An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Embattled social media platform Parler is offline after Apple, Google and Amazon pulled the plug on the site after the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol last week that left five people dead. But while the site is gone (for now), millions of posts published to the site since the riot are not. A lone hacker scraped millions of posts, videos and photos published to the site after the riot but before the site went offline on Monday, preserving a huge trove of potential evidence for law enforcement investigating the attempted insurrection by many who allegedly used the platform to plan and coordinate the breach of the Capitol.

The hacker and internet archivist, who goes by the online handle @donk_enby, scraped the social network and uploaded copies to the Internet Archive, which hosts old and historical versions of web pages. In a tweet, @donk_enby said she scraped data from Parler that included deleted and private posts, and the videos contained "all associated metadata." The scraped videos from Parler appear to also include the precise location data of where the videos were taken. That metadata could be a gold mine of evidence for authorities investigating the Capitol riot, which may tie some rioters to their Parler accounts or help police unmask rioters based on their location data.

Patience may be a virtue. For U.S. tech companies looking to do deals that involve China, it is also an expensive necessity. From a report: Cisco Systems and Applied Materials each received different lessons on that score last week. On Friday, Cisco found its $2.6 billion deal to buy Acacia Communications in serious jeopardy after Acaia announced it was terminating the merger due to a lack of approval from Chinese regulators. Cisco's unusual response was that it did, in fact, receive the necessary approval, and it is now seeking a court mandate that would prevent the deal from being terminated. The deal was first struck in July 2019 and was Cisco's largest acquisition since its $3.7 billion pickup of AppDynamics more than two years prior.

Applied Materials took a different tack. The maker of semiconductor manufacturing gear earlier in the week announced in a regulatory filing that it has upped its price for Kokusai Electric to $3.5 billion from the $2.2 billion the two companies first agreed upon in June 2019. That deal is also only awaiting approval from Chinese regulators. With its higher price, Applied was able to extend the deadline to close the merger to March 19 from its original date of Dec. 30. Both cases are just the latest sign of soured trade relations between the U.S. and China. The departing Trump administration has continued to pursue aggressive actions, such as export controls on Chinese chipmaking giant SMIC and an order requiring the delisting of three Chinese telecommunications companies from the New York Stock Exchange.

Donald Trump received unexpected backing from Germany and France after the U.S. president was shut off social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook, extending Europe's battle with big tech. From a report: German Chancellor Angela Merkel objected to the decisions, saying on Monday that lawmakers should set the rules governing free speech and not private tech companies. "The chancellor sees the complete closing down of the account of an elected president as problematic," Steffen Seibert, her chief spokesman, said at a regular news conference in Berlin. Rights like the freedom of speech "can be interfered with, but by law and within the framework defined by the legislature -- not according to a corporate decision." The German leader's stance was echoed by French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, who said that the state and not "the digital oligarchy" is responsible for regulations, calling big tech "one of the threats" to democracy.

Twitter shares fell 7% in pre-market trading after the social media platform permanently banned outgoing President Donald Trump. From a report: The company confirmed its decision in a blog post on Friday, saying Trump's tweets breached policies by risking incitement to violence. It cited his posts on the riots in the U.S. capital last week. It's a watershed moment for technology platforms that have faced conflicting pressures on one hand to restrict misinformation and hate speech, and defend free speech on the other. Twitter was Trump's preferred channel for amplifying attacks on his rivals, spreading conspiracies and provoking other nations during his four years in power.