5 ms·

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 netwo

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.
        CRConrad 5y ago
        > "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." Yeah, well, sorry, but I really couldn't see much of a stronger interpretation. I mean, hey, was my take all that much more of "a weaker one that's easier to criticize" than: >>> 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? ? I'd say no.
  - ogurechny 5y ago
    I didn't think I was convincing anyone to run anything, just explaining that this approach wouldn't work. Moreover, there's always a possibility that you, a “decent person” can become a “criminal” one day, and, counter-intuitively, that's when you want the laws to work and be equal for everyone, not when you're a “decent person”. But it doesn't need to be so dramatic. Like most of the people on this site, you probably use more or less cheap broadband or mobile internet at home. The reason it's much cheaper than a dedicated line to your location is because a lot of people in your area want an internet connection, too (and they don't use it fully, or all at the same time, etc.), so there's a great deal of ISP infrastructure sharing. So you help your neighbor in having a cheap internet access, and your neighbor helps you. What if one of your neighbors is a maniac who streams killing people, or a botnet owner, or a military drone operator working from home, or just a domestic abuser? Have you asked your provider to only join the “decent people” network? If not, you are actively helping bad people right now.
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      > What if one of your neighbors is a maniac who streams killing people, or a botnet owner, or a military drone operator working from home, or just a domestic abuser? Have you asked your provider to only join the “decent people” network? If not, you are actively helping bad people right now. But they weren't asking about whether the network had some users doing "super-illegal" things. They asked if it was roughly all the users. So that analogy isn't even close to fitting.
      - ogurechny 5y ago
        You mean that helping some cold-blooded killers is okay, but after their percentage reaches some tipping point, it becomes too much of a headache? I can't say that I agree with that moral. One of the central ideas of Freenet (and some other projects) is that you don't know what exactly you transfer. Moreover, if you could discern “good content” from “bad content” in some general or specific fashion, you would instantly be forced to do so according to numerous laws. If we followed that path, all bittorrent clients would get outlawed long ago (we all know certain businesses have always wanted that).
  - robertlagrant 5y ago
    Wait til you hear about the criminal justice system. Sometimes lawyers defend guilty people!
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      Guilty people are supposed to have lawyers. What lawyers don't do is assist their clients in ongoing breaking of the law.
      - robertlagrant 5y ago
        But why do they need lawyers when it's easy to determine if someone is decent?
        user-the-name 5y ago
        Is your argument here that it is hard to tell if a pedophile is really a bad person or not?
        robertlagrant 5y ago
        No. Distorting things into disingenuous nonsense helps nothing. You wrote the original message that it's easy to know if nodes' users are decent people. I'm saying it's not easy, with an example.
        Dylan16807 5y ago
        It's not easy to judge a single person to a criminal standard. But big groups of people are much easier to judge when you only care about things like the average, and my own choices don't have to be sure beyond reasonable doubt.

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.
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        > "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." Yeah, well, sorry, but I really couldn't see much of a stronger interpretation. I mean, hey, was my take all that much more of "a weaker one that's easier to criticize" than: >>> 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? ? I'd say no.
- ogurechny 5y ago
  I didn't think I was convincing anyone to run anything, just explaining that this approach wouldn't work. Moreover, there's always a possibility that you, a “decent person” can become a “criminal” one day, and, counter-intuitively, that's when you want the laws to work and be equal for everyone, not when you're a “decent person”. But it doesn't need to be so dramatic. Like most of the people on this site, you probably use more or less cheap broadband or mobile internet at home. The reason it's much cheaper than a dedicated line to your location is because a lot of people in your area want an internet connection, too (and they don't use it fully, or all at the same time, etc.), so there's a great deal of ISP infrastructure sharing. So you help your neighbor in having a cheap internet access, and your neighbor helps you. What if one of your neighbors is a maniac who streams killing people, or a botnet owner, or a military drone operator working from home, or just a domestic abuser? Have you asked your provider to only join the “decent people” network? If not, you are actively helping bad people right now.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    > What if one of your neighbors is a maniac who streams killing people, or a botnet owner, or a military drone operator working from home, or just a domestic abuser? Have you asked your provider to only join the “decent people” network? If not, you are actively helping bad people right now. But they weren't asking about whether the network had some users doing "super-illegal" things. They asked if it was roughly all the users. So that analogy isn't even close to fitting.
    - ogurechny 5y ago
      You mean that helping some cold-blooded killers is okay, but after their percentage reaches some tipping point, it becomes too much of a headache? I can't say that I agree with that moral. One of the central ideas of Freenet (and some other projects) is that you don't know what exactly you transfer. Moreover, if you could discern “good content” from “bad content” in some general or specific fashion, you would instantly be forced to do so according to numerous laws. If we followed that path, all bittorrent clients would get outlawed long ago (we all know certain businesses have always wanted that).
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  Wait til you hear about the criminal justice system. Sometimes lawyers defend guilty people!
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    Guilty people are supposed to have lawyers. What lawyers don't do is assist their clients in ongoing breaking of the law.
    - robertlagrant 5y ago
      But why do they need lawyers when it's easy to determine if someone is decent?
      - user-the-name 5y ago
        Is your argument here that it is hard to tell if a pedophile is really a bad person or not?
        robertlagrant 5y ago
        No. Distorting things into disingenuous nonsense helps nothing. You wrote the original message that it's easy to know if nodes' users are decent people. I'm saying it's not easy, with an example.
      - Dylan16807 5y ago
        It's not easy to judge a single person to a criminal standard. But big groups of people are much easier to judge when you only care about things like the average, and my own choices don't have to be sure beyond reasonable doubt.