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Comment by a_vanderbilt | Hacker News Reader

I use Tor occasionally to see what's going on in the flip side of the net and to contribute to routing, but honestly you aren't going to convince anyone who isn't ideologically inclined to support it. It doesn't help that Tor itself is full of scams and dark markets selling who knows what. It seems to have gotten better over the years, but normal people aren't going to put up with that. Nobody wants to see that stuff.

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If you use a Tor browser you see the same web as with your "normal" browser. You'd need to actively search for dark web and shady markets (and no you can't just google that up either, you'd need to lurk much deeper). It's not possible, never was, to "accidentally" see that stuff if you use web the way you did it before Tor.

Yes. I don't get ambushed by illegal content, as most of my surfing with Tor is for browsing the clearnet, (which is fairly innocuous and more sanitized than the dark web). I do use the 'real world' onions[0] to read The New York Times, etc

[0] https://github.com/alecmuffett/real-world-onion-sites

>Tor itself is full of scams and dark markets selling who knows what.

Did you forget to read the article? They make the point that this is not the case. Tor Browser can be used to access most of the web besides aggressively anti-privacy platforms like Meta.

If you choose to go on a "Dark Web Search Engine" and that's what you find, that's entirely your decision and not something you would stumble upon.

>but normal people aren't going to put up with that. Nobody wants to see that stuff.

They would never see that stuff by accident, as they never do right now.

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