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US Panel Asks FBI To Review Role of Parler In Capitol Attack (reuters.com) 259

Posted by BeauHD from the put-under-the-microscope dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The House Oversight and Reform Committee on Thursday asked the FBI to investigate the role Parler, a social media website and app popular with the American far right, played a role in the violence at the U.S. Capitol. Representative Carolyn Maloney, who chairs the panel, cited press reports that detailed violent threats on Parler against state elected officials for their role in certifying the election results before the Jan. 6 attack that left five dead. She also noted numerous Parler users have been arrested and charged with threatening violence against elected officials or for their role in participating in the attack.

Maloney asked the FBI to review Parler's role "as a potential facilitator of planning and incitement related to the violence, as a repository of key evidence posted by users on its site, and as a potential conduit for foreign governments who may be financing civil unrest in the United States." Maloney asked the FBI to review Parler's financing and its ties to Russia after she noted the company had re-emerged. Maloney cited Justice Department charges against a Texas man who used a Parler account to post threats regarding the riots that he would return to the Capitol on Jan. 19 "carrying weapons and massing in numbers so large that no army could match them." The Justice Department said the threats were viewed by other social media users tens of thousands of times. While Parler has reappeared online thanks to a cloud services company based in Russia, it doesn't appear to be hosted via Amazon Web Services anytime soon. According to NPR, a U.S. district judge sided with Amazon, arguing "that it is within Amazon's right to punish the company over its refusal [to remove posts that threatened public safety]." Slashdot reader fropenn first shared the story.
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US Panel Asks FBI To Review Role of Parler In Capitol Attack More

US Panel Asks FBI To Review Role of Parler In Capitol Attack

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  • Being a racist insurrectionist has consequences. Whoda thunk?

    • What part of this is actually illegal? (Score:5, Funny)

      by lessSockMorePuppet ( 6778792 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @06:03PM (#60975664) Homepage

      Uh, pardon me, but the 1st and 2nd amendment specifically protect, "carrying weapons and massing in numbers so large that no army could match them."

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yeah, but killing about 30+ people during 'riots for racial justice (including multiple 'P.O.C.' and a few cops) as well as causing multiple billion dollars of damage to both public and private property is just fine. Because ORANGE MAN BAD!!1

  • Parler was not used, Facebook was (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @05:41PM (#60975552)

    A handful of people commented about the protest during, not much before. All of the protest planning was done on Facebook - y'all took out the wrong target. But Facebook is too big to destroy I guess.

    • Re:Parler was not used, Facebook was (Score:5, Informative)

      by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @05:52PM (#60975594)

      And how is that relevant to Amazon's argument that Parler did not remove or moderate over 100 examples of threats of violence? Those were just examples that Amazon presented to the judge; I am sure more exists on Parler. Fun fact: the judge scolded Parler for not following procedure as Amazon was not properly served with the lawsuit if that give you any indication of the lawsuit.

      • Cant amazon detect those specific URLs and block them out using their firewall systems which can control anything internally.

        IF external URL matches table then redirect to warning page.

      • It's not but what's your point? What does AWS have to do with ordering the FBI to investigate ?

        I'm not a lawyer but I would think Parler would be protected from legal liability for those posts under Section 230 of the CDA. That is to say that the people who posted "threats of violence" would be legally liable, not Parler. Which means it doesn't matter whether or not Parler violated their contract with AWS - that's a civil matter between AWS and Parler. It has nothing at all to do with the FBI or anything cr

      • And how is that relevant to Amazon's argument that Parler did not remove or moderate over 100 examples of threats of violence?

        100? That's a about 10 billion less than exist on FB right? I'm not excusing Parler here but some consistency would be nice.

    • Re:Parler was not used, Facebook was (Score:4, Funny)

      by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @05:58PM (#60975626)
      You’d think they would actually lash out at Facebook, but apparently it’s too big to flail.

    • Re:Parler was not used, Facebook was (Score:5, Informative)

      by phalse phace ( 454635 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @06:29PM (#60975764)

      A handful of people commented about the protest during, not much before. All of the protest planning was done on Facebook - y'all took out the wrong target. But Facebook is too big to destroy I guess.

      Not according to the WSJ [wsj.com]

      Parler had become a pariah for serving as a hub for people who organized, participated in or celebrated the storming of the Capitol that left five dead, as well as a forum for some who have posted about future violent actions around the coming inauguration.

      In some Parler posts flagged by tech companies as examples of inadequate moderation, users posted about “poisoning the water supply” in minority neighborhoods and killing their alleged enemies.

      Executives at Parler said posts inciting violence violate its rules, although acknowledged they are aware such content was on the platform and others in the run-up to the Capitol attack.

      . . . .

      Daniel J. Jones, president of nonprofit research group Advance Democracy, said the organization found numerous Parler users calling for violence on Jan. 6.

      Parler relies on a volunteer community of jurors to moderate content. After some experimentation with its initial rules, Parler settled on generally allowing users to engage in any constitutionally protected speech. There would be no fact-checking, no restrictions on offensive language and no prohibition on gory or adult content, so long as it was tagged “sensitive” by the creator, executives said.

      . . . .

      Parler executives said before the Capitol riot there was a growing number of calls for violence on the platform, as well on the rest of the internet.

      Ms. Peikoff said she instructed moderators who had been hunting for spam to also look for incitements of violence and report it to law enforcement when appropriate. “I was concerned that there was actually going to be some sort of violence on the 6th,” she said.

      The day of the riot, Parler was among the social-media networks, including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, that Trump supporters seeking to contest the election results used to organize the protests and celebrate the attack, according to researchers and analysts who study extremism and disinformation, as well as posts reviewed by the Journal.

    • A handful of people commented about the protest during, not much before. All of the protest planning was done on Facebook - y'all took out the wrong target. But Facebook is too big to destroy I guess.

      a) Are you saying that a peaceful protest was planned on facebook? That's hardly relevant. Nobody is objecting to the peaceful protesting that took place.

      or

      b) Are you saying that you, personally, knew all of the details of planning an insurrection, attempted kidnapping of senators and attempted murder of the vice president of the united states and yet you remained silent about this?

      How do you know that all of the full illegal activities were planned in the open on Facebook?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        It is pretty certain none of the terrorist actions (and that is what they are) were planned on Facebook. The question of whether any were planned on Parler will be interesting. If they were and if Parler had knowledge of this, they may be in very deep there. Life-sentence deep.

    • Re:Parler was not used, Facebook was (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @07:00PM (#60975904)
      They both were. The difference is Facebook is moving to get the violent extremists off their network. Parler dug it's feet in. They kind of had to, since so many of their users came to them because they were getting removed from Facebook & Twitter for the kind of Stochastic speech Parler specialized in.
  • Economist: Democrats are more likely than Republicans to have heard of QAnon [economist.com]

    Although it is generally thought of as a far-right cult polling from YouGov shows that Democrats are more aware of it than Republicans. Facebook seems to be especially fertile ground for QAnon.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      If I had fallen for such an obviously batshit crazy conspiracy theory, I might be tempted to deny even hearing about it too.

    • And how many democrats fell for this cult compared to republicans?

    • Re:Democrats are more likely to heard about QAnon (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Trailer Trash ( 60756 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @06:47PM (#60975852) Homepage

      This is like Richard Spencer. Big bogeyman of the left, but no conservatives had heard of him until lefties made a big deal of him.

      The primary difference between the left and the right is that people on the right pay no attention to the so-called "alt-right" because they don't really see much in common with them and are generally appalled by them when they see them. People who are left of center, on the other hand, tend to cover for the far-left even though it makes no sense.

      See the BLM/Antifa riots (still ongoing) which attacked businesses and governmental buildings, caused $1-2B of damage, and are still being described as "mostly peaceful" by those on the left. All of my conservative friends jumped on facebook to condemn the capitol attack the next day. There's no comparison.

  • Tomorrow (Score:5, Funny)

    by systemd-anonymousd ( 6652324 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @06:03PM (#60975660)

    Feds asked to investigate the role of air molecules in transmitting hate speech

    • I mean comparing Parler to air molecules is not really accurate. Excessive methane and SO2 emissions after burrito night would be more fitting, and that does have a large role in hate speech, aggressiveness, and depending on the flavour of the burrito maybe even death threats.

  • FD: Never been to Parler (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @06:05PM (#60975674) Journal

    Parler appears to be in the crosshairs because of its popularity as a forum for some of the pro-Trump, alt-right, and Qanon folks associated with the Capital invasion. They landed here in droves as their options were limited by ostracization from the more mainstream posting forums, and the inherent promise of a freer atmosphere with little to no moderation.

    But the unicorn in the room is that there is no such thing as not moderating content. Content moderation is required by law, even on sites protected by Section 230 of the CDA... copyright issues, underage sexual content, and conspiracy to break laws, for instance, must all be vetted.

    Parler welcomed the flood of immigrants from twitter, facebook, the chans, and who knows where else. As the former President may have been able to tell them, " When the internet sends its people, they're not sending their best."

    • Some of us disagree with that basic idea. It's not my job to police anybody else's agenda.

      Spend your own time and resources finding your own copyright violations and spend your own time and money in the legal system pursuing those. after you serve me with some papers I'll remove whatever but I'm not spending a second of energy before that.

      I personally have a bunch of things I wish everybody would police for me but I realized that that's not their job.

      If you don't want society's all encompassing copying syst

      • An idealistic viewpoint. The unattractive current situation demands that governmental regulations dictate the degree to which you must moderate your forum.

        Do what you want. In your own home and, hopefully, your own life, but on the internet, your presence is is akin to what you are allowed to do in the Publick. You'll either mind or face the consequences of your contrarian stand. It's a free country, so you get to choose.

    • But the unicorn in the room is that there is no such thing as not moderating content. Content moderation is required by law, even on sites protected by Section 230 of the CDA... copyright issues, underage sexual content, and conspiracy to break laws, for instance, must all be vetted.

      Hmm...not really. For copyright, the content owner must issue a DMCA notice, and whoever posted it can also issue a counter notice to keep it there. The site owner only has to remove it if they have received a notice and there is no counter notice. Otherwise, the site owner has safe harbor.

      For kiddie porn, they only have to remove it once they're aware that it's present and they've notified the police. Conspiracy to break any laws doesn't have to be removed, though there may be criminal liability on the par

  • The more they stay the same (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @06:08PM (#60975704)

    About 80 years ago good decent hardworking Americans were convinced to take up arms to respond to the invasion of Martians [wikipedia.org].

    In other words, they panicked over an entertainment broadcast they thought was real. Fortunately, the fantasy did not involve a need to storm public buildings and hunt fellow Americans. But it if it had they probably would have.

    You might suppose that as a society we have grown much more sophisticated than that. But you would be wrong.

    Our media diet, as with our food diet, has become huge and dominated with empty calories. And on 1/6 we saw the result of that.

    • From your link:

      "Many newspapers assumed that the large number of phone calls and the scattered reports of listeners rushing about or even fleeing their homes proved the existence of a mass panic, but such behavior was never widespread."

      • Yes you are correct. And on 1/6 we got a few thousand people out of population of over 300M.

        You get points for actually reading.

        But my point is that the insurrection, although very real and very heinous and at the same time very stupid, looked a hell of a lot bigger than it actually was for many reasons. The following week none of the state capitals experienced more than a few protestors or insurrectionists. Many none at all. The few that showed up soon left. The armed-in-the-streets revolution

    • There was no mass panic over the WotW broadcast. It was a publicity stunt.

    • Uhh...no they weren't. That whole thing was a hoax spread by newspapers that had an axe to grind with radio. From your own link:

      "The supposed panic was so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast"

  • Why not ask FBI to investigate all social media sites involved in planning the Capitol attack, and then investigate their roles in all the riots of 2020?
    I guess party representatives only want to investigate the role of sites who don't donate to their party, and only investigate crimes most likely to have been committed by the other party's base. How is this any different than the Trump administration, just biased in the opposite party direction? So much for democratic party being different.

    • Don't you realize it's okay for the Democrats to do it. It won't even get reported on. It's that kind of crap that the media pulls which made it so easy for Trump to say "Fake News!" to anything he didn't like, because when you spend all day shuffling words around, of course you can make something sound good or bad, yet be the exact same bit of information.

      I'm actually more surprised there wasn't some REAL effort to take the capital. It really didn't seem like a militia was invading versus a mob of idiots.

  • There were between 500-1000 rioters who stormed through into the Capitol.

    Fun fact: the Capitol Police are one of the largest police forces in North America with over 2k sworn officers. They had ample manpower and firepower to crush this, but didn't. Even so, it doesn't matter because the overwhelming majority of the rioters were goofballs who had no plan to do more than upset people.

    So what if a few people were armed for terrorism? That always happens at a riot. You have honest to goodness urban terrorism h

    • So the crowd chanting HANG MIKE PENCE didn't really want to drag him to the gallows they constructed?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lips ( 26363 )

      So if you turn up to a bank, armed, with the intention to rob it, but are too stupid to realise that you have no hope in hell... then that is not attempted armed robbery.

      And in the process of that attempted armed robbery, deliberately kill a security guard, again, that is just "hooliganism".

    • At least they destoryed the first ever Starbucks. That's almost worth all the damage they caused in Portland. Plus, who fucking cares if they burn their city down. The liberals LIKE all that stuff that's happening. They voted for it in fact. Let them have what they clearly must want.

      Scared citizens? Nah, just richer liberals that are scared of the rioting liberals. Nothing to worry about. Defund the police, right?

  • From what I've heard, the troops didn't even have magazines in their rifles.

    • That is almost certainly true. You don't give live ammo to a soldier unless you want him to shoot it. They don't have the training to figure out when to shoot people in civilian situations.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

        I don't know if it the case here but the troops are almost always armed with live ammo. Maybe there is no magazine in their rifles but they certainly carry some.

        The rules of engagement are likely very strict. If you start shooting with assault rifles around civilians, it will become a massacre very quickly. It the situation is manageable, they will likely call the police instead. Unless there is a full blown terrorist attack, the soldiers are unlikely to do anything, but it doesn't mean that their guns are

        • The rules of engagement are likely very strict. If you start shooting with assault rifles around civilians, it will become a massacre very quickly. It the situation is manageable, they will likely call the police instead. Unless there is a full blown terrorist attack, the soldiers are unlikely to do anything, but it doesn't mean that their guns are just for show.

          You're kind of making things up here.

        • Then there's no point in having them there unless you intend for them to go hand to hand with rioters. At that point, why even carry the gun? I know, intimidation, but when I can tell in two seconds that your M16 doesn't even have a mag in it, that isn't very effective. At least put an empty magazine in the thing so the rioters have to wonder.

  • Parler is *not* back online (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Harvey Manfrenjenson ( 1610637 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @06:34PM (#60975790)

    "While Parler has reappeared online thanks to a cloud services company based in Russia..." No, it hasn't reappeared. Parler.com currently directs to a "We'll be back soon!" page.

    I'm sure I would have disagreed with just about every word posted on Parler... but you know, I would have appreciated the chance to *see* those words so that I could make that judgement call for myself. It's a bit disturbing when a platform with 15 million users can be scrubbed so thoroughly and effectively from the Internet.

  • I'm not saying this from either side of the parties... but just from my own perspective.

    - Social media giants like FB, Google, Twitter are protected by section 230. Why was Parler not?
    - The companies that executed the coordinated deplatform action on Parler, are they prepared to surrender their own protection by section 230?

    I know what you guys gonna say... that what people said on FB/Twitter are just rants and what people said on Parler are hate/treason. The thing is, those that made the loudest noi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Social media giants like FB, Google, Twitter are protected by section 230. Why was Parler not?

      Because FB, Google, Twitter (and Amazon) own their own infrastructure. Parler did not. Section 230 protects infrastructure owners from throwing or not throwing anybody they like off their own systems. On the other hand, if you have to rent space, you have no protections.

      Damned shape Parler couldn't file a claim under the Covid moratorium on evictions.

      • That is only half correct. FB/Google own their infrastructure but their internet operation is still owned by AT&T/Verizon. Twiter rents from AWS just like Parler does. If Parler gets booted off of both networking and cloud services, it begs the question if the boot relates to their support of the other side.

        I invite you guys to give it a simple thought: If the FBI is only now being instructed to review Parler's role, who provided the Judge/Jury/Executioner role to whom?

  • Like the Catholic Church, tens of thousands of raped kids, 9000 killed children in Ireland alone but the organization still stands and the Don in Italy still gets his cut.

  • This is actually seriously disturbing to me. It shows that the Democans, as well as the Republicrats, are all united in rescinding section 230 and instating liability for user-posted content.

    Honestly, this is an attack on section 230. They're investigating for anything at all that can be used as a basis for repealing section 230. This is pretty terrible. Crypto currency, section 230, what next that people largely want or ok with, but that challenges centralized bureaucracy, will be attacked? Not global clim

  • That's what the 'Stop the Steal' clowns are. It was a close election but sometimes you (or your guy/gal) loses. I didn't vote for either of them and don't care for either of them. I'm no fan of the people who robbed Foot Locker out of supposed anger about racial injustice. But there was one group that brought restraints, nooses, and an arsenal directly to the US Capitol, and we all know that one. Lots of foreign governments would like to come take our stuff. If you don't know that get your head out of your

  • Time to investigate Fox News (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Required Snark ( 1702878 ) on Friday January 22, 2021 @03:03AM (#60977086)
    Fox News has been spewing misinformation, flat out lies, and propaganda for years. They overtly supported Russian interference in the 2016 US election and engaged in direct efforts to cover up the Federal investigation into foreign election tampering. Specifically they endorsed former Attorney General Barr's complete misrepresentation that the Mueller report exonerated Trump. It did not.

    Fox has been advocating for single party right wing rule all over the English speaking world. Their political goal is to eliminate multi-party politics and establish fascist governments. Fox embodies an international fascist political movement that crosses political boarders and is unaccountable to any nation.

    The ties between Fox and the Putin Kremlin are obvious. At least in the US , Fox reporting never criticizes Russia no mater what they do. Like Trump, they always blame China for everything, even when Russia is the obvious troublemaker.

    Until Western democracies face the reality that there is a powerful entrenched international pro-fascist movement, democracy itself is under an existential threat. It would not take much of an investigation to uncover how international fascism has been distorting free governments all over the world.

    By the way, I expect this post will be modded down to -1,000,000. Scum hate to be exposed to the light.

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