Full chart, weighted by the number of channels owned here: visualization generated in Google Data Studio Even just exploring the owners of the channels sent to Zello, there’s some obvious coalescence around several influential Zello users. Zello provides highly networked voice communication, even if the app claimed not to be social media previously. Yet 6.4% of the overall channels remain online. Some groups rushed to delete their channels when news of militia involvement in the 6 January storming started to reach a fever pitch. 10% of the channels also returned a ‘404’ error, which is usually indicative that the channel has been deleted by its owner. However, of the channels sent to them, the status is detailed below:Ĩ3.6% of these channels now return a ‘410’ error, which appears to be a Zello-induced ban of the channel. Firstly, this indicates that they were likely already gathering channel affiliation with the potential plan of monitoring or banning these channels. Zello claims to have banned 2000 militia channels, which is over double the amount of channels sent to them as part of this investigation. The “Militia” item in the legend is just a stand-in for unaffiliated militia groups, including both non-descript “patriot” militia groups and local groups not describing themselves as Oath Keepers or III% or otherwise. It’s a brand of militia that has multiple competing splinters and most of those splinters started on Zello years ago. Despite their high numbers in this network, it is unsurprising just how represented the III% groups are within this network. The overall percentage of groups that claimed III% character is also slightly larger, as some “Patriot Emergency Response” channels and even some Oath Keepers channels claimed a dual status as both III% and some other character. Over 50% of all channels in the list were explicitly III% groups.

Visualization generated in Google Data Studio

Zello channels