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Comment by b5 | Hacker News Reader

That was my experience too, the few times I tried it. I haven't been back for just that reason. There's nothing that I can do on there that I can't do on the real internet and even the tiniest risk of CSAM material reaching my machine is not worth it.

It's sad but I think in most modern democracies that are relatively free, like the USA and EU, the primary use for these services is CSAM. There's no other reason to use it, except maybe paranoia or technical curiosity, and only the former will keep someone using it. The technically curious will move on quite quickly.

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" There's no other reason to use it, except maybe paranoia or technical curiosity,"

How about idealism?

I mean 20 years ago, you would have been declared paranoid, if you said secret government agencies and big corporations track everything you do online - but now you just speak a inconvinient truth, most people are aware of, but try to ignore it as much as possible.

It is good, to have working alternative plattforms, in case there are really needed by us in the west.

But yeah, currently I do not use them either, because my last experience with them were "dark", too. Because yes, the strongest incentive right now have those people not acting out of idealism, but because their content is not tolerated on the open web. Quite a shitty situation. How do one establish a "alternative, anonymous" communication service, without attracting all the kicked out elsewhere btards first?

You are falsely equating anonymity for privacy.

The goal of anonymity is to avoid disclosure of identity but not secrecy of content. You don’t care if the entire world sees the substance of the communication. You care that they cannot detect who you are. Networks like this and Tor share your information across a large number of nodes to resist identity detection.

Privacy is the opposite. You don’t care that the entire world knows who you are so long as they can never read your communications. Privacy is challenging to achieve with anonymity because it is almost impossible for one party to trust the other against information disclosure if they have no idea who they are.

The first world problem is confusing these concepts so that you can have your cake and eat it too, typically for self-serving reasons.

Freenet provides both: Secrecy of content and pseudonymity — both are required to enable confidential disclosure to a journalist on the (typically valid) assumption that the opsec of the journalist is far from perfect.

The entire goal of journalism is information disclosure, to publish a story. That is not privacy. The goal here is to not reveal the identity of a source.

The goal is to publish a story. Hiding the identity of a source is a way towards that goal.

The journalist does not need privacy or confidentiality to publish. The source does. And without the source, there’s no story.

Have you ever been threatened by a right-wing extremist that they would come to your house when you answered their hatred online and pointed out the flaws in their logic?

I have been.

That’s why I deeply appreciate having a pseudonym that’s separated from where I live so I don’t have to fear Neonazis turning up at my doorstep or attacking my kids when I write something they do not like.

You know that you could just name yourself "John Doe" and that's it, right?

Yes. That experience made me change to that. But “John Doe” will quickly be my IP address when there’s a Nazi in police (see the reports about organized Neonazis in police and military in Germany in the past few years who also leaked police data to other Neonazis).

I can use Tor or I can use Freenet. That’s it. I use both: Tor to google simple medical questions. Freenet to discuss. Because in Freenet — different from Tor — the Forums don’t die and the prevailing forums don’t block me with neigh unsolvable CAPTCHAs.

As the original commenter pointed out, neonazi networks using their connections in law enforcement and other corporations (or simply setting up honeypots) are a real concern for personal safety.

EDIT: For what it's worth, if neonazis are not a threat where you reside (where is that and how can i get citizenship?), any bad actor could engage in the same kind of behavior, whether it's a political police, an industrial group whose corruption/pollution you're fighting, a local mafia who wants to ruin you...

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