Honestly, it reminded me a lot of the early 90s www - that is that anything and everything just couldn't be trusted unless you knew the source outside of the web, too. (Like you know the author's personally, or you have confirmation it is a university site, etc.) and that put me off quite a lot. I really didn't fancy the idea of even accidentally opening the wrong link and seeing these images so I basically stopped using Tor altogether and haven't been back since.
And you know something, I don't know if I'm even opposed to that.
The idea that the government must have a ton of CP stashed somewhere for such purposes feels about as disgusting as disgusting gets, but I'm not sure how many of those monsters you can catch without placing bait.
Why? If someone is using those sites, they are extremely unlikely to tell anyone they're being shaken down because doing so requires admitting that they have used those sites. I would imagine that that group of people is a lot more likely to stay quiet and pay up than many other people.
That aside, I'm not entirely sure how people using those Tor sites would even be shaken down given Tor's anonymity. Unless, of course, they paid with a CC and not a form of digital currency.
2. Calling people who view these images "monsters" contributes to a stigma that makes people hesitant to seek help before their urges lead them to abuse children.
2.5. If they are "monsters" and someone you know and love is not a "monster," what do you do when you discover that your loved one is one of those people? We go around asking why people look the other way; the way we reflexively dehumanize pedophiles is one of the reasons. We need to recognize pedophiles as human beings who have serious and potentially dangerous mental health problems, and instead of calling them "monsters" we need to reoriented ourselves to say "let's get this person help before they do something monstrous." Obviously a person who is actively abusing children needs to be arrested, but let's not forget that we are talking about people who actively consume imagery of children being abused, many of whom are not necessarily abusing children (yet).
Fortunately it does seem like a lot of that has been expunged. I recently revisited hidden services, as well as the Hidden Wiki (which I'm almost certain had CP links a long time ago but my memory is cloudy), and it seems like that filth isn't tolerated anymore on most indexes I found.