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Comment by einpoklum | Hacker News Reader

> We dont yet life in the police state where everyone's political opinions need to be hidden in dark networks.

You may not, but many of us actually do. Naturally not every political opinion, and it depends on how you express it, but still.

> At the moment, freenet has a bad reputation for hosting very illegal content.

Why is that a bad reputation? Isn't that part of the point? ... Perhaps you mean unsavory, or immoral, or socially detrimental.

> but dont be suprised if the cops pay closer attention to you

Now that is a significant point in its disfavor, yes.

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I said illegal and meant exactly that. Morality and societal norms are debates for twitter and facebook. Tor/freenet/i2p are at another level of seriousness. Freenet has a rep for child abuse imagery.

> Freenet has a rep for child abuse imagery.

If I connect to Freenet, will I be offered images of abused children? ... I would assume the answer is no.

Well, child abuse is one of the top excuses for governments to demand to be able to spy on everyone.

Once we've seen a complete ban on government use of violence because it sometimes kills innocent people, then talk to me about how private communications is problematic because people use it for child porn.

That “think of the children” argument is so tired and played out.

Freenet is known for child abuse content, a topic so sensitive and disturbing people don’t want to even refer to it directly.

These days you have to go actively searching to find such on Freenet. And as journalists proved multiple times¹, if you do go searching, you’ll find a lot more of it in the clearnet via forums accessible with Tor than in Freenet.

And for the highest security in Freenet (the friend-to-friend mode), you need to have friends whom you trust not to go to lengths to spy on you — friends would be able to run statistical attacks if you transmit large amounts of known content. And such trusted friends are what people who want to access child abuse content do not have.

¹: Example (in German): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iItLpwkQMUQ

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