Those fucks who run Parler aren’t anti-establishment, quite the opposite, they are boot licking fascists.
“Stealing I can accept, but having an opinion that’s different from my own is where I draw the line.”
- Piracy isn’t stealing, primarily since the victim still has the pirated goods and can continue to sell them, but doubly so since people who pay for those goods legitimately don’t own them and are at the complete mercy of the company to continue to access them. History is rife with examples of companies removing access to digitally paid for goods with no explanation or recourse. Look at the recent PlayStation fiasco, or Warner Brothers cancelling Infinity Train and Inside Job (and pulling the completed seasons from streaming services) because they wanted a tax write-off.
- Questioning the validity of science and half the global population’s worth of empirical evidence and endangering oneself and others purely to be contrarian, and, more importantly, continuing to support someone who calls immigrants vermin and quotes Mussolini in his campaign speeches goes beyond “having a different opinion”
Warner Brothers cancelling Infinity Train and Inside Job (and pulling the completed seasons from streaming services) because they wanted a tax write-off.
WHAT THE FUCK, as if the cancellation wasn’t bad enough, I only now learned they removed Infinity Train from streaming. Fuck you WB
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Questioning the validity of science is precisely how science is done. You form a hypothesis and design an experiment to either prove or disprove it. Reading papers and just believing everything they say, taking for granted that the people who wrote them carried out the experiment(s) exactly as described, didn’t fudge any numbers, and declared all their conflicts of interest and sources of funding accurately and unbiased, isn’t.
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Making your own discussion platform because you don’t like the other ones that are available is no worse of an offense than going to a different room. Lemmy literally IS such a place that was created because people didn’t like what was happening on reddit. Basically, what you’re saying is that YOU deserve a safe space because your opinions are valid and correct, and other people don’t because theirs are wrong. I don’t know, man… sounds kinda fascist if you ask me.
- Questioning the conclusions that scientists before you have reached is something that is good to do if you have the tools to do your own primary research and publish your own study. If you don’t have the tools to do your own study, looking at the hundreds of papers out there in peer-reviewed journals (peer-reviewed meaning multiple independent teams of scientists did the experiment as described and got the same result the authors did) all showing the same results are about as good as you can get. If you don’t trust Big Science, just look around you. Take for example the question of whether the vaccine is safe to get. A common argument I heard was that people didn’t want to be guinea pigs, which would have been fair were it not for the fact that half the global population had already gotten it and less than 1% had any ill effects. As for whether it protects people from the virus, one need look no further than the endless stories from healthcare workers about the people they kept alive. All of the life threatening cases were from people who hadn’t gotten the shot.
Acting as though the conclusions scientists before you have reached are false because a podcast you follow said they were, without supplying any data to suggest such a thing, is a wholesale rejection of the scientific method.
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The person you replied to never said anything about Parler itself, let alone whether platforms that don’t follow the popular consensus should exist. That is unambiguously good. What they said was that the people who run Parler are fascist bootlickers, which, now that Trump has said in as many words that he plans to be a dictator, is true of anyone who still supports him.
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Can’t help but notice your response didn’t address the piracy issue. Can I assume we agree on that?
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The problem with “big science” is that the ordinary person has no conceivable means by which to verify any of their claims, they have to be taken by faith. And there have been many, many cases in the past where this turned out to be a mistake. Unlike what some people will have you believe, science is never really settled, things that used to be the common consensus have turned out to be wrong many times in the past. What makes you think that nowadays, we’re somehow past all that, just because our methods are more precise than our forefathers’? Why should the knowledge we have now be the end-all-be-all when not too long ago, doctors used to prescribe cigarettes as a treatment for asthma?
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Okay, but that’s just an opinion, not scientific consensus. People on Parler think the Fediverse is full of pedophiles, does that give them the right to shut it down?
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I don’t care about stealing as long as there’s a legitimate need and it’s not just out of laziness or greed. I used to pirate my games and software when I was too broke to afford them, but once I started earning more money, I gave up on that and started paying for them, even though pirating would have sometimes been easier or more convenient.
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So you disagree with the scientific consensus. Cool. Where’s your data to the contrary? When are you publishing your study? Or are you just here to cast doubt on the validity of science as a concept, and use that as a basis to believe whatever a talking head says?
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Parler advertises itself towards Trump supporters. I think it’s safe to say there are Trump supporters there. Also, once again, neither I nor the OP said anything at all about Parler itself, only its founders. Where did you get the idea that I think it should be shut down?
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I already told you why piracy isn’t stealing. Do you have a response to that?
It’s becoming increasingly obvious you’re not arguing in good faith. I’m going to bed now. You’ll have to pretend to argue with someone else for a while.
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Strawman. I didn’t say I disagree with it, I just listed some valid reasons for why people might.
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Yeah, okay, I get it, you just hate them. That’s allowed of course. I’m just pointing out that hating them for hating you makes you no better than them.
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Of course it’s stealing, your justifications don’t change that. Like I said, I don’t think it’s objectionable when it’s done for legitimate reasons (like if the company removes access for something you already bought and paid for), and forgivable if you’re too broke to afford it, but it’s stealing nevertheless.
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I think that’s the difference: Pirate Bay and Silkroad knew they were inherently anti-establishment, but it seems to me that Parler and Gab think of themselves as “alternative establishment” or something.
Pirate Bay was never trying to compete with Netflix or Steam-- it’s conceptually very different. But Parler very much wants (wanted?) to just be Twitter but with right-wing politics.
It’s simpler than that: fascists lie.
That’s a great distinction, I’m gonna start stealing that.
Some people aren’t anti establishment, they are anti-not-my-establishment. You can’t call yourself anti establishment if you just don’t like the current one.
Totally. I’m not even sure how many do call themselves anti-establishment, but I do know that there’s lots of talk on the right about building a “second economy” and “alternative public square” and stuff like the Daily Wire trying to make movies, all as part of this “fine, I’ll open my own casino” kind of play. It’s very purposefully establisment-focused, just not the existing one.
Socialist devs now
Socialism by definition is not anti establishment. It’s anti current establishment but the philosophy is geared towards a bigger government “establishment”.
I’m pretty sure that’s the difference between anti establishing and anti government. the “establishment” is the established power structure. technically fascists ARE anti establishment in most places. and that’s a very good thing.
Fascists only pretend to be anti establishment their whole thing is preserving capitalism when it enters crisis.
hmm, that feels a bit like splitting hairs. at that point we have to argue whether the establishment is capitalism, or the government. and that just seems like a pedantic argument about semantics that will accomplish nothing. point being, most fascists want to overthrow their current government.
The government is part of the structure of capitalism though. It is an expression of the power of capital.
I demand the government force this private company to provide me free speech.
Shit that makes you go https://i.imgur.com/rITNPGY.jpg
My dad always said “Don’t trust a man in a suit telling you who’s wrong” but then again he fell in line with Trump when he grew old.
Christ, if that happens to me, kill me.
Don’t worry, he did it so you won’t get a chance to.
Gab has their own server infrastructure.
Apparently they’re working on Christian AI too lol
I would advice against hosting servers in Russia, though. Police raids on datacenters, where they literally rip servers out from the racks, are, unfortunately, a common occurence.
It’s required to have literally zero knowledge of worldwide piracy and its current state to post or upvote such things.
I’m sure you can corroborate this with evidence.
Sure
https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-pia-exits-russia-server-seizures-160712/
The info is a bit buried under the news of Ukraine’s police apparently raiding lots of data-center since 2014 (mofos got their own language but still post news in Russian, smh), but I’m pretty sure that rghost, rutracker, rutor, RAMP, zaycev and the likes were also raided this way at some point - the police just came to the data-center, out of the blue, and literally just ripped the servers out. There was also some drama with some major hosting I don’t quite remember the name of, where police got involved at some point, prevented the staff from entering and caused a massive outage back in the day, I’ll update if I remember which one was it.
Overall, though, there’s not as many sources as I expected. Feels like either my memory is giving up or I’ve travelled dimensions… or it’s just roskomnadzor being at it again. I’ll check with my sysadmin friends, who personally had to deal with those situations, to check what is up and why there’s so little coverage on this.
That may all be correct but I don’t think that the Russian authorities are going to target me, a foreigner because I downloaded some movie. They will also not share data with law enforcement in my country in any effective way.
Exactly this can happen in some western countries. Russia is bad and all but they might be busier shutting down VPNs and censorship of their own people than with piracy.
They are probably doing a nonfantastic job with that too.
This is good evidence. Thank you for finding and linking these. Though I’d still object to ‘common occurrence’ if there aren’t a lot more; the most recent one is still 8 years old and all the examples are for sure guilty of breaking laws while having properly registered offices with their own data centre – high profile targets. Rather than a scenario where my VPS might randomly go offline because I hosted Invidious or Lemmy on it.
the most recent one is still 8 years old
That’s about the time they’ve figured what they’re really after - personal data. In 2015 they’ve expanded the 152-FZ(Russian GDPR) to force everyone who operates in Russian market to store all user data in Russia, and forced operators to provide it on request. Completely blocked linkedin as an example of non-compliance outcomes. They’ve also put a shit ton of spy-boxes everywhere that can inspect and block any traffic on the fly, so the need to physically confiscate servers is significantly reduced. Recently they’ve also started to force everyone to install their root certificate so that not even encryption is of help there. Yeah… should’ve mentioned all that in the first comment too
because I hosted Invidious or Lemmy on it
That could land you (or the person who paid for or owns the server) straight in jail
This time I must say your evidence and reasoning is much weaker. I disagree strongly with how you interpret this. Demanding foreign companies keep data on your citizens in your country is a good thing. The alternative is foreign spy agencies and governments having control over it. The fact that they have laws requiring companies to dox users is a completely separate issue. It’s bad, but it’s in-line with many EU nations. The NY Times article is especially bad because the tool they’re talking about, whois, is included standard with Mac and Linux. It’s not scary spy software. Inspecting and blocking traffic on the fly isn’t supported by the article as far as I can tell. And finally, having someone’s root certificate does not at all stop you from encrypting data. It lets websites that have been verified by the issuer have a green check mark in Firefox. You likely have tens or hundreds of root certificates installed on your computer. You can still keep data hidden from their issuers. It doesn’t affect your ability to encrypt.
In the case of that last link. He did go to jail for 20 days, but on the other hand, running Tor did literally save him from prison. This isn’t from that article but looking up his name, it seems he was cleared of all charges a week after he got out of jail and the judge’s reasoning was that because of Tor there wasn’t undeniable evidence. He wasn’t asked to stop hosting Tor either. Not defending the Russian justice system allowing them to jail you with only probable cause and not an actual conviction, that’s still bad, but where I live, I would get convicted instead, which is worse. This case sounds like positive confirmation that if I rent a Russia VPS and use it for Tor, I’m not breaking any laws and don’t need to worry about regular downtime, which was the original premise.
The NY Times article is especially bad because the tool they’re talking about, whois, is included standard with Mac and Linux. It’s not scary spy software. Inspecting and blocking traffic on the fly isn’t supported by the article as far as I can tell
Sorry, the article is terrible but I couldn’t find better English articles. Here are couple of auto-translated articles with some technical details on said spy-boxes. I remember there was a great combined push of state-owned market majority ISP Rostelecom along with state’s truth agency Roskomnadzor to implement all of this, for the first it was to push out independent ISP’s who couldn’t afford any of it, and for latter to erase and block out any info that the government doesn’t like, e.g. protest movements. The pretense was that it was for protection against foreign threats and autonomous operation of Russian side of the internet in case of hostile actions from the west, which has a grain of sense - e.g. of the 13 root DNS servers, 10 are operated by US and the rest by it’s allies. But the fact that this was not a joint initiative with other countries who are not on good terms with the US, and that those tools were used to combat political opposition, tells that this was not at all the real reason for it.
In the case of that last link. He did go to jail for 20 days, but on the other hand, running Tor did literally save him from prison. This isn’t from that article but looking up his name, it seems he was cleared of all charges a week after he got out of jail and the judge’s reasoning was that because of Tor there wasn’t undeniable evidence
That’s a dangerous precedent though, that a person can be arrested and held for indefinite amount of time without any significant evidence - just based on IP address. And in Russia, the laws are often written backwards, like the religious people feelings law in response to pussy riot case, the veteran feelings law for Navalny, the meme laws… for everyone… and…
He wasn’t asked to stop hosting Tor either
the entire Tor network was outlawed in Russia, so it won’t work as a defense any further.
This case sounds like positive confirmation that if I rent a Russia VPS and use it for Tor, I’m not breaking any laws and don’t need to worry about regular downtime, which was the original premise.
If you are not located in Russia, and you are not a figure in Russian politics, you indeed have nothing to worry about, except for the downtime, and certain protocols and endpoints being unreachable… and having your business ruined, but I figure if you’re not planning on doing any if you don’t care about downtime.
Though, if you are a political figure, the advice would still be to not touch anything Russian even with a 10-foot pole
And finally, having someone’s root certificate does not at all stop you from encrypting data. It lets websites that have been verified by the issuer have a green check mark in Firefox. You likely have tens or hundreds of root certificates installed on your computer
This allows them to perform MITM attacks by connecting to the website on your behalf, decrypting it, then re-encrypting it with their own cert and you’d still get the checkmark. Do you ever click on it to see who issued the certificate? They can, and most definitely will use it to attack their political enemies. Currently, they’re still forcing users to install it by holding online payments hostage, but even if you don’t pay online, nothing stops them from forcing it on all outbound communications in the future.
Here are couple of auto-translated articles with some technical details on said spy-boxes.
I found the technical exploration interesting, even if the translation I read might not have been completely accurate. But at least 8 years ago, they didn’t seem to have any ability to analyse and modify content, instead relying on a simple domain block-list. There’s domain blocking where I live too. I imagine it’s handled similarly on a technical level. Seems more of a concern for home users, I don’t think one of these boxes sitting outside a data-centre would affect you at all. Your hosted web application would have proper encryption and they’d only see the destination of one leg of the journey. Even for 8 years ago, this doesn’t really seem like a level of technical sophistication that trumps even non-rigorous general best practices.
That’s a dangerous precedent though, that a person can be arrested and held for indefinite amount of time without any significant evidence - just based on IP address.
Absolutely.
the entire Tor network was outlawed in Russia, so it won’t work as a defense any further.
This just says blocked, not outlawed. I also couldn’t find any other articles about Tor being outlawed. As long as it’s not illegal it’s no practical problem for me/you. According to this article, Tor and someone else is suing, which they wouldn’t do if they didn’t have a legal basis for operating. It even says it’s unconstitutional.
The decision violates the constitutional right to freely provide, receive and disseminate information and protect privacy.
Assuming that’s true, then that’s a pretty easy win for any data centre hosting my blackbox VPN-routed seedbox or whatever it would be.
you indeed have nothing to worry about, except for the downtime, and certain protocols and endpoints being unreachable
Yeah but I don’t feel you’ve demonstrated that at all. There were a few high profile raids, but they were decades ago. If my cheaper than average hosting has average downtime then I’m still getting a good deal. Based on what you’ve provided, it sounds like the anonymous computer in a cave scenario in the meme would go completely unnoticed by an averagely aggressive and averagely competent police state.
Though, if you are a political figure, the advice would still be to not touch anything Russian even with a 10-foot pole
assassination attempt to poison Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the British intelligence agencies
Come on. I’m not planning to spy on the Russian military for the MI6! That’s several levels of shady beyond ‘anti-establishment website’.
This allows them to perform MITM attacks by connecting to the website on your behalf, decrypting it, then re-encrypting it with their own cert and you’d still get the checkmark.
In theory that is true. And not particularly hard. But it’s not invisible, and so it would get discovered quickly. And it can also be mitigated with a VPN and not using the state’s DNS. Users of Russian e-banking are be susceptible to MITM, but my VPS isn’t, because I don’t have that certificate. And the Russian banking public isn’t being spied on because they’d burn the card when they use it. Is it being deployed to discretely and sparingly MITM-attack specific individuals? I mean maybe. But I think it’s being deployed so they can have a green check.
Where would you recommend?
IANAL, but, from a purely technical standpoint, Netherlands is a big hub of east-west Eurasian communications, so the latency, on average, is at least decent from everywhere on the continent. Germany seems to be popular option too, with lots of hosting companies just selling shares of Hetzner nodes. I myself host all my crap in the US because all the good stuff is over there. If you’re asking about the pirate stuff… I don’t know, maybe consider India? They seem to be struggling with cybercriminals over there
are you absolutely insane recommending hosting piracy in Germany those fuckers will take your house as Pfand
I don’t know what this is referring to, but GoDaddy can suck an entire warehouse of cocks.
Agreed, GoDaddy can suck an entire warehouse of cocks. It’s important you know the basic context, because in a weird way this can be considered history.
This is another Trump Derangement Syndrome type post. Remember when Trump got kicked off of Twitter & other social media platforms? Conservatives & Republicans said FINE, we’ll make our own social media platform! With blackjack! And hookers! Parler was born.
…but Amazon & I guess GoDaddy, too, decided after Parler was built that they wanted nothing to do with Parler. So they yanked out the infrastructure, the hosting & servers, that Parler was built on. Parler was unable to function. Liberals rejoiced & jeered, conservatives were understandably distraught.
Somehow Truth Social exists, via Mastodon & some weird-ass open source structure. Nobody cares about Truth Social, though.
Basically this post is mocking the Republicans, conservatives for feeble attempts to grassroots build an internet presence. And not having robust contingency plans in place, and owning every step of the process, to ensure it could not be disrupted or fucked with.
You lost me at “Trump Derangement Syndrome” which is a term only used to gaslight people who have legitimate issues with Trump.
Fascists aren’t anti establishment. Their whole thing is doing even worse things to preserve capitalism when it enters crisis.
They become the establishment.
No, they always were. That’s the point of fascism. To present an “alternative” that keeps the same group in power.
