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70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

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Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#421

Post by [deleted] »

semicolon_storm wrote: post #405
nickysielicki wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole ordeal really sours Twilio in my mind. Whereas AWS can plausibly claim that they don't want to host illegal content, what can Twilio say for themselves here? From Twilios perspective, providing Twilio's core product to Parler isn't any different than serving them to other platforms. They have no responsibility or liability. The lack of moderation on Parler is irrelevant when Twilio isn't involved with movi…

If there's a drunk guy trying to start fights in your restaurant, you boot him out the door immediately for being a safety hazard and overall reflecting poorly on your business. I don't think any reasonable patrons will see that and think "Wow, they just kicked that guy out because they didn't like what he was saying, it could happen to me too, better get out of here". It's a similar (digital) situation here. Parler…

[deleted]

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#422

Post by jsilence »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #267
dieortin wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re referring to world war 2, axis engineers were in no way “mediocre”.

it seems unlikely anyone would be describing WW 2 as recent.

On a tangent: This hacking of parler might be the reason a more recent WW does not come into fruiton.

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#423

Post by evgen »

tw04 wrote: post #349
sanedigital wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk about hyperbole. In no way did even 1% of the population on Parler want mass executions for people like you.

I hear this a lot, but it makes no logical sense to me. I see a site that is (in)famous for being full of self-proclaimed right-wing "patriots" who are calling for violence against people due to political beliefs. Someone then decide to associate with these people by joining the site. They may not personally post messages calling for violence, but are now associated with them. And the response is: well sure I'm in th…

There is a German saying that goes something like "if there’s a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you've got a table with 11 Nazis.”

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#424

Post by matt-attack »

rob74 wrote: post #202
gwbas1c wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a surprising amount of insecure code in the wild; and naive engineers who are willingly ignorant in their security practices. I'd assume that Parler's engineers motivations had more to do with politics than providing a secure platform for protecting dissidents under duress. (Or, if we look at the history of a recent major war, the mediocre engineers working for the other side thought they were the good guys.)

To be fair, it's probably hard for a network like Parler to attract top talent. I mean, they explicitly advertised themselves as the "free speech social network" (i.e. "all hate speech welcome, we won't censor anyone except maybe Trump parody accounts") - would you want to work for such a company, or have it on your resume in the future?

So it’s now just a given that all of HN objects to the phrase “free speech” without limits?

Seems like a pretty radical assumption and a pretty sad sign of the times if true.

Note: this message has nothing to do with Parler and being right or left. Just about the phrase “free speech” and what it now connotes.

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#425

Post by bartread »

rob74 wrote: post #202
gwbas1c wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a surprising amount of insecure code in the wild; and naive engineers who are willingly ignorant in their security practices. I'd assume that Parler's engineers motivations had more to do with politics than providing a secure platform for protecting dissidents under duress. (Or, if we look at the history of a recent major war, the mediocre engineers working for the other side thought they were the good guys.)

To be fair, it's probably hard for a network like Parler to attract top talent. I mean, they explicitly advertised themselves as the "free speech social network" (i.e. "all hate speech welcome, we won't censor anyone except maybe Trump parody accounts") - would you want to work for such a company, or have it on your resume in the future?

Top talent works at PornHub so I imagine Parler would have done all right. Perhaps not in the area of security, but we can point at plenty of other companies that were discovered to be lacking in this area at relatively early stages of their lifecycles (e.g., Zoom), not to mention a few very mature organisations (e.g., Intel!).

One of the things that's incredibly unhelpful in our current political debates is that there exists a very noisy (at least) minority on both sides of every one of those debates that assumes all the people on the other side are idiots. In general this is not true[0] and so, yes, even though Parler was a social network explicitly for conservatives, they would still have been able to hire smart people.

I don't say that Parler was for extremists, although an extremist contingent was certainly present, but it's worth remembering that even those that are unequivocally and uncontroversially agreed to be extremists by the vast majority of people (Bin Laden, Stalin, Hitler[1], et al) were always able to "hire", or perhaps disciple, very smart people.

Being smart is not the same thing as being ethical, by which what I really mean in this context is sharing the same set of ethics that you or I have.

(On a tangentially related note to both my first and last paragraphs, Boeing employ a very large number of very smart people and yet, as the 737 Max debacle clearly illustrates, they were nursing some absolutely horrendous culturual issues that led to a situation where that airliner was certified and sold even though it contained systems that incorporated severe safety failings.)

[0] And the culture of endless cheap shots, snobbish intellectualism, and disrespectful dismissiveness that surrounds political debate these days is not a force for good in the world.

[1] At the risk of invoking Godwin's law.

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#426

Post by estomagordo »

sanedigital wrote: post #364
muspimerol wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no hyperbole in the comment. It can still be a safe haven for extremists even if most of the users are not.

That applies equally to the rest of the internet.

So let's start by looking at Hacker News. Where on HN can we see people plotting mass executions like that?

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#427

Post by jrobn »

gwbas1c wrote: post #68
mabbo wrote: post #8

This story truly terrifies me: my team owns my company's sign up page. (I speak for myself and not them, of course). Sounds like Parler, fearing that their OTP provider might go down, decided to fail-open, ie: if the dependency throws an exception, presume there's something wrong with the dependency and that the code provided is acceptable. It never occurred to them that the dependency could be down permanently, or t…

There's a surprising amount of insecure code in the wild; and naive engineers who are willingly ignorant in their security practices. I'd assume that Parler's engineers motivations had more to do with politics than providing a secure platform for protecting dissidents under duress. (Or, if we look at the history of a recent major war, the mediocre engineers working for the other side thought they were the good guys.)

Bingo. They most likely didn’t care. It was all a means to an end. I would be combing this data to see if any active users that were inciting a call to violence are employees or contractors of say: Epoch Times, Members of Congress or their staff, members of law enforcement (especially capital police), select corporations or donors.

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#428

Post by nijave »

mabbo wrote: post #8

This story truly terrifies me: my team owns my company's sign up page. (I speak for myself and not them, of course). Sounds like Parler, fearing that their OTP provider might go down, decided to fail-open, ie: if the dependency throws an exception, presume there's something wrong with the dependency and that the code provided is acceptable. It never occurred to them that the dependency could be down permanently, or t…

I've seen similar setups to allow testing suites/local/lower environments to allow less restricted access. You have to be sufficiently careful how they work to prevent misconfiguring the real thing which may have happened here

Example: In production, a load balancer or other proxy handles authentication and passes a signed JWT to the application but running locally the application will take a JWT directly and signature verification is disabled. In this case, the application has multiple checks in place to make sure it's running locally and in production environments it has network policies to only allow traffic from the authentication infrastructure.

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#429

Post by whimsicalism »

ipsocannibal wrote: post #286
boredumb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just call everyone a terrorist and absolve your soul of any uneasiness you have with this. Surely this hyperbole hasn't been used in recent history to push authoritarian and unethical measures by state and private actors paving a golden road to hell.

Well what is your suggested response? I think the lack of calling out terrorism and fascism in this country have already resulted four years of "pushing authoritarian and unethical measures" by the US executive.

The response should be to pass $2k relief checks.

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#430

Post by neartheplain »

hannasanarion wrote: post #179
eudajmonia wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The find the whole narrative of dehumanising Trump supporters to be sick. The memory of all the pathological mob like violence that occurred during the BLM movement which occurred worldwide should still be fresh in all of our memories. If only the actors who incited that violence were held to this same standard.

Quick question, how many BLM mobs beat two cops to death with flagpoles? How many built gallows and rushed into government buildings with handcuffs looking for politicians to execute? How many battered down the door to the room where the Vice President and Speaker of the House were hiding chanting "Hang Pence, Hang Pelosi"? And how many of them were inspired by prominent politicians telling them "We are never going t…

I've recapped the depths of last summer's BLM/antifa violence in previous threads:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25667848

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25691407

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25671284

Objectively, the summer's riots (as opposed to the more numerous peaceful protests) caused more deaths, injuries, and property damage. At the same time, the assault on the capitol was an unprecedented attack on democracy and the peaceful transition of power, to which there is no direct BLM parallel.

For now, I suggest we all stop comparing these things. I don't think many are receptive to either side of the argument. Emotions are still running high, and we're not through the transition of power just yet.

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