Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

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I've never personally tried Freenet, and there's a reason for that. Everyone I've spoken with who has has told me that it's basically a kidporn network -- absolutely riddled with the stuff. If you dedicate storage to Freenet chances are more than half of the data you store will be child pornography. No thanks.

It's a problem you run into with any darknet, but Freenet seems to have it a lot worse than Tor .onions. I have trawled around onionland a few times and saw only a few links that seemed like they might point in that direction, and didn't follow them. Most of Tor seemed pretty free of the stuff, and most of the directories seemed to have a policy against it.

I think this is a special case of a more general problem with libertarianism. There are in general two kinds of libertarians: those who want to maximize freedom for humanistic reasons, and those who want to maximize freedom because they want to be free to bully and exploit people without supervision or interference. Child pornographers fit into the latter, a category they share with people who want financial deregulation so they can fleece investors with pump and dump scams or KKK types who want the Federal government out of our lives so they can establish local tyrannies and oppress minorities.

There's no policy against child porn sites at the directory level or at any Tor level. There was a talk at CCC some days ago that claimed 80%+ of hidden service traffic is to child abuse sites. So I'm not sure it's so different to Freenet, actually.

Hrm. Maybe more hidden then. Honestly this doesn't bode well for darknets. The problem is that even if darknets have a legitimate reason to exist, non-creeps will avoid them if they see much of this kind of thing.

I've also heard stories of very realistic looking rape porn -- maybe a bit too realistic -- in places like this. It's gross.

> Honestly this doesn't bode well for darknets. The problem is that even if darknets have a legitimate reason to exist, non-creeps will avoid them if they see much of this kind of thing.

Non-creeps shouldn't use cash to purchase anything. People will almost always use money to purchase drugs, because it's extremely difficult to trace.

Just because people use something for something illegal, doesn't mean that it shouldn't be used at all. In fact, if more people use darknets for legitimate activities, then there is less illegal activity going on overall (looking at it percentage wise, there would still be arguably the same amount going on).

I don't like the fact that these things occur on darknets. But these places are perfect for them, and I highly doubt these darknets would be created solely for the purpose of illegal activities.

That's a bad analogy. Networks are more akin to social spheres, especially if they are "sub-networks" like Tor.

Imagine you walk into a hotel. There's a guy in the lobby with a visible gun on his hip, and he's not a cop. The elevator opens up and someone's getting a blow job from a hooker. There's a dead roach in the corner. Would you stay there? With your kids?

It's not a question of should or shouldn't. What I'm saying is that normal people will run away screaming from a network that's full of child porn. They won't use it. As a result, it loses its utility for non-creepy but legitimate uses like political expression. The swimming pool is yellowish and stinky.

That claim probably isn't correct, as there are several confounding factors in linking the number of hidden service descriptor requests to the number of individual requests for each hidden service, and in correlating those to actual usage: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/some-thoughts-hidden-servic...

> I have trawled around onionland a few times and saw only a few links that seemed like they might point in that direction, and didn't follow them.

You can use Freenet the same way. Use the indexes that exclude such content or use the uncensored index and ignore the content that has warnings.

If you use Freemail, Sone and FMS it's unlikely you'll randomly encounter CP unless you are looking for it.

I use Freenet as a decentralized twitter-like, an encrypted email and mirroring my blog. For those purposes it works fine. Having more users using the network for normal purposes would be good.

"You never know until you try."

Saying "I didn't follow a link because I was unsure of what was behind it." is the same as never having followed that link. Why bother to say "There is child port on Freenet." and then in the same breath say "I've never seen it." That's the same as keeping your stupid mouth shut, but unfortunately stupidity like yours is simply contagious.

If your statements are correct, then that would mean that Everyone You've spoken with has actually seen kidporn. Does that include your hairdresser? We don't really care about the hear say of someone who can't remember the last time he/she talked to someone about something other than Freenet.

At least tell us how many ppl you've talked to who claim to have actually seen child pornography? I sure haven't and I've seen a lot of porn, even went looking for the stuff and have only come close. There was a few times when I though "ohh, there it is", but then did some research only to discover that the model in question was in her mid 20s. Now that's not to say the content of the images was legal. My understanding is that if it looks like a kid, then it's just as illegal as the "genuine??" article. That is had drawn images of children are illegal, even though no children were harmed.

If there is kidporn on Freenet, then do the correct thing please post a takedown request.

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