Parler, founded in 2018, touts itself as “the world’s premier free speech platform.” On Saturday, CEO and co-founder John Matze said one of the privately owned company’s early investors is Rebekah Mercer, who along with her father, hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, has been a backer of President Trump and is also a major donor to conservative causes, including Breitbart News and former White House strategist Steve Bannon.
It has hit 10 million members — more than double the 4.5 million it had last week, according to Jeffrey Wernick, the company’s chief operating officer.
Still, that is just a tiny fraction of Twitter’s 187 million daily users and Facebook’s nearly 2 billion.
Experts say “free speech” approach lets false claims flourish Gab, an alternative social network that has become notorious for hosting anti-Semitic and white nationalist content. It was used by the accused 2018 shooter at a Pittsburgh synagogue.
Kyle Chayka calls this “ambient television,” an artifact of contemporary dystopia made for our quarantine era, when nothing’s stopping you from leaving the TV on all day long.
I just finished reading True or False by @CindyOtis_. It’s the one accessible book on #media and #infolit that I’ve been looking for years. Otis’s background is authoritative, her historic and contemporary examples well-chosen, and her writing clear. https://t.co/2GdHU7rdM4
Until recently, the .su domain has been the home of weird, but legitimate sites. But when the administrators for Russia’s .ru got a little more strict about what they would and wouldn’t allow, scammers and hackers alike began to migrate to the out-dated .su, which saw its population of sites double in 2011, and again in 2012.
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Old Soviet Union domain name attracts cybercriminal interest