Also this comment:
I will not be spinning up instances of anything. I will seed hashes in bittorrent-like P2P networks, I will put my posts where they fit, I will look for posts from others in the most anti-censorship ways I can find, and I will hope devs and server admins create a version of Lemmy that’s fitting for more of my posts - while hurrying toward a possible future where Tor isn’t enough to make Lemmy relevant anymore, because P2P networks become the only place worth posting anything.
They are right about TOR. Between the TikTok bullshit and porn sites requiring ID, it blows me away that more leftists aren’t preparing for the obvious hammer hanging over their heads.
I don’t necessarily think they are right about Tor. Why isn’t DNS and IP addressing sufficient?
Most DNS registers aren’t going to blast your DNS records, and even if they do, you don’t have to specify ones from the United States or in the West, you can go to other countries that are more friendly to whatever particular ideology you’re working with.
It hasn’t even been a year since Hexbear spent a month in limbo because of Domain Name shenanigans brought on by its own admins.
Most DNS registrars aren’t going to abide with the demands of Law Enforcement?
Yeah because it’s easier and safer to find sites on tor?
The DNS registers do work with the authorities, but it’s very, very, very rare for them to just straight up remove somebody’s records.
DNS shenanigans involving non-renewal of records is a very very common issue among the internet not just hexbear.
Tor supposedly has massive infiltration ftrom different governments and can suffer from degraded performance and security.
Yes, setting up your DNS name with a DNS register in a country that’s hostile to the west such as possibly China or Russia would probably help insulate you from these issues.
Like, what you’re talking about isn’t necessarily ridiculous, but as somebody that literally works in this industry in the west, I can tell you for a fact that these DNS registers do not give a flying fuck about the law unless it’s going to cost them lots and lots of money, like most capitalist companies.
I’ve literally not been able to get them to take down hacking sites, scam sites, pornographic sites, CSAM sites, they don’t care. Not only that, DNS itself is decentralized, which is why it’s beneficial to have several DNS names that aren’t associated with Western countries.
I didn’t say they give a shit about the law, I implied they’re gonna abide with Law Enforcement. Are you Law Enforcement?
No. Are you in government and can confirm the DNS registers are the bogey man you think they are?
Tor federation sounds good but it also doesn’t feel like a priority. If y’all want it so bad go figure out how to add it to lemmy since it’s open source.
Lol. Boogey men? We regularly see piracy sites get nuked via compliance from registrars and their hosting providers. Your assertions otherwise are silly.
I wish I could, but I have my own projects that require most of my attention if I’m going to be able to eat each month.
That’s really interesting, and I would love to know more about that, because last I recall, most piracy sites aren’t necessarily brought down by the DNS registers, but by their hosting providers. If you have an example of a DNS register responding like that, I’d love to know more about it.
It is easier for the authorities to go after the host then it is for the DNS register.
You’re not wrong on the tor thing, but I do think the concern is really overblown right now.
i think its relatively easy for them to do either way. registrars aren’t going to hestitate to change some NS records if the FBI tells them they have to.
lol. no thanks. disengaging.
The only dns i need is /etc/hosts
I’m going to do my best to give a good-faith answer to why TOR isn’t the answer it seems to be. Leftists should understand the limitations of the technology we use so we can properly adjust our own personal security postures.
Content moderation is difficult to impossible with TOR
A TOR instance would be very difficult (if not impossible) to moderate while keeping its users safe. By design you can’t block a troll by IP; 4chan runs into this problem constantly. If you force users to register with email then all security will be compromised for both the user and server when it sends out emails over the clearnet, to say nothing if the server is compromised. AFAIK no email provider will accept an email sent through TOR.
Even if the Onion instance(s) didn’t care about moderation (like the original ranter wants), other instances will care about the griefing and spam, driving them to defederate with the Onion instance(s).
Old members of
chapo.chatHexbear will remember several attempts to flood this site with all kinds of trash, or the great purge of transphobes. Content moderation is the key to keeping us from becoming another cesspool or falling offline. Ironically the *chans have similar moderation for the exact same reason.Technological security can be undermined shockingly easily with one mistake
For the sake of argument, and to steelman your position, lets pretend the above are solved. One huge danger of technological security is it gives many a false sense of their own security. Look at the recent Young Republican leaks, or really any leak from far right types. All of Signalgate was because a journalist was accidentally invited into the chat. Basic social engineering often gets the goods.
Most busts of by the feds are human factors, like a lapse in security or reusing an email. Powers-that-be can also find and go after the admins, which can compromise the site no matter the technological security. The Feds cracked LulzSec by a slip-up from Sabu and from there dismantled the whole group from the inside.
The breadth of the raids on LulzSec suspects and hardware across the world should give everybody pause from a security standpoint.
I haven’t even covered securing the server from hackers.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, Lemmy is designed to get us out from under Corporate control, just like phpbb forums back in the day. Being a Person of Interest by nation-states is a completely different beast. Everybody should read Diary of a Person of Interest to see just how much power the Five Eyes can put on you.
I hate being the debbie-downer. I do wish we could build more secure software to protect people, but I want to keep people safe by giving a realistic view of the technological limitations. With the limitations in mind people can adjust their own security posture to mitigate the issues above for themselves.
Look, I appreciate you trying but this really isn’t a takedown.
It’s nothing personal but I’m not gonna respond after this. I’m really getting tired of being pulled into
after 
by folks who are just repeating what other people told them. If you folks have not at the very least, run your own hidden service, you are not equipped to be lecturing or debating people on TOR.