If you’ve ever posted content on the right-wing social media platform Parler, chances are it’s now stored, archived, and posted online forever.
This includes posts you previously deleted on Parler.
Over the past few days, archivists have retrieved content from Parler to store it for legitimate and historical purposes.
Archivists began storing the data because they were concerned that users would remove their posts and delete possible evidence of crime at the Capitol. However, after companies like Amazon announced that they were terminating their business relationship with Parler, it became a race to archive the content before the platform went offline.
Parler, played an integral role in the January 6 storms of the Capitol by Trump supporters, resulting in five deaths and at least 25 domestic terrorism cases. Pro-Trump personalities used the platform to promote the event, and many Trump supporters who attended posted updates, including photo and video evidence of the Capitol, on the platform.
I’m now looking for URLs of all videos uploaded to Parler. Sequential from newest to oldest. VIDXXX.txt files popping up, 50k pieces, there will be 1.1 million URLs: https://t.co/YUl8CtoeEA
This could include things from deleted / private posts.
– crash override (@donk_enby) 10 January 2021
The campaign to support Parler was by Twitter user @donk_enby. According to Gizmodo, the archivist described the material she had stored as ‘very incriminating’. She claims that she was even able to access content that Parler’s ‘users’ removed from the platform because Parler did not actually remove the content. to @donk_enby for further comment, but we did not hear it. When she spoke to Gizmodo, she asked to be referred only by her Twitter handle.
While @donk_enby went to work retrieving the data, and eventually grabbed what she was declaring according to Parler’s content, misinformation spread about the archiving campaign. On Twitter and Reddit, people incorrectly described how the data that was tracked was tracked.
There was no hacking at Parler and no access to private information was gained. Phone numbers and credit cards were not obtained. Only access to the content that Parler made available to the public was @donk_enby said on Twitter.
as many people seem confused about these details and there is a silly reddit message:
only things that were publicly available via the web were archived. I do not have your email address, phone or credit card number. unless you put it on parler yourself.
– crash override (@donk_enby) 11 January 2021
@ donk_enby’s archive campaign was run using public APIs, with the great help of Parler’s poorly coded platform. An API is basically a system that allows an application to communicate with other applications. Social media APIs often provide third parties with easy ways to access their real-time feeds for analysis or research, for example.
The content was subsequently deleted, which is contrary to the terms of service of some platforms, but which is not illegal.
How was it so easy to grab all the images uploaded to Parler? Because the platform the contents of consecutive numbered URLs. What does it mean? For example, look at a YouTube video URL. Each video is located at a URL starting with ‘https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=’ followed by a string of random characters. However, Parler has stored each image sequentially (i.e., 1, 2, 3, etc.), making it easy to set up a script that just runs through all the URLs and retrieves all the images from the site.
Another false claim claims that the hack allowed any user to create a high administrator account on Parler because a security verification company also severed ties with Parler. Although the last part is true – for a while any user can set up a Parler account without verifying via an SMS text code – it did not allow users to have an “administrator” account.
Everyone @donk_enby done to access back information, the mobile app was unveiled, giving a look at features already coded in the app but hidden from the public. Developers sometimes do this to future features in mobile applications.
Early Monday morning, Amazon officially suspended Parler and suspended their web hosting services on the platform, leading to the removal of the entire social network. This step follows after Apple and Google released the company’s mobile app from its app stores.
Parler says it will be important for them to get up again – if they ever get things going again.
As for all the archived Parler content? According to @donk_enby the data is presented by the.