Someone hacked the far-right social media platform Parler, and now all of the videos posted on the app are available and able to be downloaded.
Parler is an American alt-tech microblogging and social media service predominately used by Donald Trump supporters, conservatives, conspiracy theorists, and right-wing extremists. Users on the site usually post far-right ideologies and content. A large bulk of the recently posted content to the site were videos from Trump supporters and other domestic terrorists who raided the U.S. Capitol. And now, everyone has access to it because of archivists and data hoarders.
According to Vice Media, the Jan. 6 riots on Capitol Hill were live-streamed on social media. During that time, archivists saved the footage and data from the day, especially those sent to Parler, Vice reports. One of the hackers pulled more than56 terabytes of data from the application. Eventually, all the data became available on BitTorrent, where anyone can download and watch.
“These torrents contain video.parler.com public video archives, as they existed,” the projects GitHub explained. “Some videos that were archived by the Archive Team do not exist any longer, but there’s still a large chunk left.”
A lot of the footage is raw and unsorted, and some of the videos don’t play. Other videos that were pulled contain random, unrelated things like TikTok videos, memes, and foreign language videos. However, some groups like Bellingcat have created ways to view the content more easily.
Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in an attempt to stop lawmakers from confirming Electoral votes that would solidify President-elect Joe Biden as the next president. Many of the mobsters have since been arrested for their participation in the insurrection.
