Dark Web is overrated, but I'm sure people on Bitcointalk already knew

[Lethn]

So for the first time I decided to have a proper poke around the Dark Web/Deep Web ( No I wasn't doing anything illegal before you get all jumpy and paranoid on me, I just got curious ) and boy was my Anarchist side disappointed! "What?" you probably all are going when you read that but the typical media networks as usual have blown everything out of proportion trying to pretend that the Dark Net is some kind of real life crime net from Payday. Unless I'm missing more websites out there which I could well be, it's like going back to the faster dialup speeds you could get back when the year 2000 was coming along, I did spot some Anarchist groups which was pretty cool, some Anarcho-Syndicalists and Anarcho-Communists but the network is clearly way smaller than the clearnet, again, unless there are way more websites out there that I know of.

Yes, there are some bad guys out there, paedophile links which I stayed the hell away from, weapons markets, drugs markets but it basically seemed to be a bunch of people building up a network from scratch rather than anything properly established. I did notice that there were clearly discussions and plans going on about a new wireless internet that was in the works which looked interesting but that was about it.

Fucking media warping everyone's view of stuff yet again, they're doing a damn good job.

[gordoh]

That's pretty cool man. I wanna check it out too. I wouldn't know how to do it though. And I wonder if its illegal just to snoop around there?

Also, do you think its safe? Wouldn't you be opening yourself up to viruses and hackers?

[Lethn]

Honestly, you just load up tor browser and poke around the .onion addresses which people with normal browsers can't see, it really isn't that big of a deal I suspect unless you're actually doing something illegal then you won't end up on any list or get hacked since of course you've got the tor browser running to begin with. Again, it's just the media trying to scare the shit out of people and make things far worse than they actually are, I'm sure there are people using the private messaging services and email for shady stuff but it's not as bad as I was expecting.

I think I've actually seen worse stuff on the clearnet LOL! I can definitely see how the privacy minded web hosting would be good if you don't want people poking around your personal information though which is why you can find wikileaks there, I think I'll just stick with my fast connection and VPN's or Proxies, but it's going to be even easier to avoid this kind of thing with Bitcoin which doesn't force you to sign up with personal information if you customise the software on your website a bit.