Nice article, and I agree wholeheartedly that a large part of what is hyped up in the media as "The Dark Web" is nothing more that what used to the refereed to as "The Invisible Web".
I suspect that history will show the vast majority of "dark web" coverage to be simply another moral panic, analogous (and in some cases almost identical) to the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic of the 1980s.[1] Happy to see an article which goes against that flow.
Agreed, there is more reality to the dark web than there was to Satanic Ritual Abuse. Nonetheless, the panic:reality ratio is probably something like 99:1, vs. 100:0 for SRA. In both cases (as with any moral panic), it can be terribly dangerous when these kind of panics start to drive policy and policing.
That came up again here in the UK recently, there was a case where child custody was at issue and the mother and her new partner got the kids to lie about their father.
The lies were incredibly obvious to anyone that's read about the previous incidences of Satanic Ritual Abuse panics, but it still took the press some time to catch on. It also inspired the usual crop of well-meaning fools saying things like - "well clearly these children are traumatised and this is their reality, even if there is no evidence"
They gave numbers on Tor but not on either of the other 2 dark networks mentioned. They also don't have any size numbers; is every wordpress blog considered a "site"?
I'm also not completely clear on what they think is a myth; it would be helpful if excerpts of other media were included and shown to be false.
edit: there's a legitimate point that people confuse the deep web with the dark web, but that doesn't make either a myth.
Exactly. I did a presentation about this for an IT class recently. It's astounding how many 'tip of the iceberg' diagrams are out there, implying that tor is 10 times bigger than the regular internet, and filled with dark and seedy things.
They somehow mix up the Dark Web and Deep Web (which are ill defined terms already) and combine their mythologies into one hilariously incorrect idea that there is a whole underground society 10 times bigger than the regular web.
More hilarious is how many of these charts put 4chan or the Pirate Bay just below the surface, as if they are hard to find sites. These diagrams are incorrect every way you look at them, besides maybe a "the lower you go, I'm implying the sites are less moral".
I don't believe you've been to the same parts of the dark web as me if 4chan is even if the running for top 10 worst sites you've seen.
There are literally dozens of websites on the darknet that source much of the content that is disturbing on 4chan and act as exchange points for such content.
However, both you and the article are correct that there's nothing particularly surprising or disturbing about this -- there are plenty of other dark corners of the internet where such things lurk. The interesting parts of the dark web are the same parts as the normal web -- the deep web. Just like with the normal internet, you need to know where you're going and a few of the right knocks before you see anything really interesting.
On the open internet, a few magic nondescript addresses, a few specific keys that are indistinguishable from random ones -- and suddenly, you're playing fluid dynamics engineer on someone's hardware instead of just reading about fluid dynamics. Similarly, there are dark net sites that are essentially access portals to other places on the internet, are generally not advertised to people (and so don't make the news rounds like Silk Road or Tor Wiki or Freedom Hosting), and are considerably more interesting than things like hosting child pornography, selling drugs, or instructing on how to make bombs (which is what most of the surface dark net consists of).
Everything else is just showrooms and advertising posters.
There are areas of reddit you can go to watch children being killed. Gore abounds on the normal web and is legal (at least in the US due to First Amendment protection). What have you seen that is more frightening than that?
I was talking about revisionist interpretations of the events leading to and surrounding WW2, up to and including questioning the number of victims, the methods of killing, and the systematic nature of the killing. This is so scary it even got brave skeptic Michael Shermer in some hot water and he is a trained arguer in this very topic.
Another frightening thing, since we're on the topic, is a bit more complex for me to explain, but if you search for "Perth Group" you will find there is a group of people who seriously question the viral model in Biology and to what extent it explains AIDS and HIV.
It would be great if journalists could stop conflating the dark web with the deep web (formerly also known as the dark web) and stir frying statistics between the two (omg! 80% of the web is the dark web and 80% of the dark web is child pornography!).
Talking about the "Dark Web" is sort of like talking about a "Criminal Underground".
It sounds like you're discussing some grotesque subterranean civilization, but it's really an awful lot of people walking around the same city you are, with crime that isn't really that organized.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 69.1 ms ] threadI wrote this way back in 2001, and I'm not convinced that in the intervening years much has changed: http://www.alphadevx.com/a/30-The-Invisible-Web
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse
The lies were incredibly obvious to anyone that's read about the previous incidences of Satanic Ritual Abuse panics, but it still took the press some time to catch on. It also inspired the usual crop of well-meaning fools saying things like - "well clearly these children are traumatised and this is their reality, even if there is no evidence"
I'm also not completely clear on what they think is a myth; it would be helpful if excerpts of other media were included and shown to be false.
edit: there's a legitimate point that people confuse the deep web with the dark web, but that doesn't make either a myth.
...And in the dark web -- they now have a Tor-friendly Onion address!
Facebook profiles that can only be found by using Tor (which I don't believe exist) would be in the dark web.
Maybe that's where the "Dark Web is bigger than the regular internet" meme comes from.
They somehow mix up the Dark Web and Deep Web (which are ill defined terms already) and combine their mythologies into one hilariously incorrect idea that there is a whole underground society 10 times bigger than the regular web.
More hilarious is how many of these charts put 4chan or the Pirate Bay just below the surface, as if they are hard to find sites. These diagrams are incorrect every way you look at them, besides maybe a "the lower you go, I'm implying the sites are less moral".
As someone who's done a fair bit of 'dark web' browsing, still the most frightening things I've seen have been on 4chan.
And of course the govt would love for you to think that the dark web is something only for criminals.
There are literally dozens of websites on the darknet that source much of the content that is disturbing on 4chan and act as exchange points for such content.
However, both you and the article are correct that there's nothing particularly surprising or disturbing about this -- there are plenty of other dark corners of the internet where such things lurk. The interesting parts of the dark web are the same parts as the normal web -- the deep web. Just like with the normal internet, you need to know where you're going and a few of the right knocks before you see anything really interesting.
On the open internet, a few magic nondescript addresses, a few specific keys that are indistinguishable from random ones -- and suddenly, you're playing fluid dynamics engineer on someone's hardware instead of just reading about fluid dynamics. Similarly, there are dark net sites that are essentially access portals to other places on the internet, are generally not advertised to people (and so don't make the news rounds like Silk Road or Tor Wiki or Freedom Hosting), and are considerably more interesting than things like hosting child pornography, selling drugs, or instructing on how to make bombs (which is what most of the surface dark net consists of).
Everything else is just showrooms and advertising posters.
You can't just leave it at that, tell us more!
Another frightening thing, since we're on the topic, is a bit more complex for me to explain, but if you search for "Perth Group" you will find there is a group of people who seriously question the viral model in Biology and to what extent it explains AIDS and HIV.
"These aren't the webs you're looking for."
grins
It sounds like you're discussing some grotesque subterranean civilization, but it's really an awful lot of people walking around the same city you are, with crime that isn't really that organized.