Following the banning of Donald Trump and many prominent followers on mainstream social media platforms, and Amazon’s withdrawal of web hosting from Parler, rightwingers have fled to an archipelago of smaller “alt tech” sites and services that promise less content moderation or a refuge from the prying eyes of their political opponents and law enforcement.
On Tuesday, on Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play store, apps, services and social networking platforms that either directly pitch themselves to Trumpists as a free speech alternative, or which allow them to enjoy encrypted communications, were dominating the list of the most downloaded apps.
Some of these were platforms that – like the temporarily disappeared Parler – seek to reproduce some of the features of big tech platforms, but with far fewer restrictions on what users can post.
One example, CloutHub, was founded by Jeff Brain, an Irvine, California-based businessman, in 2018. It was originally pitched as a hub for civic engagement and on Brain’s LinkedIn site, it is still described as giving “tools to organize, exchange information, hold meetings, create a better-informed public, increase public participation, and effectively advocate their positions”.
Since last December, though, when pro-Trump “stop the steal” activists were increasingly receiving sanctions on mainstream sites, it has more squarely presented itself as a redoubt for conservatives who have been “disenfranchised by big tech”.
It has acquired a number of high-profile “ambassadors”, including the Republican party official and lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, the Hercules actor Kevin Sorbo and the pro-Trump meme peddler Logan Cook, who operates under the alias “Carpe Donktum”.
CloutHub also offers a function for rightwingers missing their frenetic Facebook groups. On his own CloutHub page as of Tuesday, Brain was offering links to an anti-lockdown page demanding the reopening of houses of worship. Other groups included “Patriot’s Corner”, “Women for Trump”, and “QAnon: The Official Group Page on CloutHub”.
The site is one player among a cluster of sites like MeWe and Minds.com whose light touch in content moderation is presented as a commitment to free speech. The laissez-faire attitude of those sites has led many conservatives to at least set up accounts ahead of any bans they might receive on other platforms. On MeWe, for example, the QAnon-boosting lawyer Lin Wood, conservative broadcaster Mark Levin and Eric Trump all have profiles, but have so far posted little or no content.
A far more concerning case is Gab, founded by Andrew Torba in 2016 in response to what he called “the entirely left-leaning Big Social monopoly”. It immediately attracted users associated with the “alt-right”, who were beginning to come under some pressure on mainstream platforms. Gab soon developed into an echo chamber of hate speech and far-right radicalization where the Pittsburgh shooting suspect Robert Bowers announced a mass murder of worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue.
Parler is currently down and out but it has found a new hosting company in the form of Epik, which has repeatedly stepped in to save far-right-friendly websites. If it does come back in some form, it will only be after a painful migration of its user data. It is an open question whether the security issues exposed by a data breach that has apparently struck the site will make its old users reluctant to return.
Megan Squire is a professor of computer science at Elon University and has published extensive research on the far right’s use of alternative tech platforms. She says Parler’s troubles are symptomatic of the difficulty of competing with established big tech players when it comes to the security of users.
“Facebook has a 16-year lead on you,” she said.
She added that anyone considering using any alt tech platform should find out information about security arrangements and what was being done with their data.
Alongside the alt tech social media platforms are a number of sites that reproduce one or the other of YouTube’s two most important features: the ability to post and share video, and the ability to livestream to an audience.
The video sharing sites – like Rumble and BitChute – also make their pitch to users on the basis of lax moderation. BitChute, in particular, has become home to huge amounts of neo-Nazi material, including coded death threats against journalists and activists.
The selling point of platforms like DLive is a combination of light-touch moderation and the opportunity to make money through livestreaming. Squire explains that DLive’s functionality is similar to YouTube’s Super Chat, in that live stream viewers can engage in cross-chat, and, importantly, offer tips to streamers in the platform’s own cryptocurrency.
One prominent white nationalist streamer, Nick Fuentes, was banned from the site in the wake of the Capitol riot, which he streamed. Squire says that on average, in the year leading up to the ban, Fuentes was making an average of $418 a day, the site’s blockchain records show, “and that average includes the days when he didn’t stream at all”.
Though his remaining holdings on the site were frozen after the ban, Fuentes drew down his earnings regularly, and had a direct financial incentive to attend the Capitol protests.
Another popular download in recent days has been Signal, an encrypted messaging application with a broad range of users. It offers the ability to send encrypted text messages and make encrypted voice calls, whether one-to-one or in groups. It is not specifically marked by the influence of the far right, nor specifically marketed to them.
The Guardian previously reported on the former Washington state representative Matt Shea’s use of the app to secretly coordinate surveillance of constituents, and his followers’ use of the platform to ventilate conspiracy theories and fantasies of violence.
Lastly, Telegram, which on Tuesday evening was listed as the No 2 download on both the Play store and the App Store, according to Squire represents a kind of Swiss army knife for far-right movements seeking to recruit and radicalize supporters.
While she emphasizes that it, too, has a wide range of users, the majority of whom are not extremists, its hands-off approach to moderation in combination with several key features makes it irresistible to anyone unable to use mainstream services.
“It allows file storage, voice chat, and audio and video sharing,” she says, meaning that a wide range of content and communication styles can be employed. It also offers one-to-many communication in channels, and many-to-many communication in chats, including encrypted chats.
But most important element is its “one-two punch”, Squire says, wherein after groups “publish their outward-facing propaganda, they can draw recruits into a chat, then an encrypted chat, and further and further towards the inner circle of their group”.
Radicalization on Telegram, she adds, proceeds by users being led to “peel back layers of an onion”.
And this is the environment that possibly tens of thousands of disillusioned Trumpists have entered this week.