Jan 18 (Reuters) – Parler, a social media website and app popular with the far-right in the United States, has come online in part with the help of a Russian technology company.
Parler disappeared from the Internet when he was left by the hosting division of Amazon Inc and other partners for bad moderation after his users called for violence and posted videos extolling the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
On Monday, Parler’s website was available again, but only with a message from the CEO that he was in the process of restoring functionality.
The internet protocol address it used is owned by DDos-Guard, which is monitored by two Russian men and provides services including protection against distributed denial of service attacks, infrastructure expert Ronald Guilmette told Reuters.
When the website is fully restored, Parler users can see and post comments. However, most users prefer the app, which is still excluded from the official Apple Inc and Google stores.
Parler CEO John Matze and representatives from DDoS-Guard have not responded to requests for comment.
Last Wednesday, Matze told Reuters the company was in talks with multiple service providers but declined to elaborate further.
DDoS-Guard has partnered with other racist, right-wing and conspiracy sites used by mass killers to share messages, including 8kun. It has also supported Russian government sites.
The DDoS-Guard website lists an address in Scotland under the company name Cognitive Cloud LP, but that is owned by two men in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, Guilmette said. One of them recently told The Guardian that he was not aware of all the content the company makes possible.
Critics of Parler said it was a potential security risk to be dependent on a Russian company, as well as an odd choice of a site popular with self-described patriots.
Russian propaganda has fueled political divisions in the United States, backed outgoing US President Donald Trump and reinforced false stories of electoral fraud, as well as protests against police brutality.
Parler, who revealed it has more than 12 million users, sued Amazon last Monday after the ecommerce giant and cloud service provider shut down the service, citing poor moderation in calls to violence. (Reporting by Kenneth Li and Elizabeth Culliford in New York and Joseph Menn in San Francisco; adapted by Lincoln Feast.)