they are being critical of himself or the Russian government. If this website became very popular with anti-Putin activists in Russia, maybe he would take issue with it. But even then, he could just block it at the ISP level in Russia rather than try to get it shut down for everyone. That appears to be the main form of online censorship in Russia. https://news.engin.umich.edu/2019/11/how-russias-online-censorship-could-jeopardize-internet-freedom-worldwide/

I don't he think minds it much if people in other countries criticize Russia online. If anything, he might like it when Americans are excessively critical of Russia because that fuels division in the US. Liberals talk a lot about Russia being a threat and Conservatives are sick of hearing "Russia, Russia, Russia".

Russia's preference for instability in the US is part of what makes them a safe host for a mostly English speaking free speech site. They'd be happy if some kind of civil war and/or revolutionary war happens here, so they would be fine with Americans calling for violence against politicians or using racial slurs. That sort of speech is the main kind that has gotten free speech platforms in trouble so far.

While I generally agree, I think the problem with that theory is the three letter agencies are allowed to operate with impunity outside of the U.S. They may be operating with impunity inside the U.S. already, but they are violating the law by doing so. Either way, real news about the world is about to become a whole lot more sparse than a few years ago.

I suspect they went with the cheapest alternative that would get them back online. Having various services hosted across many different countries only helps with the freedom of information.

I think I read that they were paying AWS upwards of $300,000/mo for services.

Definitely a much larger operation than I had previously though. A client that big should have had providers, globally, drooling over the idea of a big sale.

$300,000/mo

I find it hard to believe they could be generating that much revenue legitimately.

I think they were a political hot potato. Hosting providers likely don't want to risk their payment processors.

They can get a court order to collect user data for servers in the US, and for Parler I'm sure that has already happened. Though I wouldn't be surprised if Parler is a honeypot anyways. It's suspicious that they ask their users for personal information.

I agree. I've always thought it was a honeypot as well, so I never dug to deep into it. Given the rumors that the site's information was compromised, I'll never attempt to use it either.

now people really can say parler is russian trolls. amazing.

They're not trolls, they're patriots.

If you were Putin, you probably wouldn't care about a few thousand boomers from another country talking in circles about how some messiah named Q is going to come through "any day now" and take out a bunch of pedophiles or whatever crazy shit they convinced themselves to believe in.

You'd probably be more worried about being able to choose the next guy who controls Belarus or something instead