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Comment by l33tbro | Hacker News Reader

I signed up to explore the site yesterday. Was curious from hearing in the news and it required an account to view. There was no verification process whatsoever. I popped in a fake email and then got immediate access. So not sure what this "Verified Parler citizen" thing refers to ...

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"Verified Parler Citizen" is basically a red badge to prove that you weren't a bot account. I think there were other benefits but I can't recall off the top of my head.

As a privacy-conscious person, the thought of uploading the front and back of a driver's license + selfie, or passport just to get an "I'm not a bot" badge is ridiculous.

Prior to Okta and Twilio revoking their accounts you needed to provide SMS authorization to create an account (you give them a number, they send you a code, etc.). It seems likely after their API access to Okta/Twilio was revoked their services weren't written to catch and handle the new exception these API calls were probably raising...

Based on this twitter thread from Nov 2020 they may not have been hiring the best developers: https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/1327253991936454663

To get verified you had to post a scan of your driving license or another document, which was then stored in Parler's database. After all that happened (and even before 6/1 it was clear that Parler was being closely watched by a lot of three letter agencies), it was clearly a honeypot.

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