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perching_aixtoday at 8:47 AM2 repliesview on HN

Sounds heartwrenching until you see a story like this: https://youtu.be/hKLIxxBrM-o

To absolutely no sane person's surprise, the main audience of e.g. anti-censorship platforms is exactly people who typically feel or find themselves censored, which in a harmonious or at least well-functioning society will not be a particularly cheritable set of individuals. In one where that's not the case, the audience would change alongside too, sure, but clearly these narratives mismatch reality, at least for now.

Conversely, (actually) high privacy platforms will be primarily seeked out and leveraged by those who value precisely that. While the privacy scares have been pretty serious for a while, for now that is still both evidently, and indeed obviously, in good part criminals or other high risk individuals.

It's like trying to pretend people are shopping for regular items on .onion webshops rather than for contraband. I'm sure that crowd exists, but like, who are we trying to fool here exactly?

Performative victimhood only works so well, and until such blatantly deceptive narrative is being pushed, you may very well see your doomsday scenario realized. It's a trivially vulnerable position, so much so that it feels like a rhetorical trap almost. Like a poet self-sabotaging the monetization of their work, while waxing poetic about how they're (financially) un(der)appreciated. Although people have been getting into anti-government conspiracies pretty hard in the past few years, and governments have been working hard to demolish whatever good standing they have in parallel, so that does help your case I suppose. One may even recognize this miraculously well oiled process and nosedive in social trust as uncoincidental, in fact. But I digress. I wouldn't wanna spread conspiracy theories after all, would I?


Replies

cyphartoday at 11:57 AM

Well-funded criminal networks like the ones in the video you linked would have little issue if all e2ee chat apps disappeared tomorrow, they have enough money and operational incentives to pay someone to make custom encrypted chat apps (not to mention the myriad of open source ones available).

The only people actually hurt by banning e2ee are regular people.

> It's like trying to pretend people are shopping for regular items on .onion webshops rather than for contraband. I'm sure that crowd exists, but like, who are we trying to fool here exactly?

Based on public metrics, 3% of Tor traffic is .onion traffic and it is incredibly likely the vast majority of that is the Facebook .onion service (based on some stats posted by Facebook a few years ago).

So no, I think the burden of proof falls on you to show that the vast majority of .onion usage is illegal.

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jodrellblanktoday at 11:52 AM

I skim-watched your link and it doesn’t seem to support your thesis.

First, the secure end-to-end encryption was broken by international police and messages were read without making it illegal.

Second they suggest reading hundreds of thousands of people’s messages to catch a dozen or so gang members - not supporting your claim that only crooks use it.

Third, the video ends by the gang leader saying he was working for the President; not supporting your implication that criticism of government is all baseless conspiracy theories.

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