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Tor is a meme in 2023. Even advocates for it seem to believe it's only really good for circumvention, which is the totally wrong way to look at it. Having a bui

Tor is a meme in 2023. Even advocates for it seem to believe it's only really good for circumvention, which is the totally wrong way to look at it. Having a built-in outproxy to the web is probably it's greatest flaw, not its strength. Why? Because there's nothing stopping anyone from setting up exit nodes and analyzing the traffic. The open web itself is a vulnerability. Being an anonymizer for the web also encourages people to not contribute energy to "hidden services" but to the non-hidden web, which is self defeating. And as others have pointed out, Tor wouldn't scale if everyone was using it. Contrast this with I2P which not only would scale but become more resistant to DDOS attacks with the more nodes on the network. Unlike For, I2P has no distinction between nodes, mostly because it's not designed to be an outproxy. But no, let's keep insisting that everyone use a deep state tool with chronic flaws because reasons. /s

holmesworcester 3y ago
> And as others have pointed out, Tor wouldn't scale if everyone was using it. Contrast this with I2P which not only would scale but become more resistant to DDOS attacks with the more nodes on the network. One objection a lot of people in this thread have to using Tor is the (misconception) that they'll be relaying Tor traffic. (It doesn't work this way in Tor.) But what you're saying is that i2p will scale because this is the default behavior in i2p. But is that what people want? Also, hidden services have been harder for Tor to scale than exit nodes, at least in the past few years. I don't think this is the result of the fact that Tor provides exit nodes. I think it's just a result of the onion service connection process being a series of fragile steps. I do agree that supporting traffic to the web results in the Tor dev team prioritizing this use case over traffic to hidden services, but that's understandable given that it's the vast majority of their traffic and usage.
- nvy 3y ago
  >One objection a lot of people in this thread have to using Tor is the (misconception) that they'll be relaying Tor traffic. Um. I'm pretty sure that nodes relaying Tor traffic is the fundamental principle underlying Tor. Everyone relays Tor traffic when using it.
  - bauruine 3y ago
    No only if you explicitely enable it in the config file.
    - nvy 3y ago
      Interesting. I thought this was only the case for exits.
Run_DOS_Run 3y ago
>Because there's nothing stopping anyone from setting up exit nodes and analyzing the traffic. This should be assumed. So what? In 2023, almost every website supports https and unencrypted traffic is the exception, not the rule. So if someone sets up an exit node, they can only collect metadata from a few circuits from a competent user. Of course, this becomes a problem when someone sets up hundreds or thousands of nodes, but that - including statistical analysis or the use of 0-days - can only be done by a small minority.

holmesworcester 3y ago

> And as others have pointed out, Tor wouldn't scale if everyone was using it. Contrast this with I2P which not only would scale but become more resistant to DDOS attacks with the more nodes on the network. One objection a lot of people in this thread have to using Tor is the (misconception) that they'll be relaying Tor traffic. (It doesn't work this way in Tor.) But what you're saying is that i2p will scale because this is the default behavior in i2p. But is that what people want? Also, hidden services have been harder for Tor to scale than exit nodes, at least in the past few years. I don't think this is the result of the fact that Tor provides exit nodes. I think it's just a result of the onion service connection process being a series of fragile steps. I do agree that supporting traffic to the web results in the Tor dev team prioritizing this use case over traffic to hidden services, but that's understandable given that it's the vast majority of their traffic and usage.

nvy 3y ago
>One objection a lot of people in this thread have to using Tor is the (misconception) that they'll be relaying Tor traffic. Um. I'm pretty sure that nodes relaying Tor traffic is the fundamental principle underlying Tor. Everyone relays Tor traffic when using it.
- bauruine 3y ago
  No only if you explicitely enable it in the config file.
  - nvy 3y ago
    Interesting. I thought this was only the case for exits.

Run_DOS_Run 3y ago

>Because there's nothing stopping anyone from setting up exit nodes and analyzing the traffic. This should be assumed. So what? In 2023, almost every website supports https and unencrypted traffic is the exception, not the rule. So if someone sets up an exit node, they can only collect metadata from a few circuits from a competent user. Of course, this becomes a problem when someone sets up hundreds or thousands of nodes, but that - including statistical analysis or the use of 0-days - can only be done by a small minority.