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"Richard Downing, who oversees the computer crime section of the Justice Department, said he and his colleagues have focused on techniques that create distrust

"Richard Downing, who oversees the computer crime section of the Justice Department, said he and his colleagues have focused on techniques that create distrust on the sites by encouraging users to believe that sellers and site administrators have already been compromised and are feeding information to law enforcement." This looks like a good way to spark real-life violence in what is otherwise a remarkably safe way to exchange drugs. In addition, reputation and trust are everything in dark net markets, and reputation is the only thing preventing vendors from selling fake or adulterated drugs. I can't see any way that the police intentionally spreading misinformation is a good thing, on a practical or philosophical level.

anigbrowl 7y ago
This looks like a good way to spark real-life violence in what is otherwise a remarkably safe way to exchange drugs. How? The whole point of the dark web is that you don't know who you're dealing with so who are you going to seek revenge against if you think you've been wronged? If you mean the second-order effect of people giving up on the dark net and buying drugs of questionable quality from a dealer on a street corner (with all the implicit violence of illegal street crime) that's likely true; but policing is an instrumentality and wishing they weren't is to say that the police should shape policy, which creates a whole new set of problems. Without endorsing the drug war, this is going to happen any time you have asymmetric conflict with incomplete information. So while I think all drugs should be legal and we should concentrate on education and harm reduction, the same techniques will be deployed against other things that everyone does agree are crimes, from the manufacture and distribution of child porn to disrupting violent organized crime networks. Wherever there is a demarcation of liability actors on both the supply and demand sides will operate independently to penetrate it and establish a bidirectional channel. So while I'd like to see the drug war ended right now and a full pardon for everyone who hasn't committed murder or extreme violence, the philosophical aspect of this is never going to go away because it's a fundamental strategy, arguably rooted in biology if not deeper.
russdpale 7y ago
Well I mean they gotta tell the brass they are doing something, right? So you create an atmosphere by where it looks like you are doing stuff, but really you know the things you are doing are ineffective and even counter productive to your goals. But you need a job, doesn't everyone? So the cycle of a bumbling war on drugs goes on.
dewaine 7y ago
it makes sense when the goal is not to protect people but to enforce the law for the law's sake
- jMyles 7y ago
  Really? What law is being enforced by these actions? This is just a domestic PsyOps operation; I see no adherence to the rule of law here.
  - ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
    Broadly speaking, the law in question is Title 21 Chapter 13 of the US Code. Buying and selling controlled substances without appropriate authorization is illegal. Disruption of illegal activities by law enforcement is generally legal, provided no other laws are broken in the process. Now, whether buying and selling these substances should be illegal is another question. But it's definitely not obvious that law enforcement is outside its typical role here.
    - jMyles 7y ago
      I didn't mean to suggest that law enforcement is outside its typical role, just that it is outside its legitimate role if it were behaving in a way, as dewaine suggests, of blindly enforcing a law for that law's sake. This action doesn't appear to actually enforce any law, only to create acrimony and violence in communities where some people choose to violate it.
      - ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
        > blindly enforcing a law for that law's sake. I think this take is really uncharitable. I believe many/most people in the US believe that the laws controlling illegal drugs have at least some good purposes. Sure, most people want weed to be legal (not everyone, but most people). But heroin and fentanyl? I'm guessing support for legalizing those is well below the 50% mark. I bet in an unbiased poll, most people would support efforts to disrupt marketplaces that sell these goods. I agree that if law enforcement believed what, say, many HNers believe about the effectiveness of prohibition laws, this type of enforcement would represent a slavish devotion to the law over justice. But I'm guessing they generally believe the law is a good law and that the country is better off with it enforced. > This action doesn't appear to actually enforce any law I already referenced the law that it enforces. I'm not sure what you mean by reasserting that it doesn't enforce any law, while in the previous paragraph you conceded that "[law enforcement were] enforcing a law for that law's sake." Are they or aren't they enforcing a law?
jascii 7y ago
If however, you have vested interests in the private prison industry and benefit from keeping the drug-trade illegal and on the streets it is a very good thing..
- opo 7y ago
  Less than 10% of prisoners are in private prisons - getting rid of private prisons would have little impact on support for the drug war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison Which isn't to say that public sector unions and companies that supply material to prisons, or built prisons don't all support polices that incarcerate more and more people. (For example, the CA prison worker union spends more on political lobbying than all other labor unions in CA.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peace_Officers_Association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peace_...
  - onetimemanytime 7y ago
    Said it yourself in the second part. >>"The American prison system is massive. So massive that its estimated turnover of $74 billion eclipses the GDP of 133 nations." https://smartasset.com/mortgage/the-economics-of-the-american-prison-system https://smartasset.com/mortgage/the-economics-of-the-america...
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  Alternatively you could have completely open interests in public correctional officers unions. Over 90% of prisons in the US are public and their employees are at least as highly motivated as any investor to lobby for more punitive laws and they can vote.
RobertDeNiro 7y ago
Seems like a good use of taxpayer money.
PaulAJ 7y ago
Rather puts me in mind of the deliberate poisoning of alcohol by the government during Prohibition. The attitude was that if someone died from drinking poisoned hooch, well it was their fault for drinking it. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/government-poison-10000-americans/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/government-poison-10000-am...
- refurb 7y ago
  The government did not poison supplies of alcohol meant for human consumption, nor did it intentionally aim to kill those who drank the tainted products. That's a big difference from a deliberate poisoning. And that still happens today - you can buy "denatured alcohol" that is unfit for human consumption.
  - dagenix 7y ago
    Quoting the referenced article, in turn quoting a Slate article: > To sell the stolen industrial alcohol, the liquor syndicates employed chemists to “renature” the products, returning them to a drinkable state. The bootleggers paid their chemists a lot more than the government did, and they excelled at their job. Stolen and redistilled alcohol became the primary source of liquor in the country. So federal officials ordered manufacturers to make their products far more deadly. They didn't put poison specifically in alcohol for human consumption, but they did put poison into chemicals that they knew would be consumed by humans. At the end of the day, I don't see the difference.
    - refurb 7y ago
      Fair point. But that still happens today. They add things like benzene, toluene or diesel to alcohol so it can’t be consumed. It’s similar to over the counter codeine in Canada. The dose is small and combined with a dose of acetaminophen. Seems kind of cruel for addicts to destroy their liver if they take too much.
      - dagenix 7y ago
pastor_elm 7y ago
> I can't see any way that the police intentionally spreading misinformation is a good thing, on a practical or philosophical level. Being undercover is spreading misinformation. It's the nature of the job.
- maxheadroom 7y ago
  By that logic, the "birther" movement resulted merely from the "nature of politics", yeah? At some point, we have to concede that misinformation campaigns can be quite dangerous - like with yelling fire in a crowded theatre.
Taek 7y ago
This might also have the inverse effect. Some websites already do what they can to ensure that the web admins don't have access to communications between the seller and the buyer. Increased paranoia results in more safety guides and increased attention to detail by those who do not want to be prosecuted.
decoyworker 7y ago
Devil's advocate- just because the violence is not visible doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It's just pushed out of sight. The increased ease of acquiring drugs is probably pretty strongly correlated to stronger cartels elsewhere. I think the real solution is legalization of most drugs but until then I see no issue with these tactics.
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  Why most and not all? Also, given how many existing drugs are already legal, couldn't one say that most already are legal and that hasn't been enough to fix the problem?
bduerst 7y ago
The law enforcement are vastly overselling their capabilities and impact here. These dark-net markets are already rife with FUD from scammers, and the LE accounts spreading it are painfully obvious to the communities that they exist in.
drawkbox 7y ago
> This looks like a good way to spark real-life violence in what is otherwise a remarkably safe way to exchange drugs. The drug war is the antithetical to harm reduction and safety in production and use. The only solution to the drug war is decriminalization, legalization and improved health systems for harm reduction. Most of the issue with the drug war and overdoses is in direct relation to drug illegality. Users get badly produced products, mixed with harsher drugs like fentanyl that are cheaper or people can't get them help due to the criminality of the policy. Drugs can be dangerous, the drug war and illegality makes them more dangerous and obliterates harm reduction. The hard line approach leads to more dangerous synthetics that only exist due to the illegality of the substances they are analogs to. Anyone taking drugs that is addicted and needs help, should get help, not felonies and put in a building with violent criminals, adding to problems problems doesn't solve anything. Not only that, the drug war has diverted funds to mafias/cartels that have built them to the size of nation states, making the whole thing extra violent when it is mostly just a non-violent end result. We learned nothing from alcohol prohibition. The drug war also makes respecting law and order a joke when drugs like marijuana, LSD, psilocybin and more are treated harshly, these are safe drugs with very low toxicity [1], lower than caffeine, aspirin and nicotine, and keep people from harsher substances. Ultimately the drug war is a war on people and plants, that is part of a drug dark age we are in, that will look quite silly in retrospect from the future, same way alcohol prohibition looks today. Alcohol is a drug, it is dangerous, but also fun, as long as there is harm reduction and information about it and it is produced safely. When alcohol was illegal, all of that, including production which led to explosions and production of deadly batches, was more dangerous being illegal than legal. It is also safer with the legal market running it rather than the mafia, the reverse is true in other illegal drugs. Harm reduction, decriminalization, legalization and bringing a regulated market in will make all substances safer, markets around them efficiently work safety into the system when is has enough market value as there is liability that pushes producers to make safe products and information about harm reduction. It is time to throw in the towel on the war on people and the human condition, then turn to a human/health/market focused solution rather than authoritarian enforcement solution. End the drug prohibition dark age. We need a Right to Body amendment that ends this prohibition and future attempts. [1] https://imgur.com/gallery/Bkl9QeN https://imgur.com/gallery/Bkl9QeN
- 7y ago
sandworm101 7y ago
The police don't know what they are doing. Trying to break the trust of darkweb users is a fool's errand. The system is built on mistrust. The big selling point of these markets is that you don't have to know anything about your dealer, and they need to know almost nothing about you. So there is no trust system to break. The other big selling point is that these websites defeat all the violence. There are no turf wars online, at least not physical wars. No dealer can force users to buy from them exclusively. No low-level dealer in a neighborhood must pay homage to a local mob boss. All of that disappears. Any cop that thinks oldschool tactics like spreading distrust within the supply chain to instigate internal mole hunts has watched too many movies. Within Tor it is assumed that everyone is a mole. Each individual protects themselves with the tools available. Every dealer assumes at least some buyers are cops. Every buyer assumes the cops are running sting operations. The market functions nevertheless.
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  So long as 'trust' is part of the factor for purchase, then by 'Supply and Demand' - the tactic will work. Consider that there's an incredible number of 'regular people' who might visit these sites, not super knowledgable. They might have regular jobs, regular lives. The thought that they could be caught up in something legal, lose their jobs etc. etc. is a very material risk. Without getting into other aspects of this issue ... the tactic they're using is actually reasonable. Also, I'll bet their not spending a huge amount of energy on it, it probably boils down to 'keeping an eye on it'. As far as your comments bout 'no violence' etc. - really, it'll just move elsewhere. Anything that starts making money will be exploited very quickly by nefarious entities for nefarious means.
- velox_io 7y ago
  It's also safer than buying it off the streets (aside from dealing with gang members), there is no telling what you are buying (they probably don't know either). While it's true that everyone mistrusts each other. Sellers are also competing with each other to offer the best products with the best prices, putting a huge amount of effort to build the best feedback ratings. A world away from gangs using extreme violence to increase turnover (you would think that factors into the priorities). I'd feel safer buying from DreamMarket than I would Ebay.
SkyBelow 7y ago
>This looks like a good way to spark real-life violence in what is otherwise a remarkably safe way to exchange drugs. If you believe what they are doing is bad and must be stopped, then it makes such a choice seem like the relevant thing to do. When the violence does come, it provides more support for the laws in the first place. From the view point of someone who disagrees with those laws in general, I find it evil. But seemingly well thought out evil. Given their existing ideology, it makes sense.
- nothrabannosir 7y ago
  This is beyond the mere position on whether drugs should be legal. The question raised by op is: at what cost? OP says: this action directly causes violence. Therefore anyone defending the action must defend either one of the following positions: - that is wrong, it does not cause violence, or - it does cause violence but drugs are so bad that this violence is worth it. These are different positions from “drugs are bad and must be stopped.” Talking about this is valuable, because everyone has a limit on how far they’re willing to see countermeasures go. E.g. we think DUI is bad and must be stopped, but clearly not at the cost of making alcohol locks mandatory on every car in circulation. But DUI is evil! Well, yes, but apparently not that evil. The question then is: ok, you think drugs are evil.. how evil? This evil? It’s more than just ideology.
  - UncleEntity 7y ago
    I would argue the violence has nothing to do with the drugs and everything to do with the legality -- you, as an upstanding citizen, can't seek legal protection for your chosen trade so have to provide your own protection outside the legal frameworks.
  - SkyBelow 7y ago
    >it does cause violence but drugs are so bad that this violence is worth it. Generally once you want to make something illegal and use the threat of execution to force people into cages for engaging in it, then you have to accept that it is worth the violence to stop it. I do see a lot of people who want to make things illegal but don't consider what that actually means for the perspective of someone having the law enforced against them. For example, people who want to make abortion illegal, but when you ask them about what penalty it would be enforced with, they don't want one. Personally, I consider these people to be in a state of still deciding their views on the given issue. Once an individual has decided that someone in possession of the wrong plant should be locked in a cage for years and using physical, potentially lethal, violence used if they resist, then it seems quite reasonable they will feel the same about other uses of violence for the same reason. > E.g. we think DUI is bad and must be stopped, but clearly not at the cost of making alcohol locks mandatory on every car in circulation. Based on the numbers of deaths from alcohol and compared to other movements to restrict rights based on deaths caused (restriction of privacy in the case of terrorism or gun rights in the case of mass shootings), I find it quite surprising there isn't an effort comparable to what you suggest. It makes me begin to question the honesty and sincerity of any held political position.
llamataboot 7y ago
It's an awful idea. Same thing happens when police departments run ads claiming that there is a bad batch of crystal meth in town and to please bring yours in and the police will dispose of it and then they arrest people that show up. Makes it super difficult for legitimate harm reduction organizations to get out actual information about possibly adulterated substances.
- nerdponx 7y ago
  Do they seriously do that? Seems so obviously counterproductive.

anigbrowl 7y ago

This looks like a good way to spark real-life violence in what is otherwise a remarkably safe way to exchange drugs. How? The whole point of the dark web is that you don't know who you're dealing with so who are you going to seek revenge against if you think you've been wronged? If you mean the second-order effect of people giving up on the dark net and buying drugs of questionable quality from a dealer on a street corner (with all the implicit violence of illegal street crime) that's likely true; but policing is an instrumentality and wishing they weren't is to say that the police should shape policy, which creates a whole new set of problems. Without endorsing the drug war, this is going to happen any time you have asymmetric conflict with incomplete information. So while I think all drugs should be legal and we should concentrate on education and harm reduction, the same techniques will be deployed against other things that everyone does agree are crimes, from the manufacture and distribution of child porn to disrupting violent organized crime networks. Wherever there is a demarcation of liability actors on both the supply and demand sides will operate independently to penetrate it and establish a bidirectional channel. So while I'd like to see the drug war ended right now and a full pardon for everyone who hasn't committed murder or extreme violence, the philosophical aspect of this is never going to go away because it's a fundamental strategy, arguably rooted in biology if not deeper.

russdpale 7y ago

Well I mean they gotta tell the brass they are doing something, right? So you create an atmosphere by where it looks like you are doing stuff, but really you know the things you are doing are ineffective and even counter productive to your goals. But you need a job, doesn't everyone? So the cycle of a bumbling war on drugs goes on.

dewaine 7y ago

it makes sense when the goal is not to protect people but to enforce the law for the law's sake

jMyles 7y ago
Really? What law is being enforced by these actions? This is just a domestic PsyOps operation; I see no adherence to the rule of law here.
- ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
  Broadly speaking, the law in question is Title 21 Chapter 13 of the US Code. Buying and selling controlled substances without appropriate authorization is illegal. Disruption of illegal activities by law enforcement is generally legal, provided no other laws are broken in the process. Now, whether buying and selling these substances should be illegal is another question. But it's definitely not obvious that law enforcement is outside its typical role here.
  - jMyles 7y ago
    I didn't mean to suggest that law enforcement is outside its typical role, just that it is outside its legitimate role if it were behaving in a way, as dewaine suggests, of blindly enforcing a law for that law's sake. This action doesn't appear to actually enforce any law, only to create acrimony and violence in communities where some people choose to violate it.
    - ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
      > blindly enforcing a law for that law's sake. I think this take is really uncharitable. I believe many/most people in the US believe that the laws controlling illegal drugs have at least some good purposes. Sure, most people want weed to be legal (not everyone, but most people). But heroin and fentanyl? I'm guessing support for legalizing those is well below the 50% mark. I bet in an unbiased poll, most people would support efforts to disrupt marketplaces that sell these goods. I agree that if law enforcement believed what, say, many HNers believe about the effectiveness of prohibition laws, this type of enforcement would represent a slavish devotion to the law over justice. But I'm guessing they generally believe the law is a good law and that the country is better off with it enforced. > This action doesn't appear to actually enforce any law I already referenced the law that it enforces. I'm not sure what you mean by reasserting that it doesn't enforce any law, while in the previous paragraph you conceded that "[law enforcement were] enforcing a law for that law's sake." Are they or aren't they enforcing a law?

jascii 7y ago

If however, you have vested interests in the private prison industry and benefit from keeping the drug-trade illegal and on the streets it is a very good thing..

opo 7y ago
Less than 10% of prisoners are in private prisons - getting rid of private prisons would have little impact on support for the drug war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison Which isn't to say that public sector unions and companies that supply material to prisons, or built prisons don't all support polices that incarcerate more and more people. (For example, the CA prison worker union spends more on political lobbying than all other labor unions in CA.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peace_Officers_Association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peace_...
- onetimemanytime 7y ago
  Said it yourself in the second part. >>"The American prison system is massive. So massive that its estimated turnover of $74 billion eclipses the GDP of 133 nations." https://smartasset.com/mortgage/the-economics-of-the-american-prison-system https://smartasset.com/mortgage/the-economics-of-the-america...
barry-cotter 7y ago
Alternatively you could have completely open interests in public correctional officers unions. Over 90% of prisons in the US are public and their employees are at least as highly motivated as any investor to lobby for more punitive laws and they can vote.

RobertDeNiro 7y ago

Seems like a good use of taxpayer money.

PaulAJ 7y ago

Rather puts me in mind of the deliberate poisoning of alcohol by the government during Prohibition. The attitude was that if someone died from drinking poisoned hooch, well it was their fault for drinking it. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/government-poison-10000-americans/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/government-poison-10000-am...

refurb 7y ago
The government did not poison supplies of alcohol meant for human consumption, nor did it intentionally aim to kill those who drank the tainted products. That's a big difference from a deliberate poisoning. And that still happens today - you can buy "denatured alcohol" that is unfit for human consumption.
- dagenix 7y ago
  Quoting the referenced article, in turn quoting a Slate article: > To sell the stolen industrial alcohol, the liquor syndicates employed chemists to “renature” the products, returning them to a drinkable state. The bootleggers paid their chemists a lot more than the government did, and they excelled at their job. Stolen and redistilled alcohol became the primary source of liquor in the country. So federal officials ordered manufacturers to make their products far more deadly. They didn't put poison specifically in alcohol for human consumption, but they did put poison into chemicals that they knew would be consumed by humans. At the end of the day, I don't see the difference.
  - refurb 7y ago
    Fair point. But that still happens today. They add things like benzene, toluene or diesel to alcohol so it can’t be consumed. It’s similar to over the counter codeine in Canada. The dose is small and combined with a dose of acetaminophen. Seems kind of cruel for addicts to destroy their liver if they take too much.
    - dagenix 7y ago

pastor_elm 7y ago

> I can't see any way that the police intentionally spreading misinformation is a good thing, on a practical or philosophical level. Being undercover is spreading misinformation. It's the nature of the job.

maxheadroom 7y ago
By that logic, the "birther" movement resulted merely from the "nature of politics", yeah? At some point, we have to concede that misinformation campaigns can be quite dangerous - like with yelling fire in a crowded theatre.

Taek 7y ago

This might also have the inverse effect. Some websites already do what they can to ensure that the web admins don't have access to communications between the seller and the buyer. Increased paranoia results in more safety guides and increased attention to detail by those who do not want to be prosecuted.

decoyworker 7y ago

Devil's advocate- just because the violence is not visible doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It's just pushed out of sight. The increased ease of acquiring drugs is probably pretty strongly correlated to stronger cartels elsewhere. I think the real solution is legalization of most drugs but until then I see no issue with these tactics.

SkyBelow 7y ago
Why most and not all? Also, given how many existing drugs are already legal, couldn't one say that most already are legal and that hasn't been enough to fix the problem?

bduerst 7y ago

The law enforcement are vastly overselling their capabilities and impact here. These dark-net markets are already rife with FUD from scammers, and the LE accounts spreading it are painfully obvious to the communities that they exist in.

drawkbox 7y ago

> This looks like a good way to spark real-life violence in what is otherwise a remarkably safe way to exchange drugs. The drug war is the antithetical to harm reduction and safety in production and use. The only solution to the drug war is decriminalization, legalization and improved health systems for harm reduction. Most of the issue with the drug war and overdoses is in direct relation to drug illegality. Users get badly produced products, mixed with harsher drugs like fentanyl that are cheaper or people can't get them help due to the criminality of the policy. Drugs can be dangerous, the drug war and illegality makes them more dangerous and obliterates harm reduction. The hard line approach leads to more dangerous synthetics that only exist due to the illegality of the substances they are analogs to. Anyone taking drugs that is addicted and needs help, should get help, not felonies and put in a building with violent criminals, adding to problems problems doesn't solve anything. Not only that, the drug war has diverted funds to mafias/cartels that have built them to the size of nation states, making the whole thing extra violent when it is mostly just a non-violent end result. We learned nothing from alcohol prohibition. The drug war also makes respecting law and order a joke when drugs like marijuana, LSD, psilocybin and more are treated harshly, these are safe drugs with very low toxicity [1], lower than caffeine, aspirin and nicotine, and keep people from harsher substances. Ultimately the drug war is a war on people and plants, that is part of a drug dark age we are in, that will look quite silly in retrospect from the future, same way alcohol prohibition looks today. Alcohol is a drug, it is dangerous, but also fun, as long as there is harm reduction and information about it and it is produced safely. When alcohol was illegal, all of that, including production which led to explosions and production of deadly batches, was more dangerous being illegal than legal. It is also safer with the legal market running it rather than the mafia, the reverse is true in other illegal drugs. Harm reduction, decriminalization, legalization and bringing a regulated market in will make all substances safer, markets around them efficiently work safety into the system when is has enough market value as there is liability that pushes producers to make safe products and information about harm reduction. It is time to throw in the towel on the war on people and the human condition, then turn to a human/health/market focused solution rather than authoritarian enforcement solution. End the drug prohibition dark age. We need a Right to Body amendment that ends this prohibition and future attempts. [1] https://imgur.com/gallery/Bkl9QeN https://imgur.com/gallery/Bkl9QeN

7y ago

sandworm101 7y ago

The police don't know what they are doing. Trying to break the trust of darkweb users is a fool's errand. The system is built on mistrust. The big selling point of these markets is that you don't have to know anything about your dealer, and they need to know almost nothing about you. So there is no trust system to break. The other big selling point is that these websites defeat all the violence. There are no turf wars online, at least not physical wars. No dealer can force users to buy from them exclusively. No low-level dealer in a neighborhood must pay homage to a local mob boss. All of that disappears. Any cop that thinks oldschool tactics like spreading distrust within the supply chain to instigate internal mole hunts has watched too many movies. Within Tor it is assumed that everyone is a mole. Each individual protects themselves with the tools available. Every dealer assumes at least some buyers are cops. Every buyer assumes the cops are running sting operations. The market functions nevertheless.

sonnyblarney 7y ago
So long as 'trust' is part of the factor for purchase, then by 'Supply and Demand' - the tactic will work. Consider that there's an incredible number of 'regular people' who might visit these sites, not super knowledgable. They might have regular jobs, regular lives. The thought that they could be caught up in something legal, lose their jobs etc. etc. is a very material risk. Without getting into other aspects of this issue ... the tactic they're using is actually reasonable. Also, I'll bet their not spending a huge amount of energy on it, it probably boils down to 'keeping an eye on it'. As far as your comments bout 'no violence' etc. - really, it'll just move elsewhere. Anything that starts making money will be exploited very quickly by nefarious entities for nefarious means.
velox_io 7y ago
It's also safer than buying it off the streets (aside from dealing with gang members), there is no telling what you are buying (they probably don't know either). While it's true that everyone mistrusts each other. Sellers are also competing with each other to offer the best products with the best prices, putting a huge amount of effort to build the best feedback ratings. A world away from gangs using extreme violence to increase turnover (you would think that factors into the priorities). I'd feel safer buying from DreamMarket than I would Ebay.

SkyBelow 7y ago

>This looks like a good way to spark real-life violence in what is otherwise a remarkably safe way to exchange drugs. If you believe what they are doing is bad and must be stopped, then it makes such a choice seem like the relevant thing to do. When the violence does come, it provides more support for the laws in the first place. From the view point of someone who disagrees with those laws in general, I find it evil. But seemingly well thought out evil. Given their existing ideology, it makes sense.

nothrabannosir 7y ago
This is beyond the mere position on whether drugs should be legal. The question raised by op is: at what cost? OP says: this action directly causes violence. Therefore anyone defending the action must defend either one of the following positions: - that is wrong, it does not cause violence, or - it does cause violence but drugs are so bad that this violence is worth it. These are different positions from “drugs are bad and must be stopped.” Talking about this is valuable, because everyone has a limit on how far they’re willing to see countermeasures go. E.g. we think DUI is bad and must be stopped, but clearly not at the cost of making alcohol locks mandatory on every car in circulation. But DUI is evil! Well, yes, but apparently not that evil. The question then is: ok, you think drugs are evil.. how evil? This evil? It’s more than just ideology.
- UncleEntity 7y ago
  I would argue the violence has nothing to do with the drugs and everything to do with the legality -- you, as an upstanding citizen, can't seek legal protection for your chosen trade so have to provide your own protection outside the legal frameworks.
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  >it does cause violence but drugs are so bad that this violence is worth it. Generally once you want to make something illegal and use the threat of execution to force people into cages for engaging in it, then you have to accept that it is worth the violence to stop it. I do see a lot of people who want to make things illegal but don't consider what that actually means for the perspective of someone having the law enforced against them. For example, people who want to make abortion illegal, but when you ask them about what penalty it would be enforced with, they don't want one. Personally, I consider these people to be in a state of still deciding their views on the given issue. Once an individual has decided that someone in possession of the wrong plant should be locked in a cage for years and using physical, potentially lethal, violence used if they resist, then it seems quite reasonable they will feel the same about other uses of violence for the same reason. > E.g. we think DUI is bad and must be stopped, but clearly not at the cost of making alcohol locks mandatory on every car in circulation. Based on the numbers of deaths from alcohol and compared to other movements to restrict rights based on deaths caused (restriction of privacy in the case of terrorism or gun rights in the case of mass shootings), I find it quite surprising there isn't an effort comparable to what you suggest. It makes me begin to question the honesty and sincerity of any held political position.

llamataboot 7y ago

It's an awful idea. Same thing happens when police departments run ads claiming that there is a bad batch of crystal meth in town and to please bring yours in and the police will dispose of it and then they arrest people that show up. Makes it super difficult for legitimate harm reduction organizations to get out actual information about possibly adulterated substances.

nerdponx 7y ago
Do they seriously do that? Seems so obviously counterproductive.