7 ms·

I wonder if Freenet is used for anything but super illegal stuff, and sheer curiosity? This isn’t to say privacy and escaping the bottleneck of traditional int

I wonder if Freenet is used for anything but super illegal stuff, and sheer curiosity? This isn’t to say privacy and escaping the bottleneck of traditional internet isn’t compelling. But I’ve yet to see a use case for Freenet.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
You can't see any use case for a private and censorship-resistant publishing platform that isn't illegal? Okay, pretending for a moment that privacy and censorship-resistance aren't good ends unto themselves: Whistleblowing, publishing something perfectly legal but which political or corporate interests don't want published, and publishing or reading LGBT+ content in a political, social, or family situation that would disapprove.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  Yeah, but, is anybody actually using it for that? Or is it just used for criminality, in practice?
  - ogurechny 5y ago
    How would you know if someone shared data with someone else (using any kind of communication system, not just anonymous) without telling you? How would you gather statistics of such transfers? Some time ago, certain people used Freenet to transfer enormous amounts of data (for such a small network) in the open, and most users did not notice, and it rarely got mentioned (if at all). So when people state they have estimates of network usage, I get really skeptical.
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      Nobody has stated they have any estimates of anything, but this is a really defensive response to the mere suggestion that it might be good to know if the network is used for criminality or not.
      - ogurechny 5y ago
        In simple terms, if someone has uploaded a picture of a cat to a non-public Freenet key, and someone downloaded it, both you and I have no way to learn about it unless we can spy on those users or flood the network with spying nodes to the point of logging each piece of data, and deducing that these two people exchanged something. Even theoretically, we can only make assumptions about publicly announced data (freesites and message systems), and then try to estimate the proportion of communication that happens in the dark. And people often make wrong assumptions.
        user-the-name 5y ago
        So you are telling me that it is hard to find out if running a Freenet node will help criminals, or decent people. That does not really do much to convince me running it is a good thing, you know?
        h_anna_h 5y ago
        One man's criminal is another man's freedom fighter. Snowden is a criminal but his supporters consider him a decent person. I do not believe that the two are mutually exclusive. The whole point of projects like freenet is to let people communicate data between each other without censorship and without being identified, no matter what that data is. If you disagree with that principle then I believe that freenet is probably not for you. > That does not really do much to convince me running it is a good thing, you know? Make sure to block TLS connections on every network that you manage. You don't know what naughty things your users might be doing after all. You would not want to help a criminal, would you?
        CRConrad 5y ago
  - int_19h 5y ago
    And if it is, so what? Plenty of things are illegal around the world that shouldn't be. In some countries, homosexuality is a crime. In some, atheism is a crime. In some, ingesting harmless substances is a crime.
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      When the original question is whether it's used for non-"super illegal" stuff, I don't think that includes things that are legal in most countries.
      - int_19h 5y ago
        The original question is misleading, because it's asked from the perspective of somebody privileged wrt not having their opinions, beliefs, or topics of interest suppressed. (Which, of course, is often a temporary state of affairs - the means of censorship are the same regardless of their target, so the more pervasive they are, the more chances that they'll be used against people who did not anticipate themselves being targets.) But even if you go by this arbitrarily restricted definition, there's still one item on my list that is not legal in most countries.
        Dylan16807 5y ago
        > But even if you go by this arbitrarily restricted definition, there's still one item on my list that is not legal in most countries. The harmless substances? You can't ingest those via ethernet, so I skipped that one on purpose.
    - aabbcc1241 5y ago
      And in some, playing video game or music are illegal
- tootie 5y ago
  Does this actually solve those cases though? If I run one of these in China and talk about the Uighur genocide am I actually safe? Not being sassy I'm actually wondering.
  - commoner 5y ago
    It would definitely be safer to discuss that topic on Freenet than on Weibo or WeChat. China requires websites to be licensed,* so the typical self-hosting route isn't viable. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICP_license https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICP_license
    - ArneBab 5y ago
      But you are not safe to discuss anything on most Chinese smartphones regardless of the App, because common input methods in China (optimized software keyboards) send all your keystrokes to their servers. Freenet actually warns you about that during installation.
      - commoner 5y ago
        There are ways around that. For example, users can switch to a third-party keyboard, such as TRIME: https://github.com/osfans/trime https://github.com/osfans/trime In any case, using Freenet is safer than using a platform that is actively monitored by the government and linked to the user's identity.
        ArneBab 5y ago
        Freenet currently takes the simpler route of suggesting to use the phones' IME (because that isn’t already proven to send all keystrokes). It is likely that using Freenet in opennet-mode can get you on a watchlist — but you’re already on that if you wrote here. There have not been report of actual tracking of Freenet in pure friend-to-friend mode, but there are too few people using it exclusively in that mode to be sure.
- leshokunin 5y ago
  I didn’t say I can’t see a use case, did I? I asked if people use it for that. You simply never hear from people praising Freenet as a tool for censorship resistance. Nowhere near the same awareness as TOR or even Secure Scuttlebutt.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    > I didn’t say I can’t see a use case, did I? Although I think I'm following what you meant now, it's very easy to read > But I’ve yet to see a use case for Freenet. exactly like that; I didn't realize that you were asking for documented real world instances.
einpoklum 5y ago
If nothing else, many people use it for personal, interpersonal and group communications about perfectly mundane issues, uninteresting to governments, on principle. (... for some definition of "many".)
exporectomy 5y ago
What's wrong with illegal stuff? Perhaps you mean to say stuff that your culture shames, abuses or ostracizes people for? In that case, yea, that's why somebody would want to hide their activity.
- leshokunin 5y ago
  I never said anything about that. I asked what people use it for and basically if it’s got any traction, besides being an interesting idea.
  - exporectomy 5y ago
    OK, thanks for clarifying. I misread some subtext in your comment and assumed you were judging illegal activity as not worthy of an internet service.
ArneBab 5y ago
Groups of people from very different backgrounds discussing politics for more than a decade without lifting their pseudonyms, in Forums that actually persist while most forums in the clearnet died? For me that’s a compelling use-case.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago

You can't see any use case for a private and censorship-resistant publishing platform that isn't illegal? Okay, pretending for a moment that privacy and censorship-resistance aren't good ends unto themselves: Whistleblowing, publishing something perfectly legal but which political or corporate interests don't want published, and publishing or reading LGBT+ content in a political, social, or family situation that would disapprove.

user-the-name 5y ago
Yeah, but, is anybody actually using it for that? Or is it just used for criminality, in practice?
- ogurechny 5y ago
  How would you know if someone shared data with someone else (using any kind of communication system, not just anonymous) without telling you? How would you gather statistics of such transfers? Some time ago, certain people used Freenet to transfer enormous amounts of data (for such a small network) in the open, and most users did not notice, and it rarely got mentioned (if at all). So when people state they have estimates of network usage, I get really skeptical.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    Nobody has stated they have any estimates of anything, but this is a really defensive response to the mere suggestion that it might be good to know if the network is used for criminality or not.
    - ogurechny 5y ago
      In simple terms, if someone has uploaded a picture of a cat to a non-public Freenet key, and someone downloaded it, both you and I have no way to learn about it unless we can spy on those users or flood the network with spying nodes to the point of logging each piece of data, and deducing that these two people exchanged something. Even theoretically, we can only make assumptions about publicly announced data (freesites and message systems), and then try to estimate the proportion of communication that happens in the dark. And people often make wrong assumptions.
      - user-the-name 5y ago
        So you are telling me that it is hard to find out if running a Freenet node will help criminals, or decent people. That does not really do much to convince me running it is a good thing, you know?
        h_anna_h 5y ago
        One man's criminal is another man's freedom fighter. Snowden is a criminal but his supporters consider him a decent person. I do not believe that the two are mutually exclusive. The whole point of projects like freenet is to let people communicate data between each other without censorship and without being identified, no matter what that data is. If you disagree with that principle then I believe that freenet is probably not for you. > That does not really do much to convince me running it is a good thing, you know? Make sure to block TLS connections on every network that you manage. You don't know what naughty things your users might be doing after all. You would not want to help a criminal, would you?
        CRConrad 5y ago
- int_19h 5y ago
  And if it is, so what? Plenty of things are illegal around the world that shouldn't be. In some countries, homosexuality is a crime. In some, atheism is a crime. In some, ingesting harmless substances is a crime.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    When the original question is whether it's used for non-"super illegal" stuff, I don't think that includes things that are legal in most countries.
    - int_19h 5y ago
      The original question is misleading, because it's asked from the perspective of somebody privileged wrt not having their opinions, beliefs, or topics of interest suppressed. (Which, of course, is often a temporary state of affairs - the means of censorship are the same regardless of their target, so the more pervasive they are, the more chances that they'll be used against people who did not anticipate themselves being targets.) But even if you go by this arbitrarily restricted definition, there's still one item on my list that is not legal in most countries.
      - Dylan16807 5y ago
        > But even if you go by this arbitrarily restricted definition, there's still one item on my list that is not legal in most countries. The harmless substances? You can't ingest those via ethernet, so I skipped that one on purpose.
  - aabbcc1241 5y ago
    And in some, playing video game or music are illegal
tootie 5y ago
Does this actually solve those cases though? If I run one of these in China and talk about the Uighur genocide am I actually safe? Not being sassy I'm actually wondering.
- commoner 5y ago
  It would definitely be safer to discuss that topic on Freenet than on Weibo or WeChat. China requires websites to be licensed,* so the typical self-hosting route isn't viable. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICP_license https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICP_license
  - ArneBab 5y ago
    But you are not safe to discuss anything on most Chinese smartphones regardless of the App, because common input methods in China (optimized software keyboards) send all your keystrokes to their servers. Freenet actually warns you about that during installation.
    - commoner 5y ago
      There are ways around that. For example, users can switch to a third-party keyboard, such as TRIME: https://github.com/osfans/trime https://github.com/osfans/trime In any case, using Freenet is safer than using a platform that is actively monitored by the government and linked to the user's identity.
      - ArneBab 5y ago
        Freenet currently takes the simpler route of suggesting to use the phones' IME (because that isn’t already proven to send all keystrokes). It is likely that using Freenet in opennet-mode can get you on a watchlist — but you’re already on that if you wrote here. There have not been report of actual tracking of Freenet in pure friend-to-friend mode, but there are too few people using it exclusively in that mode to be sure.
leshokunin 5y ago
I didn’t say I can’t see a use case, did I? I asked if people use it for that. You simply never hear from people praising Freenet as a tool for censorship resistance. Nowhere near the same awareness as TOR or even Secure Scuttlebutt.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  > I didn’t say I can’t see a use case, did I? Although I think I'm following what you meant now, it's very easy to read > But I’ve yet to see a use case for Freenet. exactly like that; I didn't realize that you were asking for documented real world instances.

einpoklum 5y ago

If nothing else, many people use it for personal, interpersonal and group communications about perfectly mundane issues, uninteresting to governments, on principle. (... for some definition of "many".)

exporectomy 5y ago

What's wrong with illegal stuff? Perhaps you mean to say stuff that your culture shames, abuses or ostracizes people for? In that case, yea, that's why somebody would want to hide their activity.

leshokunin 5y ago
I never said anything about that. I asked what people use it for and basically if it’s got any traction, besides being an interesting idea.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  OK, thanks for clarifying. I misread some subtext in your comment and assumed you were judging illegal activity as not worthy of an internet service.

ArneBab 5y ago

Groups of people from very different backgrounds discussing politics for more than a decade without lifting their pseudonyms, in Forums that actually persist while most forums in the clearnet died? For me that’s a compelling use-case.