Of course it´s just a over-generalisation, but think of the possibilities for what the matrix could really have been:

http://imgur.com/gallery/pheo61w

SYL

That's propaganda. Our profiles on this forum are part of the deep web.

This is not a very good info graphic. It makes no distinction between deep and dark web. There's kind of a huge difference. Deep web is pretty much anything hidden behind a login page. The dark web is stuff like Silk Road, Agora & Jackpoint.

"Dark Web" is also a loaded term intended to make the general public fear online anonymity. Can we please keep these political issues out of the forum?

Actually, before SR4, that's pretty much what the layered grids of the old Matrix used to be like, with the additional complication of service grids on top, like with today's mobile phone networks. You'd have public areas, and a huge amount of private, shut-off, and hidden stuff. Any PLTG, private Host, and hidden-behind-a-paywall node (and hidden-behind-timed-acces nodes like the old ShadowNet). Pretty much what SR5's Matrix tries (and, at least in the core rules fails) to be.

Pretty much the corporate networks as they are today. 4e changed that, but exactly how much depends only on the GM. I don't think anyone ran megacorp networks as single host entities.

I'm all in favor of anonymity. I really am but there is some pretty messed up dreck on the deep/dark web. Some of its fake, but some of it is very very real. Is it sensationalist? Yah, a bit. But still, it's kind of earned it.

As a related aside, I've run into several different commentators elsewhere online who claim that there is a huge amount of less-mainstream writing and documents within the dark web, and that writing and discussions there tend to have much deeper, more focused content than those readily found here on the "surface" web. Have any Dumpshockers here who frequent the Dark Web made similar observations, especially regarding Shadowrun?

I've been curious about the dystopian political parallels between SR and RL for a while, and figured that those topics might be delicate enough that some people would discuss them on the Deep Web instead. This is a setting where the PC's sometimes shoot other people in the face for money, after all, which could always lead to misunderstandings with visitors who've never heard of Shadowrun.

To the previous two posters, if you're calling onion services the deep dark web, then you really have no idea what you'e talking about. You're probably getting your disinformation directly from people paid to promote things like requiring an ID to go online. If I wanted to be propagandized, I'd view the many sponsored Youtube videos intended to scare people into supporting the terrible laws being drafted to limit our freedom. That's how this "dark web" garbage is getting out there. The media can't be trusted on this topic.

That doesn't really answer my question, but yes, I am specifically referring to .onion domains (as opposed to login profiles, e-payment receipts, some online forms, and other "deep web" pages that just aren't indexed by search engines). Probably domains that aren't listed on THW, of course. And my sources of information for this were various different people from Quora, actually. But remember, I did ask above for verification of those claims.

No. I'm not getting my information from the media that wants online IDs. I'm very much against online IDs. Are all onion domains CP, drugs and guns? Hell no. Trantors library is one of my favorites sites on the web clear or deep. What I'm saying is that there is some fucked up shit there. I'm all for onions existing. But if we as a community want to prevent the general population from Seeing all of the onion domains as CP and hitmen then we do need to acknowledge that those things exist and that we as a community are able to take that stuff down without government intervention.

I also never said that everything on onion comprised the only stuff on the deep/dark web. I don't know where your getting that. For my purposes. Deep web is defined as anything hat your average soccer mom can't access. So shit behind password walls and what not. Dark web is defined, by me, as the INTERESTING stuff on the deep web. So Agora and SR3.0 and Trantor's library and all that other stuff in my opinion counts as Dark web. Is there dark web that isn't onion? Yes, is there stuff below the silk roads and the agoras? Hell yes. But I don't want to go there. I have no interest in going deeper.

From my experience on onionland, yah most of the websites are VERY focused. I've seen a couple websites that are literally here to post one file. Unforntunatly I've never found anything shadowrun related on the deep/dark/whatever web. It would be fun to set up a onion shadowrun site though. It would make a SUPER awesome prop for a decker when he finds a deep matrx site with sweet paydata and you hand him a slip of paper with an onion address and a computer. That would be so cool.

Sephiroth, I wasn't trying to answer your question; my online habits are private. The term Dark Web is offensive. It's used to put people against online anonymity, and I wish people wouldn't do that here. Political discussions are against the rules.

Deckbeard, please stop. There is no reason to keep talking about things like online child pornography here.

Ok, so don't use the word "Dark Web", don't mention child abuse...anything else we should do, your highness?

Alright then. Have your say.

and since you can't take an image apart via quote function, I just had some fun with paint: http://postimg.org/image/4jho41mm3/

IF you're not going to shed positive light on the issue at hand, then... What are you posting about? You tell us that the propaganda of the media isn't to be trusted, yet you.. offer... nothing.

It's my understanding that doing so would violate the forum rules. Hit me up privately if you're interested.

My biggest issue running SR3 is that yes, pretty much everything is 'dark web'. There's no search engines as such. You either know the exact location of the data you're looking for, or you're SOL.

Weren't Data Search tests introduced in SR3 for trivial information?

Dark web smarsh web. That's just how stuff was in the 90s using Gopher and Mosaic.

Exactly. Go hit up textfiles.com. There's nothing on the 'Dark Web' that wasn't in a dial-up BBS document or UseNet newsgroup circa the early 1990's. It's all the usual Anarchist's Cookbook bullshit.

Sephiroth, you know why there's no Shadowrun stuff on the Dark Web? Because sticking it on a server that's not indexable and is only accessible to a few people serves no point. Our rambling chatter isn't paydata, and further limiting the audience of 'people who are interested in Shadowrun' to 'people who are interested in Shadowrun and willing to jump through all the hoops to get access' makes the value of posting it zero. There's no 'deeper discussion' to be found behind closed doors, because we're talking about a pen and paper roleplaying game about 1980's cyberpunk. Everything that can be said about the genre has been, for decades. We're just finding amusing new ways to play with the same tropes Gibson and Dick have made their careers with.

Onion services is the correct term unless you're deliberately specifying something else. The other term is pejorative.

I feel the lady doth protest too much. The "Dark Web"/ "DarkNet" term, when used by people who are professionals, and not just scare-mongers, contains no pejorative connotation of illicit or illegal activities, only that the Dark Web is harder to trace and identify than the surface web, as the protocol used for it is designed to be less traceable. I've yet to see anything published in a reputable technology journal, or by any of my associates in the IT world that implies a pejorative. I've seen major media outlets like Forbes or CNN get it wrong, but those are also the same places where I see disinformation about firearms, law and crime being bandied about.

The analogy to the physical world would be something like Checks/Credit compared to Money Order. A check or Credit transaction can be traced and identified to a specific account, while a Money Order is much harder to track, because it doesn't record the personal data of the purchaser.

So, basically, while Money Orders or Cash are used almost exclusively by disreputable, illicit or illegal business transactions, not all Money Orders or Cash transactions are illegal, illicit or disreputable. In fact, many are simply done by people who wish to maintain their anonymity.

And I think you are just stirring up an argument for the sake of it. You tell us we don't know what we are talking about, then when we ask you for some sort of clarification, clam up about how it's "against the rules". It's very similar to an argument from "revealed authority", which is common amongst religious types. They don't present a rational, logical argument that one can rebut or debate, instead insisting that they have had knowledge "revealed" to them fro ma higher, unknown source.

Basically, what I'm saying is this: If the mods find this topic to be tense, they'll warn us or lock the thread. But until the do so, if we want to discuss this, then in the interests of intellectual honesty, we should discuss it openly and honestly. But dropping in to tell us that we're wrong, because you said so, and that's that, is not intellectually honest discourse, nor does it help to educate others into the intricacies of the subject.

Basically, I am, and always have been a proponent of complete transparency and openness regarding information*. This is because I'm a bit of a Neo-anarchist/InfoLibertarian, in that I feel that access to information is one of the greatest drivers of economic advantage. This can be explained best by the way that life insurance premiums dropped, perciptiously in the mid 90s, for no explicable reason. Well, the reason was actually simple: prior to the internet, it was extremely hard to garner information regarding competing life insurance policies, while the internet made it possible to compare hundreds or thousands of policies and select the one that fits your needs and price constraint. Steven Levitt has written multiple papers about how the leverage of information has driven the real estate market and, interestingly enough, the rise and fall of the Klu Klux Klan.

And right now, what you're doing? It smacks of trying to leverage information for your own benefit. Now, this is only my perception and opinion, not fact, and the truth is that you could just be bad at communication or some other reason, but I can only go off the information you've provided me and draw conclusions from that. But you're not providing much in the way of information, while only contributing to the noise on this subject. If you're not going to inject some signal, can you atleast decrease some of the noise by not participating, since this is apparently a subject that is emotionally charged for you?

*Which is Ironic, considering I have been vocal in disparaging both Assange and Snowden, both who claim to be fans of transparency, but have leveraged the information they have shared for their own benefit, rather than for the sake of simple transparency. Assange, in particular, draws my ire as his wikileaks projects release of information from the Iraq and Afghan wars have resulted in numerous deaths of those his leaks identified as informants and collaborators with the Occupiers. Snowden's actiosn are questionable in light that his claims to be against government manipulation and oppression of our information and freedoms have to be balanced by his seeking asylum in one of the most oppressive and informationally manipulative kleptocracies in the world.

As we continue this political debate that has nothing whatsoever to do with Shadowrun...

Referring to "a secret internet for drug dealers, assassins and pedophiles" is a disgusting smear against the millions of people who use privacy enhancing technologies.

Wanting to have Tor outlawed is par for the course among anti-whistleblowing types. I've seen them spread that sort of garbage all over social media.

If you think I'm "stirring up an argument" then talk to me privately. You're the one pointing out my character flaws.

If anything it would be "onion hidden services", but that only covers TOR and not Freenet, I2P, Retroshare...


Who did that again?
Really, you're fighting attacks which are not even there, making both yourself and what you are trying to defend look asinine.

And just to top it off you complain about political discussions, after being the one who started it.


@Wothanoz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_S...s_countries.PNG
Hard to be picky when you're on the run from a superpower...
(And that's just the countries with an official extradition treaty. Namibia apparently doesn't have one and ranks quite well in terms of press freedom, but I doubt they could resist the political and economic pressure.)

As of yet, I have not referred to the darknet/darkweb as anything other than a way of surfing anonymously. Which, from what I understand, is what it is. That's in no way political, and no one in this thread has called for outlawing anything.

I don't wish to talk to you privately, as I have already stated my desires for transparency, openness and the free dissemination of information. These concepts, by the way, are part and partial to the cyberpunk genre that shadowrun is a product of. If you've ever read the Neo anarchists guide to North America, you would know that much of shadowrun's background has always been influenced by neo-libertarian and anarchist philosophy, and the protoganists we play are generally considered not only amoral, but outright criminals. We discuss a game where it is de rigor to plan assassinations, grand theft, kidnapping, murder and other violent crime, yet you insist that discussing internet connectivity, transparency, privacy and security are not germane to the setting.

Do drug dealers and pedophiles use secure technology to commit their crimes? Yup. But that no more means that so called "darkweb" technology is inherently amoral or criminal than criminals using guns means that a gun is criminal.

I understand that line of thinking. "any safe port in a storm" and all that. I just am not sure I can view him as a hero for transparency, as he is sheltering in a country that makes the current US policies look somewhat tame. However, I do give him for credit for his careful selection of what to release, so as to minimize the impact on security operations, while exposing what are dangerous policies. So, I'm not completely without sympathy for him, I just am enough of a skeptic and pessimist to not believe his stated motivations. But, ya know, ya pays yer moneys, and ya takes yer chances.

It's in the original image, near the bottom.

Feel free to go to the Tor IRC channel #tor at the oftc.net server if you'd care to ask those folks what they're called.

Saying that criminals use the deep web, darkweb, guns or cash is not the same as saying that only criminals use the deep web, dark web, guns or cash.

For that matter, near the parts where they discuss the criminal uses, they also point out legitimate, legal uses. Your fixation on the "smear" is interesting, because it's only a portion ofthe over-all graphic, yet you insist in bringing it up constantly.

I own a hi point 995 carbine, the same firearm used by Eric Harris during the 1999 columbine massacre. Yet, when people ask me why I got the 995, or why I would recommend it to others(and I would! It's great!), I don't fixate on the fact that it was used to murder a score of school children. I instead talk about it's accuracy, it's firepower, the availability of 9mm rounds, the low cost point for the firearm and the ammo, and it's portability. Those are points I will argue and discuss, while ignoring jack holes who continuously call it the "columbine gun".

Now, no one here is saying that the deep web, darkweb, onion servers or whatever is solely used for criminal purposes. So, you know, drop that aspect of the conversation.

You're mischaracterizing what I said. I'm not really here to have my political opinions changed by you anyway, so dropping it is a good idea.

You keep using that word, "politics", and I don't think you know what it means.

"deep web" as a concept, again, doesn't refer to anything political, it refers to data that is not indexed and reachable through hyperlinks. It's not even necessarily secure or clandestine information, it's just not information stored in such a way that traditional web crawlers can find it. For example, much of the information on some widely used websites is not available, because it does not involve using a link. Dark Net or Dark Web is stuff that uses non-standard protocols to be accessed, allowing secure peer to peer transmissions. That's available both from the infrographic and from plenty of articles on the internet, not all of them published by mainstream media sources. And then there are yet OTHER parts of the internet that are cut off from the rest of the internet, for example, an improperly configured router can fail to connect to other routers, while still allowing the computers on that router's network to communicate with each other and share information.

None of that is in anyway a political discussion.

Now, there could be said to be a political discussion in that some people desire to limit the access to the internet and monitor it, for various purposes. However, that isn't really "old reservation" for shadowrun, as the entire Matrix is set up in such a way as to limit and monitor who goes where and does what. Everything is under scrutiny, and shadowrunners typically operate along the seams between the legitimate and illegitimate world. They engage in deplorable criminal behavior, and it's important to make sure you only share that sort of dangerous information with a limited pool of others. So, runners should always be interested in trying to keep their matrix activities under cover and anonymous. Much like drug dealers who use onion services, or child pornography fans who use said services. OR hitmen.

Heck, I've played characters who were more deplorable than child pornography users. I mean, I would generally think that someone willing to harvest the kidneys from a child is worse than someone who is just sexual attracted to children.

And more importantly, it's not the author's own words but a quote from a newspaper. At the very bottom of the image. After extolling the use of Tor for legitimate reasons ("Many people are now beginning to use TOR as a way of maintaining their privacy whilst online"). Accordingly, nobody in this discussion even mentioned any criminal aspects of Tor usage until you stamped your feet and demanded nobody mention the war -- which should give a reasonable person some pause...


Why don't you go ahead and tell us how we should call it?

This one has pretty much died down, but I'm going to lock it anyway. Had I been around the last couple of days I would have done so a few days ago. It's a very interesting and I think relevant topic, but as it's mostly the back and forth now, I think it's lost it's value.
That being said, thanks for keeping it mostly civil.