Drug traders on a local dark web marketplace

Abstract

This article uses the concepts of habitus and way of life to analyze cultural and socioeconomic factors related to the lives of drug users who utilize a Finnish dark web site. It draws on a set of 9300 posts on that site, Sipulitori, to understand the way of life of the site's users. The article analyses usernames and forum posts, qualitatively and quantitatively, to find representations of the users' ways of life, and to understand their relationship to drugs. The article finds several different relationships to drugs, as well as the absence of some recognized drug user types on this particular dark web trading site. Drugs appear to be the defining factor of many users' lives, regardless of how actively they are using and how strongly that aspect dominates said lives. The article concludes with a brief discussions on how its findings can be used as basis for future research on such trading forums. CCS CONCEPTS • Social media networks • Online social networks • Cultural characteristics

Information Protection in Dark Web Drug Markets Research

“…For example, an early publication may, as with us, practically establish and showcase the extent to which authors are (or are not) treating the subject with respect and can lead potential partners to join in or even provide mores data or potentially re-negotiate the terms of collaboration. Work by e.g., Barratt and colleagues [24;36], like ours [31], shows that establishing a solid, positive presence as community outsiders, but not as complete outsiders, can produce positive reactions from the researched groups, as well as good quality research. We have, for instance, received the best results when we have made our identities openly known to the studied communities of drug users.…”

“…Two major exception to the above-mentioned process exist. The first of these is the case of username research, as conducted by e.g., Hämäläinen [11] and Harviainen, Haasio and Hämäläinen [31]. In such cases, the usernames should be removed into a separate file and analyzed without connection to the actual posts.…”

Usernames on a Finnish Online Marketplace for Illegal Drugs

“…Of several possible reasons for such an occurrence, the one especially worth discussing further is discriminatory attitudes within the community. Openly racist attitudes were common on Torilauta; many sellers and buyers stated in their advertisements that they make deals only with "ethnic Finns," or that they do not make deals with certain minorities, like Romani people (see also Harviainen et al 2020). Adopting a username in Finnish might have been one way for users to highlight their native Finnish background and in this way present themselves as more attractive business partners for other users.…”

“…Slang words for drugs and their use are further discussed in section 4.3. However, informal expressions were also widely used with nondrug-related name elements and in the advertisement texts on Torilauta (Hämäläinen & Ruokolainen 2021;Harviainen et al 2020).…”

“…This distribution of substances corresponds rather well with the statistics on overall drug use in Finland (Karjalainen et al 2020;Rönkä & Markkula 2020). Regular drug users comprised the majority of the Torilauta user pool, and they were often in socioeconomically disadvantaged positions (Harviainen et al 2020). The language style used in the discussions was typically informal.…”