📢 New work out today from our Tech team & China research team: @joinClubhouse app recently became popular in 🇨🇳. We looked at its data security practices & found a potential risk to mainland Chinese users.
(1) .@AgoraIO, a Shanghai-based startup, provides the backend platform to Clubhouse. This has been widely suspected.
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(2) .@joinClubhouse user IDs (not their username — more like a unique serial number) are transmitted in plaintext over the internet, making them trivial to intercept. Chatroom IDs (again, more like serial number) also transmitted in plaintext.
1/ 📢 Out Today: A new report on the contours of Parler. Our team examines growth dynamics (non) moderation policies, and platform growth in 🇧🇷 and 🇸🇦 .
2/ Our analysis pulled data from three snapshots of Parler’s roughly 29 months online. We looked at metrics from the API to map join dates and linguistic patterns on the site.
3/ Parler has roughly 800 moderators, but their moderation practices were purely reactive and did little to filter out spam or fraud accounts.
2\ The Rally Forge network was an astroturfing operation involving fake accounts (some w/AI-gen faces) that left thousands of comments on FB, Twitter, & Instagram. Clients included Turning Point Action and Inclusive Conservation Group, a pro-hunting org cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/oct-20…
3\ The 🇳🇬 network is linked to the Islamic Movement in Nigeria. With fake accounts, it advocated for the release from prison of IMN leader Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky. cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/islami…