Regarding 'Tor users are worse than Internet users' and what to do as a Project/Users about blocking...
As an example, here are 105,000 hits from people who had to (according to what appears to be Craigslist's current unwritten policy) do two generally non-anonymous things: - post from Clearnet - authenticate and use their phone number https://google.com/search?q=site:craigslist.org+inurl:/rnr/+"email to friend"+"words|people|find|offensive" Fast networks and open wireless abound worldwide, so Clearnet is going to be even more attractive to these and other maldoers if they can use it. Note the estimate above just covers one particular site and one class of possible troublemaker, the publicly incendiary ones... the ones people complain to help desks about. Not the few serious personal crimes they call the police about. Expand even this boring abuse concept of inflammatory words, ideas and trolling across more services and you have a large authenticated clearnet 'abuse' impact alone. So let's just drop the 'Tor is worse than the Internet' argument shall we, especially in regard to any sort of real load/annoyance to abuse/help/policy desks that would cause them to block Tor... Tor is a outlier, particular in regard to volume, the argument simply doesn't hold water. Theory: Tor is being blocked mostly due to negative news media perception, and kneejerk catchall solutions taking the cheap and dumb route to systems and policy... not due to balanced acceptable facts and specific measures therein... and you have to combat those errors appropriately with facts and things of your own. Just as with all the current specifically budgeted or time allocated subefforts of the Tor Project, the Project needs to develop an effort to combating this ridiculous blocking under the outreach umbrella. Yes, pressure by individual users, and even groups of users (any group examples?) has some impact, but there needs to be a parent effort, a coordination, with hints/templates, targets and milestones, and so on... both set *and advertised* by the project or some lateral entity for users to *literally see and participate in* and rally their own efforts under. Otherwise it's just a few brave random shots in the dark that probably won't amount to much against big blocking targets. Ask and dispel in Project talks 'Why are you blocking shared Tor instead of single user accounts or blocking the larger internet problem source?', go on site visits, dedicate resources, make formal calls for research on 'Tor vs. Clearnet [1]', target specific classes of social, shopping, forum sites for quarterly action by users. Just as with guiding exit relays, develop a self-serve framework for users who experience blocking problems to follow. Make it easier for user to engage the site comms barrier. Etc... [1] Poking around your contacts in Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Outlook, etc... will probably yield the spectrum of Tor users as being roughly the same as the users of Clearnet, be they: good users, annoying assholes like the above, or criminals. But the volume from Tor will be nothing in comparison. Next, validate these informal guesses and queries by turning them into formal papers where they can be of use. The solution for account based abuse is to cancel the account. Not restrict everyone else for it. And related... the ridiculous assumptions being made based on the IP/country you appear to be coming from have to be fought against and thrown out of these service's consciousness too. -- tor-talk mailing list - [email protected] To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
