An alternative social media site, Parler, crashed after President Donald Trump’s account was suspended from Twitter. This isn’t the first time Parler crashed, and the site has shown similar networking timeout errors in the past when there was a large influx of users at one time. The site has been a favored go-to for Trump supporters and came under scrutiny after the U.S. Capitol riots. Here’s what we know so far about what happened.
The App Went Down After Trump Was Banned from Twitter
Shortly after Twitter announced that it was permanently suspending Trump’s account, users on Parler reported that the social media site was down.
After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.https://t.co/CBpE1I6j8Y
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) January 8, 2021
The Twitter Safety account announced: “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
Although it’s not clear why Parler went down, it’s possible that a large number of people went to Parler to either discuss the suspension or to watch people’s reactions. On a subreddit called ParlerWatch, one user commented that they went to Parler simply to see the reactions to the Twitter news.
Despite a rumor that Trump had a Parler account, Reuters reported that he did not as of January 7.
On Twitter, people also commented on the timing of the site going down, with some wondering if the app was disabled.
The Parler app is down. Either it’s server has been overloaded right now or the app has been disabled.
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) January 8, 2021
One person received an error that read: “there was an issue fetching the feed.”
parler also seems down pic.twitter.com/XIIruFKchN
— Luke Johnson (@johnson) January 8, 2021
The Site Is Showing a Network Timeout Error
The site is either not loading for some users at all or showing errors. Users are reporting a “No Content found” error in some situations.
Parler
Others are reporting seeing a Networking Error that reads: “It seems that we are either over capacity or you are experiencing a poor network connection.”
Parler
Apple Threatened to Ban Parler from the App Store
Earlier on January 8, Apple threatened to ban Parler from the App store, Buzzfeed News reported. The threat was made via an email to Parler executives after complaints were received that the app was used to coordinate the Capitol riots.
Buzzfeed reported that Apple’s email included the following: “We have received numerous complaints regarding objectionable content in your Parler service, accusations that the Parler app was used to plan, coordinate, and facilitate the illegal activities in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021 that led (among other things) to loss of life, numerous injuries, and the destruction of property. The app also appears to continue to be used to plan and facilitate yet further illegal and dangerous activities.”
Apple told Parler that it had 24 hours to submit an update about a plan to improve moderation or the app would be removed.
Buzzfeed reported that John Matze, CEO of Parler, said on the site that they would not “cave to pressure from anti-competitive actors.” He reportedly wrote, in part: “We will and always have enforced our rules against violence and illegal activity. But we WONT cave to politically motivated companies and those authoritarians who hate free speech.”
When a Similar Error Was Seen in November, It Was Due to a Large Number of People Using Parler at Once
Parler is a microblogging, social networking site that first was launched in August 2018. It was founded by John Matze and Jared Thomson, Buzzfeed News reported. Matze is currently the CEO. Parler allows users to post with a 1,000-character limit, and others can vote on posts or “echo” them.
The last time Parler went down with the same error as seen on January 8, officials at Parler shared that these errors were due to a large number of people signing up at one time. This happened in November 2020.
Alexander Blair, CTO of Parler, posted the following message about the issues back in November. He wrote, in part: “Over the last couple of days, we’ve received a massive influx of new Parler community members, and we’re delighted to have everyone onboard! The system’s infrastructure is designed to scale extremely rapidly…however, there’s a couple of activities that everyone’s been using that are less-used in general, so we didn’t have quite as many optimizations around them…”
Parler
Matze added his own message back in November:
Parler
Matze wrote, in part: “Scaling issues are normal! We are prepared for this mostly, however not everything is predictable. We have increased the number of people per day on Parler by 4x in the last 24 hours…. it’s looking like this trend will continue…”
It’s not yet known what’s causing the recent issue on January 8, 2021. Parler has an official Twitter account, but has not posted there since June.
READ NEXT: The latest COVID-19 deaths, cases, and updates
No comments:
Post a Comment