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Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

Epik. But I wouldn't necessarily count on them to stay there. Epik hosts thedonald.win, and recently told that site it needs to get its content under control or it will be kicked off [1], so there are limits to what Epik is willing to host.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25808529

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> Epik.

It looks like Parler transferred their domain name to Epik (as a registrar), but are not currently using them for hosting.

As recently as a few days ago, Epik explicitly stated that they have no plans to host Parler (https://mynorthwest.com/2461882/sammamish-epik-parler/). That said, since the site is behind "ddos-guard.net," it's difficult to tell who their actual host is.

Little bit of history on DDoS-Guard:

- https://krebsonsecurity.com/tag/ddos-guard/ (VanwaTech relationship) - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jan/15/8kun-8cha... (End of VanwaTech relationship)

Quick check... yeah, doesn't look like 8kun is using DDoS-Guard any more.

I saw a couple articles or so that said Epik was hosting it, but it is possible that those authors just saw that Epik was the registrar and confused that with being the host.

Based on what I saw on Parler during an admittedly limited review of it, I don’t think they have to worry very much, if actual content is the issue that got them killed in the first place. I didn’t see much of the “scary” content that some people claim was on there. There were more links to positive news about Trump and conservatives in general than you would find on a site like Twitter, but I would certainly hope that isn’t the kind of thing that will get you destroyed overnight by the world’s largest companies, even in the current anti-conservative environment. I have seen far worse things on Reddit, from both sides of the aisle - and last time I checked, Reddit was still online.

It appears to me that these companies colluded to kill Parler not because of widespread horrible content (because it simply wasn’t there), but rather because they wanted to strangle any chance of Trump being able to communicate on any form of social media until after Biden takes office. As an added “bonus,” they probably also prevented millions of people from jumping ship from Twitter to Parler, because after this week far fewer people will even care about the situation.

I had a {troll} account on there - so I was there everyday. I disagree with your assessment and certainly saw posts calling for violence with essentially every comment on the post supporting it.

When you first signup you get connected for a few big names like Hannity, and the content is like what you'd see on Fox News (or really, News Max to be honest). Once you get past that layer it quickly spirals.

Regarding reddit...they did take down /r/The_Donald (and prob others, don't know off the top of my head)

If you go into the darkest corners of any of these platforms, including Facebook, you’ll see objectionable content from extremists. But when I went on there, I just poked around, as an average user would. As you point out, there was a fair amount of news and commentary from well-known conservative networks and personalities. While the general rule holds true - if you go looking for trouble, you’ll find it - most people wouldn’t go searching to connect with extremists and wouldn’t find the “quickly spiraling” content you describe. I’m sure it was there, as it is on Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook (in much larger numbers). But I would argue that they were no worse than the others.

...disagree. If you click on the comments on the well known conservative personalities that Parler sends you by default as an "average user', it's all right there. There's no need to search.

How much call for violence do you see in the comment section on reddit's default frontpage as an "average user"?

There are plenty of calls to violence even on the front pages. But those calls to violence are always against "bad people", so it's like "good hatred".

FWIW you can get a feel for the content right now - I can only assume Parker’s content is on par with thedonald.win, which is still up. Right now there is few literal calls to violence, but racism, conspiracy theories, and extremist views are the majority of the content.

Prior to the deplatforming that content likely was.. more violent.

I can only assume Parker’s content is on par with thedonald.win

I have never frequented either of them, and don't really have any desire to. I basically checked out Parler because CNN told me not to. But relative to Twitter and Reddit, it seemed pretty tame to me.

According to one analysis[1], it's anything but tame. The word cloud[2] kind of says it all.

[1] https://www.thestreet.com/mishtalk/politics/a-very-disturbin...

[2] https://imageproxy.themaven.net/https%3A%2F%2Fimages.saymedi...

They have a problem with thedonald but host thedailystormer and bitchute? lol

What company provides connectivity to Epik?

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