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Vladislav Vcherashniy, developer of an application for the pro-Trump Parler social network
The next front in the digital fight of the American Internet against Donald Trump is the actual destruction of the social network Parler. Where the supporters of the current president talked.
They have chosen this site for a long time. But after Trump was blocked by Twitter, Facebook and Google, the Trumpists rushed into Parler with triple force.
This process was not stopped even by Apple and Google sanctions, which removed the service application from their stores. Since millions of people have already installed the program on their smartphones and computers (and there was still the opportunity to download the application without going through Google Play).
Then they hooked up heavy artillery: Amazon stopped supporting Parler servers, and the service completely disappeared from the World Wide Web. Either way.
The reason was the accusation of this social network of alleged anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism. In addition, the media close to the Democrats found a “Russian trace” in its creation. Which in his eyes was reason enough to block.
Although, of course, the main reason is an attempt to block any ties between supporters of Donald Trump.
At the same time, if you wish, you can find social network connections not only with Russia, but also with Ukraine. And a nationalist meeting in Kiev.
“Strana” uncovered what is known about the disgraced service’s Ukrainian roots.
What is Parler and how was it closed
It is an American microblogging service launched in 2018. It is positioned as an alternative to Twitter.
It was created by University of Denver alumni John Matze and Jared Thomson, but was initially promoted by high-ranking Conservatives and Trumpists. So one of the first to open an account was Trump’s adviser Rudy Giuliani.
In addition to American supporters of conservative ideas, users from other countries joined Parler. For example, from Saudi Arabia, where Twitter, due to its commitment to ultra-liberalism, did not enjoy the favor of the authorities. Or from Brazil, whose president and Trump fan Bolsonaro opened a Parler account, and many of his compatriots followed suit.
A sharp rise in social media indicators started in the second half of 2020, that is, before the US presidential elections. This was due to the fact that Twitter began to openly censor Trump, marking his posts as inauthentic. Parler openly joined this fight by launching the Brexit-like hashtag #Twexit, urging people to leave Twitter.
In the summer, Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale wrote on Parler: “Hey Twitter, your days are numbered.” In other words, the connection between the new social network and the political gathering around the president was evident. Although it is not criminal.
After the US elections, when Trump accused the Democrats of stealing votes, the social network began to grow one million per week, becoming one of the most popular applications in the United States and reaching 20 million subscribers.
There were concentrated supporters of the Republican president, who rallied under the slogan Stop the Steal (“Stop theft”). Later, for some reason, that hashtag will be blocked on Twitter.
After Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, Parler was removed from major app stores. And today Amazon stopped providing service to the servers of the social network. And it disappeared from the Internet.
“We cannot provide services to a customer who cannot quickly detect and remove content that incites or encourages violence,” Amazon said.
It is true that neither this company, nor Google and Apple provided examples of such incitement.
The media assured that on the pages of the social network there were calls to burn the Capitol and kill the Democrats.
CEO John Matze denied the allegations and said the site would be down for about a week before being moved to other servers.
Russian or Ukrainian trace?
Parallel to the ban on Parler on the Web, the American and British media began to spread information about the “Russian trail” in the work of this social network.
They said that the founder of the service, John Matze, is married to a Russian woman Alina Mukhutdinova, whom he met shortly before the launch of Parler, and a year before the opening of the project he traveled with her to Russia.
Mukhutdinova’s t-shirt from her Instagram “Trust me, I’m a Russian spy” only reinforced suspicions among many observers that this is indeed the case.
But seriously, this is, in fact, the entire “Russian trail”. At the same time, there is completely open information that hedge funds close to the Republicans were financing Parler. Take Robert Mercer, who officially sponsors the Republican Party.
But the story with the Ukrainian roots of this social network is much more interesting.
After information about Parler’s lockout surfaced, Ukrainian-speaking user vkleber began showing activity on Twitter.
Some in Ukraine started referring to him as “Parler’s developer”.
However, in fact, his account contains another position: “Head of Engineering at ParlerApp”.
With the same nickname there is a Telegram user named Vladislav Vcherashniy. Specifies that you are developing an application for Apple. And he lives in Las Vegas. This city is located in the state of Nevada, where Parler is based.
That is, we can assume that Yesterday is responsible for the development of a mobile application for the social network for iOS.
In other social networks Vladislav has photographs of the United States.
The author of the project Parler adheres to the principles of “Social Network with Freedom of Expression”, so he reacted harshly to the removal of Donald Trump’s Twitter page.
“Fools rejected. Freedom of expression? Hard censorship is served under the sauce of struggle,” he wrote yesterday, January 9, after Trump’s account was blocked for “the risk of further incitement to violence.” .
After Trump and his followers moved to Parler, Apple and Google removed the social network from their stores, prompting a new chunk of negative reaction from the authors of the service, and in particular from the Ukrainian programmer.
“If you support such actions, be prepared that Jack Dorsey (CEO of Twitter) Ed.) will eliminate it by eating broccoli, for example. Internet censorship concerns everyone, “he wrote yesterday.
“My position is that censorship has no place on the Internet in the way it is, that is, you cannot ban a person if they have been ordered to do it from above, because someone does not like their position” – he also commented on the bans against Trump.
In addition, judging by his publications, Yesterday is a supporter of the Ukrainian extreme right.
In 2017, he was actively involved in the Academy for ATO Veterans project. Where he taught programming, in particular, to members of the Azov battalion. The developer added a link to his post, which contains the memories of volunteer Vladimir Vovk, whom Yesterday taught.
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There is also a photo of these workouts. In it, one of the creators of the Parler application is together with the nationalist C14 Andrei Medvedko, the organizer of these courses.
Medvedko, by the way, is one of those accused of murdering the writer Oles Buzina in the spring of 2016.
Judging by his social media, Vlad Yesterday is an active supporter of the Nationalists. For example, he recently wrote to the National Aviation University stating that several professors read subjects in Russian.
In addition, the developer of Parler is friends with one of the chiefs of the “Municipal Guard” Sergei Bondar and writes on the topic of beating the Roma.
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Naturally, all this does not mean that Parler is somehow influenced by the Ukrainian far right (just as the fact that the founder of the project has a Russian wife does not mean that he has connections with some state structures of the Russian Federation).
Obviously, if anyone contributed to its creation and development, it was the American Republicans and the Trump entourage.
That is why a war against her has now started in the United States.
