Freedom in the wilderness: A study of a Darknet space

Abstract

Mass media and journalistic accounts of Darknets have focused disproportionately on their criminogenic aspects. Moreover, research has focused mainly on the Darknet technology Tor. We wish to expand scholars’ knowledge of Darknets by exploring a different Darknet technology, Freenet. Using a combination of content analysis and grounded theory, this research asked three progressively complex questions. First, we asked: What are the types of content and the distribution of content on Freenet? Our findings show that Freenet fosters a singular distribution of content, with a high ratio of blogs (or flogs), child pornography, empty links, and Web 1.0 websites that archive information. We assumed that this content is not discrete points of data but instead produce sociologically interesting phenomena. Therefore, we ask: What are the content patterns on Freenet? Four patterns were identified. Freenet is (1) an archive of deviant data resistant to censorship, (2) a space dominated by content associated with masculinity, (3) a nonmarket space where commercial exchange is nonexistent, and (4) an empty space with many requests not returning information, and many flogs abandoned. We asked a third question: How does the analysis of Freenet inform current understandings of hacker culture? Freenet, we suggest, can be understood as a type of digital ‘wilderness’. It is a singular Darknet space, supporting a distinct set of hacker practices.

The potential harms of the Tor anonymity network cluster disproportionately in free countries

“…Tor users can act as publishers of content by using the network to anonymously administer Onion/Hidden Services for the use of others. They can also use the Tor browser to anonymously read either these Onion/Hidden Services (i.e., sites with rendezvous points located internal to the Tor network) or to access Clear Web sites ( 1 – 5 ). With these diverse supply-side and demand-side functions ( 6 ), many point to the socially harmful uses of Tor as an anonymous platform for child abuse imagery sites ( 7 , 8 ), illicit drug markets ( 9 – 13 ), gun sales ( 14 , 15 ), and potential extremist content that has shifted to the Dark Web after extensive Clear Web content moderation efforts ( 16 ).…”

Ranking potentially harmful Tor hidden services: Illicit drugs perspective

“…Dark web, an anonymous platform is one such place where illegitimate activities are prevalent like sale of illegal drugs, distribution of child abuse content, violence and hate content [1][2][3]. The Onion Router (Tor) is the most common method to access the dark web, although other methods like Freenet and I2P do exist but are used by fewer users [4]. A website on the Tor dark web is known as hidden service (HS).…”

Politics, Public Goods, and Corporate Nudging in the HTTP/2 Standardization Process

“…The research question may appear simple, but an answer is as complex as our favorite technology (Roche, 2016). At one extreme, libertarian users of the darknet rally for an unregulated virtual space (Graham & Pitman, 2020;Rochefort, 2020;Rudesill et al, 2015). On the other hand, the recent political abuses involving myriad Facebook users appear to increase the possibilities of stricter government regulations for large social platform technology companies (The Guardian International Edition, 2019; Sun, 2020).…”