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Baloney. You are mixing up free and open internet with total and utter lawlessness. If someone posts CP as spam on the open web then I have reasonable surety th

by chx 7y ago

Baloney. You are mixing up free and open internet with total and utter lawlessness. If someone posts CP as spam on the open web then I have reasonable surety the owners will swiftly deal with it because it is in their best interests to do so but on an onion site who cares. So I do have a reasonable belief I can't stumble accidentally on CP on the open web while I lack this belief with the Tor network. Well moderated discourse is better than not because it filters out the trolls. It's not less free and open.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
If someone posts CP as spam on a random onion site, it's reasonably going to get removed there too because it's disgusting and nobody wants to see that. Moreover, knowing the passport numbers of the moderators is not a prerequisite to a site being well-moderated. It's possible to build and care enough to maintain a reputation under a pseudonym. Meanwhile you have no actual guarantee that people won't post whatever they want on the open web. Anyone can host anything they want from any computer on the internet, including a compromised one when they don't want anyone to know who put it there. In other words, if you're willing to break the law then you can already be anonymous, so the thing Tor is enabling is for people who don't want to break the law to have anonymous communications.
- chx 7y ago
  It's like doing extreme sports or visiting North Korea or some such. There's risk vs benefits in every activity and browsing the "darknet" has extremely little benefit compared to the life ruining risk of CP finding its way on your laptop.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    That's like arguing that going outside is too risky because you could be struck by a meteor. The probability that you accidentally stumble across CP and that somehow comes to the attention of law enforcement and they're unreasonable enough to prosecute you for it even though the evidence indicates that it was an accident, is lower than the probabilities of equally bad things happening as a result of equally innocuous things that people do on a regular basis. Meanwhile you can still be struck by a meteor indoors. Go visit Facebook as the first person to view an image posted by a troll before it gets flagged, or on a day when Facebook was hacked but they don't know it yet.

by chx 7y ago

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

If someone posts CP as spam on a random onion site, it's reasonably going to get removed there too because it's disgusting and nobody wants to see that. Moreover, knowing the passport numbers of the moderators is not a prerequisite to a site being well-moderated. It's possible to build and care enough to maintain a reputation under a pseudonym. Meanwhile you have no actual guarantee that people won't post whatever they want on the open web. Anyone can host anything they want from any computer on the internet, including a compromised one when they don't want anyone to know who put it there. In other words, if you're willing to break the law then you can already be anonymous, so the thing Tor is enabling is for people who don't want to break the law to have anonymous communications.

chx 7y ago
It's like doing extreme sports or visiting North Korea or some such. There's risk vs benefits in every activity and browsing the "darknet" has extremely little benefit compared to the life ruining risk of CP finding its way on your laptop.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  That's like arguing that going outside is too risky because you could be struck by a meteor. The probability that you accidentally stumble across CP and that somehow comes to the attention of law enforcement and they're unreasonable enough to prosecute you for it even though the evidence indicates that it was an accident, is lower than the probabilities of equally bad things happening as a result of equally innocuous things that people do on a regular basis. Meanwhile you can still be struck by a meteor indoors. Go visit Facebook as the first person to view an image posted by a troll before it gets flagged, or on a day when Facebook was hacked but they don't know it yet.