Comment by mgkimsal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mgkimsal | Hacker News Reader

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I poked around on it some, and noticed something ... disturbing.

I saw what I assumed were bots posting a lot of garbage links to 'articles' like "Obama compound raided!" and "8 Democrats switch to Republican Party" (that actually happened in Feb 2020, but the link was to an undated rerun and the link was posted.. 2 days ago?).

The links were to such trustworthy sites as 'firstusanews.us' (made up, but all variants like that), and they all would throw "update your flash player!" malware popups.

Next to each of these links on Parler were view counts - 207, 412, 897, etc - of people who'd clicked the link to view the article.

I could not reply to the link with a comment like "this has malware" because... my account was not verified. Only 'badged/verified' accounts can comment on 'links'. AND... the only way to get 'badged' is to use the mobile app and take a picture of govt ID (driver license, passport, etc). This becomes incredibly lopsided "free speech" biased against moderating/critical voices.

It was literally a field day for bots to post malware garbage and have thousands of victims per day, and no ability for people to warn others.

On one 'article' I followed there were comments from people saying "I don't understand how Parler works" in the comments on the linked article. Indeed...

I was also curious about Parler but, when going to sign up, it asked for my phone number. Ummmm, no thank you. That kind of association is like going to a protest with your cellphone. Pretty easy to get the wrong kind of association attached to you.

I was able to sign up recently with a throwaway e-mail address and made up phone number. But I was also surprised it asked for it.

I 'signed up' on the desktop version, but you can't the 'verify/badge' stuff is only available via the mobile app, AFAICT.

I used the mobile app to sign up. However, I just signed up to lurk (Streisand effect), so I can't tell if the fake mail+phone allowed me to post/comment.

> That kind of association is like going to a protest with your cellphone. Pretty easy to get the wrong kind of association attached to you.

"We're in! We're in! Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!"

https://www.businessinsider.com/derrick-evans-capitol-siege-...

I had a good laugh looking at that :D

Does your choice of words cause you to pause and think about where we are as a society?

The "wrong kind of association" for creating a social media account?

Unlikely, but I'm certainly not one to say.

Perhaps another question to ask would be, "How fair is it that others are pigeonholed to platforms like this and undoubtedly get the "wrong kind of association"?

Are we reducing certain thoughts, beliefs and, dare I say, questions indiscriminately down to "crimethink"?

Unless you're WAY outside the political mainstream, you aren't pigeonholed into platforms like this. And if you are that far outside the political mainstream, holding thoughts and beliefs like "six million wasn't enough" then how much sympathy am I supposed to have?

Should it? Society has always judged or kept an eye on people based on who they choose to associate with. If you were active on VK or WeChat I'm sure the government would have a few questions to ask you if you applied for a position requiring clearance.

Beyond that, if a platform is known for encouraging behaviour that you and your peers disapprove of. It might make sense for you to avoid registering there in case your peers get the wrong impression of you should the information leak. While not exactly social media, you only need to look at the fallout from Ashley Madison for why you might not want to sign up somewhere because of "the wrong kind of association".

Why social media would be the only forum exempt from this line of thinking I can't imagine.

No, you're right. I am fully on-board with the idea of being careful about who and what I associate with as it relates to maintaining personal integrity and character.

I guess I was approaching that question from a different angle where "wrong kind of association" was from the perspective of Big Brother. So I probably made an incorrect assumption about what the parent comment intended.

> I guess I was approaching that question from a different angle where "wrong kind of association" was from the perspective of Big Brother. So I probably made an incorrect assumption about what the parent comment intended.

I agree with you that there probably is an element of this in the parent comment. Linking your "Cell phone at a protest" to you is probably going to be at the behest of the government.

What the implications of social media and "big tech" are in our society is definitely a conversation worth having. It's just a shame that it's often only brought up in order to distract or deflect attention from bad behaviour. The conversation would be much more productive if it happened at a time when people weren't so inflamed by the issue of the day.

> Pretty easy to get the wrong kind of association attached to you.

How sad is it that our free society has turned into this? So much for tolerance.

This isn't new. McCarthyism is the example almost everyone knows.

> the only way to get 'badged' is to use the mobile app and take a picture of govt ID (driver license, passport, etc).

Some people have argued, based on this, that Parler was set up by the NSA to get data on people.

Hoovering up data from social media is certainly the sort of thing the NSA would do.

This suggestion doesn't stand up to a moment's scrutiny.

Do you really think the best way for a government agency to access government IDs is to secretly run a Twitter clone?

I believe OP is more insinuating that the combination of (ip, user identity {username, cell number, real-world identity}) is an attractive data source for such an agency.

Of course they already have all government IDs. But tying it to a username helps correlate data across other services, and additionally if the user checks from mobile phone or other device, tying it to recent IPs could also be useful. OPSec could prevent some of that, but how many users are doing that?

Just a thought. Not an endorsement.

Seems like scaring away people by asking for cell numbers and photo ids goes too far. The IP address would give the FBI/NSA everything they need to track down an individual's household. After that, it'd be a simple case of monitoring them to figure out who the extremist is.

To me, the more realistic (and scary!) explanation is this thing is just one huge identity theft machine.

I certainly agree that it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. To suggest that setting up a honeypot to have fringe elements actively expose their views in what they deem as a safe environment is not outside of what security agency may do is a bit of stretch

It's a interesting thought to entertain but Parler is most likely not this.

I don't think it's true, but..

> Do you really think the best way for a government agency to access government IDs is to secretly run a Twitter clone?

The best way to get a bunch of white supremacists and insurrectionists to robustly, undeniably identify themselves might be to ask them to upload their ID. :P

This is so elegant in its simplicity that I actually believe it could be true.

Exactly, they take over darkweb marketplaces silently all the time for this very reason.

Yeah, early on I half joked Parler was setup by the FBI as a honey pot to keep an eye on domestic terrorist.

I think it's more likely the NSA would do it, it's more up their street.

> Do you really think the best way for a government agency to access government IDs is to secretly run a Twitter clone?

The best method for target acquisition, sure. If someone is so perturbed by their reality being rejected by the mainstream that they're willing to sign up for an alternative to maintain their worldview, then running that alternative would be a fantastic way to identify people at risk of radicalization, domestic terror risks, etc.

And if we're being clear, the USIC has run companies with this explicit mission in the past. In fact, running a company to provide one service at face level while providing a different service to the IC underneath is the mode that yielded some of the biggest intelligence wins in Western history. See Crypto AG.

That said, no reason to run it themselves; they're well aware that someone else will end up running it for them, and with security nowhere near front-of-mind for any startup, they can just pick up the key from underneath the doormat and take the farm.

They don't need IDs. They need to positively identify account owners with the IDs. @JohnSmith is not a lot to go on if you want to send the FBI after them. @JohnSmith of 123 2nd Amendment Street, Jackson County Kentucky is a lot more useful.

Would it make sense as a good way for a foreign government entity to get access to this information?

> Do you really think the best way for a government agency to access government IDs is to secretly run a Twitter clone?

No, but it’d be a really good way to get behavioral data on people and use a government ID to tie that data to real identities rather than pseudonyms.

No, but it may be a good way to identify extremists and/or easily-manipulated persons amongst your populace.

I'm not saying it's likely, but certainly possible.

It's also a pretty good argument against anonymity being the cause of toxicity, considering these chucklefucks were literally uploading their legal identity so they could then shitpost about genocide.

Actually why the flying fuck would someone think it is a good idea to plan an insurrection on this site in the first place?? It's like opposite day opsec

The key to this kind of insurrection is that it is a privilege escalation. If they sufficiently upset normal process, enough emergency control goes to Trump, he will protect them (why stop pardoning now) and make sure all future elections are too risky and anyone who objects and sides with the principals of the republic is fired.

Turkey and Russia are good examples of how this attack works. It relies on a large number of people, possibly even a majority, to overthrow the republic with a populist government with no rules the leader can't change or selectively enforce. The leader shuts down one threat to himself at a time, making his control permanent.

IMO the military is obligated to arrest Trump for treason, which was the turkish backstop, and after a few rounds Turkey finally missed the last time. So once it is used, you have to patch your system to drop privileges from the Presidents office for the next round.

An example patch is to lower the limit on presidents to 1 term. I can't imagine who would find that more unfair to their party.

Another example of this strategy is the Reichstag fire. The Nazis blamed it on communists, and used it to claim emergency powers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence

Other people/organizations besides government intelligency agencies could use that data for their own gain.

One example would be cambridge analytica...

The idea Parler is a "free speech" platform or "unbiased" is a lie, in actuality its just a "safe space" for far right provokers. Users have been reporting they're been banned for posting leftist content or for criticism of Parler itself.

If they were so concerned with "freedom" why would they have the following in their terms of use?

“Parler may remove any content and terminate your access to the Services at any time and for any reason.”

I was never on Parler even to check so I don't know as much as you about the situation, but isn't ID requirement normally a way to combat bots? Maybe it just backfired in this case?

parler sounds like a classic honeypot

It's interesting how the natural inclination of the folks drawn to this kind of product leads to them being willing to provide a lot more personal information than they otherwise would to other similar platforms.

I'm not 100% sure on that. I saw a lot of 'non-badged' accounts, meaning they weren't providing much info. I guess, though, presumably many (most?) were providing real phone numbers, but Twitter tries to force that from people, so perhaps not much more than Twitter?

> the only way to get 'badged' is to use the mobile app and take a picture of govt ID (driver license, passport, etc).

<puts on tinfoil hat> Maybe the entire site is just an FBI honeypot for right-wing extremists? (It's obviously not an NSA honeypot, because they could afford to self-host.)

With a double lawyer of tinfoil you can ask "maybe the site is just a honeypot for a foreign government?"

This twitter thread[1] suggests that it's possible. But probably best to take it with a grain of salt.

[1] https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/1327253991936454663

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