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I mean Tor is used for some pretty bad stuff. Much of the dark net, if not most of the dark net is pretty heinous. Definitely worse than Gab. Do you feel simila

I mean Tor is used for some pretty bad stuff. Much of the dark net, if not most of the dark net is pretty heinous. Definitely worse than Gab. Do you feel similarly about Tor developers? The way I see it building platforms for detested people is a pretty good canary in the coalmine. If Internet technologies aren't resilient enough to keep the most hated people in the world online, then that's a pretty bad sign that those technologies wouldn't stand up to motivated state actors.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
52-6F-62 7y ago
Tor being a protocol, I think the better analog would be the people developing the "host anything you want here, no limits" servers would be more the type of developers OP was addressing.
Traster 7y ago
Gab specifically isn't a technology though. This article is specifically about the technology Gab is going to use. So I think the more apt comparison is between Tor and Mastodon. Gab is a website in the same that that a website on the dark net is a website- both of which can and should be judged on their merits.
- repolfx 7y ago
  That seems like a rather fragile distinction to draw. Tor isn't just a software stack and protocol. It's also a service made up of many hundreds of volunteers who agree to relay traffic, blindly, anywhere, despite (a) knowing what kind of traffic they're protecting and (b) having the ability to blacklist destinations. For instance it's common for Tor exits to ban SMTP or Bittorrent ports. Bear in mind Tor also supports hidden services, and could also choose to blacklist them if they want - the way the protocol works does allow that, and of course they could change the software stack and the nodes listed in their directory services to make such things easier. So Gab is a service run by a bunch of people that allow stuff pretty liberally, including bad stuff. So is Tor.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

52-6F-62 7y ago

Tor being a protocol, I think the better analog would be the people developing the "host anything you want here, no limits" servers would be more the type of developers OP was addressing.

Traster 7y ago

Gab specifically isn't a technology though. This article is specifically about the technology Gab is going to use. So I think the more apt comparison is between Tor and Mastodon. Gab is a website in the same that that a website on the dark net is a website- both of which can and should be judged on their merits.

repolfx 7y ago
That seems like a rather fragile distinction to draw. Tor isn't just a software stack and protocol. It's also a service made up of many hundreds of volunteers who agree to relay traffic, blindly, anywhere, despite (a) knowing what kind of traffic they're protecting and (b) having the ability to blacklist destinations. For instance it's common for Tor exits to ban SMTP or Bittorrent ports. Bear in mind Tor also supports hidden services, and could also choose to blacklist them if they want - the way the protocol works does allow that, and of course they could change the software stack and the nodes listed in their directory services to make such things easier. So Gab is a service run by a bunch of people that allow stuff pretty liberally, including bad stuff. So is Tor.