10 ms·

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
        > 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? Way not to get the point. Are you saying the overwhelming majority of users on some network GP manages are using it to do "naughty things"? Yes, then of course GP should shut it down. That's why the question in this sub-thread is "Is this used for other stuff too, or in practice almost exclusively for morally repugnant stuff that I don't want to support?". If the question can't be answered, that's one thing; then people will have to base their moral judgment of whether to participate or not upon their own more or less educated guess. But most of the proponents here seem not to (want to) even understand the question, and in reply gibber about anything and everything except what was asked. Which makes not only themselves but the very thing they seem to think they're defending come off in a real shitty light. Way to score an own goal.
        h_anna_h 5y ago
        No need to be so hostile and toxic. I only mentioned it because this is an actual argument against TLS that I have seen being used in the past, even by popular sites such as pornhub for example (before being forced to enable TLS due to google downranking non-https sites). I also mentioned it because one of the points of TLS is to hide what kind of content is being accessed, so just like freenet you will not know whether most of the traffic is used for naughty things even if you want to, you can only assume. Especially since nowadays http has the Host header and services such as cloudflare are popular, so checking whether a user made a request to a "bad" IP address won't be effective. "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." > Yes, then of course GP should shut it down I would say that this is debatable.
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

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
        > 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? Way not to get the point. Are you saying the overwhelming majority of users on some network GP manages are using it to do "naughty things"? Yes, then of course GP should shut it down. That's why the question in this sub-thread is "Is this used for other stuff too, or in practice almost exclusively for morally repugnant stuff that I don't want to support?". If the question can't be answered, that's one thing; then people will have to base their moral judgment of whether to participate or not upon their own more or less educated guess. But most of the proponents here seem not to (want to) even understand the question, and in reply gibber about anything and everything except what was asked. Which makes not only themselves but the very thing they seem to think they're defending come off in a real shitty light. Way to score an own goal.
        h_anna_h 5y ago
        No need to be so hostile and toxic. I only mentioned it because this is an actual argument against TLS that I have seen being used in the past, even by popular sites such as pornhub for example (before being forced to enable TLS due to google downranking non-https sites). I also mentioned it because one of the points of TLS is to hide what kind of content is being accessed, so just like freenet you will not know whether most of the traffic is used for naughty things even if you want to, you can only assume. Especially since nowadays http has the Host header and services such as cloudflare are popular, so checking whether a user made a request to a "bad" IP address won't be effective. "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." > Yes, then of course GP should shut it down I would say that this is debatable.

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