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Comment by HenryBemis | Hacker News Reader

I was misunderstood, my bad, bad writing.

My question/wondering was on: why the hell would someone buy drugs online, and how to they accept the risk on consuming these when they arrive. Buying an iPhone cable online is a risk I can accept. Buying heroin online (I don't do drugs) it goes beyond me on the risk acceptance of such deed.

I get it that darkweb has a scoring system like Amazon, eBay, Etsy, but heroin? Cocaine? Weed?

It is not about "police can't charge you" it is about "who the hell is going to inject something that was bought on the darkweb in their veins??

What goes through their mind? I assume not much since these are people who buy heroin, online.. so that answers my question.

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Well it's a direct market, customer service is king.

The sellers cannot really move their 'brand' from one market to another. An opportunist could reserve their username on another market, and users know that anyone could be behind that new account. They don't trust the name, only the reviews you have on your particular market.

What I want to say is that the reputation of their anonymous brand is worth something, because they can't take it somewhere in a hurry and takes time to build (if you build it legitimately, it always seems easy to cheat with a bot).

Reviews from other users, (who also have a visible reputation, to combat botting), are taken seriously. The markets themselves provide escrow, if you screw your users and don't have a high standing you're likely won't be receiving payment.

This incentivizes sellers to provide a high level of customer service.

"So, in order to attract customers in this high stakes and very competitive situation, you need the highest possible rating."[0]

"This may help to explain why drugs bought on the dark web tend to be much purer than drugs bought on the street. "[0]

[0]:https://unbabel.com/blog/customer-service-dark-web/

> The sellers cannot really move their 'brand' from one market to another. An opportunist could reserve their username on another market, and users know that anyone could be behind that new account. They don't trust the name, only the reviews you have on your particular market.

Sellers can move their brand across markets with a different username because they would still have the same PGP key. There's even a search engine to find the same vendor on multiple markets by looking them up by their PGP key.

> My question/wondering was on: why the hell would someone buy drugs online, and how to they accept the risk on consuming these when they arrive.

The alternative is buying them in person, where the dealer you have worked with for years may have been flipped last week.

And it's not like injecting something you bought from your dealer doesn't have similar risk factors. Why do you think overdoses have been skyrocketing over the past decade?

The amount of fentanyl and similar compounds on the street sounds just awful now. I can't imagine buying an E in the club or wherever from a stranger in this day and age.

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