Thus spake Maxim Kammerer (mk@xxxxxx): > On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 8:09 PM, Andrew Lewman <andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > How would you have us promote Tor? > > The âTor usersâ page isn't presented as a promotional page, it is > presented as a factual one. I also remember discussion on this list > where I expressed doubt about some aspects listed there (military > uses), and the overall claim was that the page is a good > representation of the current userbase. Tor is a relatively new and underdeveloped technology, used exclusively by early adopters, technophiles, weirdos, and people who really really need it. We don't advertise. We're not in stores. This is because we're pretty much still in the prototype stage. As with most new and underdeveloped technologies, we're going to have our demographics dominated by those early adopters and weirdos rather than our target demographics. For example, in terms of number of users, I'd wager a top current demographic is "Paranoid Schizophrenic". If it's not #1, it's gotta be top 5. The more general category "Antisocial tendencies" is probably another top 5. "People who secretly view fully legal porn" is almost certainly up there, perhaps vying with the schizophrenics for the #1 position. The early Internet (even as late as the mid-90s) was also dominated by these same classes of people. Eventually it became usable by the normals and the demographics shifted quite dramatically. We all work on Tor every day so that it sucks a little less each day, so that those demographics *can* shift. However, right now, it's only the extremes and certain niche elements of society who will suffer through using it: Dissidents, journalists, law enforcement, militaries, and the antisocial weirdos/crazies. The Tor users page is in my mind a reflection of what our demographics will look like as we improve our technology enough to be useful for everyone who wants Internet privacy. We leave out the antisocial creeps/weirdos/crazies because they are not our target userbase, and their relative dominance right now is merely a reflection of our relatively early development status. No offense to the weirdos, though. You guys are my people :). > > We have a FAQ (as you pointed out) to answer the obvious questions > > about criminal usage of Tor. We're fully aware criminals can and do use > > Tor. > > So why not answer those questions honestly, and not pretend that users > are stupid? As I said, it detracts from the project's credibility. > Anyone who installs Tor (or I2P, for that matter) and explores the > hidden services, immediately sees the overwhelmingly illegal (mostly, > since it depends on jurisdiction) content. Anyone who runs an exit > node immediately sees that a sizable portion of the traffic is of > questionable nature. [1] Even today, this statement is not accurate wrt exit traffic. The handful of papers you and others have linked show that even with our current userbase, illegal and questionable traffic takes up a small percentage of the Tor exit traffic, unless you count all forms of pornography as questionable. In fact, the paper you linked even has an "Illegal/Questionable" category, and guess what, it's #42 at 0.15% of the traffic: http://planete.inrialpes.fr/papers/TorTraffic-NSS10.pdf I don't know what you're looking for, but perhaps your own desire for everyone to use Tor for "illegal and questionable" stuff is biasing what *you* find? -- Mike Perry
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