Where Is Freedom on the Internet?
Good evening, %username%. Welcome to another mischievous online broadcast. You might be used to thinking that the internet is full of restrictions, that there’s no freedom, and especially no freedom of speech. If only you knew how wrong that is. Is forbidden content hard to access? Not really. Is the internet moderated? Even less so.
People often ask us:
- Why are you so angry and serious?
- Why is there so much strange and controversial content?
This is one of those classic cases where someone sees something online they can’t unsee. In fact, each of us, living in a sea of disturbing information, tries to shield ourselves from supposedly unnecessary topics, yet still ends up searching for the weirdest stuff at the bottom.
Let’s talk about the dark side of the internet. It’s so trendy now that 2-3 books and up to a dozen articles come out about it every month, all basically repeating each other.
What Do These Articles Say?
- There’s the Tor network!
- There are drugs, weapons, hitmen, hackers.
- No moderation, no kids, freedom of speech, and Big Brother is blind.
No point repeating what’s already been said a hundred times. Instead, let’s talk about what no one wants to hear: the romantic aura of the dark web doesn’t mix well with its mundane realities.
Most of you reading this have already used the .onion zone in some way. On one hand, you find what you’re looking for. Sometimes, it’s just curiosity and the thrill of exploring—the original internet surfing. That’s what drew us there, too. The thirst for a big wave led us to the “dark side.” Even if we didn’t stay long, the impressions lasted. Then they faded, and we’d come across more “expert” articles that just left a bad taste.
Tor
Let’s start with Tor. You can buy and sell anything you want there. If you can’t find a couple of gallons of human blood, you either didn’t look hard enough or it’s out of stock. (Just kidding—sort of.) Everything is available. In this way, the dark web isn’t much different from the so-called clearnet: it’s a marketplace of consumers and hamsters, just like where we spend 90% of our online lives. Buying and selling—even taxes exist, since you have to pay a guarantor to avoid being scammed. But unlike the government, a good guarantor won’t rip you off—it’s just not profitable.
As for trolls and kids, they’re everywhere. Tor isn’t a nuclear reactor; even a fifth grader can launch it. There aren’t many social networks in Tor, and the ones that exist are stripped down for anonymity, making them boring and unpromising. Still, they serve as open trading platforms.
Here are a couple of harmless links:
- Harry71’s project: For .onion links, you’ll need the Tor Browser
- http://skunksworkedp2cg.onion/ – An .onion link aggregator, updated often (and often down).
Many start their journey here, peeling back the layers of the multi-layered world, trying to reach the CORE™. After a day or two of browsing, everyone realizes what they already knew: modern media openly lies, and reality is scary and insane. The ease with which you can change your identity, buy a couple of guns, or a few kilos of cocaine is shocking at first. We’d like to believe there are some barriers, since we hear so much about restrictions and laws. But there aren’t. There’s also a ton of ads for various sexual services and mountains of porn links aimed at the most depraved. Seriously, who pays for porn these days?
Snuff, necrophilia, pedophilia, zoophilia, and a dozen other “philias” you’ve probably never heard of can be downloaded for a small fee—along with hundreds of viruses and a possible personality disorder. Child porn is not a problem to find. The myths of anti-drug and anti-corruption fighters are laughable in the context of accessibility, and all the loud statements seem like a cruel joke—hypocritical and cynical.
There are also “lighter” sides to Tor—some forums where no one is selling anything illegal or telling wild alien stories. Here, you’ll find ideologues of crypto-anarchism, anarchism, fascism, and other “isms” you’ve probably never heard of. There’s plenty to read—if you can get in. Most likely, you can’t. And if you can, you probably already have the knowledge and connections to do so in the regular internet. Not all places are well-guarded, but you’ll need brains and skills to get in.
Should you install the Tor Browser? Yes, definitely. It lets you access any site on the internet. Unfortunately, not only Russia blocks certain sites—foreign governments are also hiding their sites from us now.
Should you use Tor to access the .onion zone? That’s up to you. If you’re a law-abiding citizen, there’s honestly nothing for you there, and being on the dark side can be an unpleasant and disappointing experience.
Freenet
But that’s not all. We’ve peeled the onion a bit, but there are more layers—and a rabbit. Or maybe a white rabbit, like the one Neo chased in The Matrix.
This is another closed network: Freenet. Unlike Tor, you can’t just download and go. You’ll need to use your brain a bit and tweak some settings. But it’s user-friendly and mostly translated into Russian. Freenet is a decentralized, distributed data storage system with no censorship, designed to provide users with electronic freedom of speech through strict anonymity. When you visit a site, you first download it entirely to your computer—specifically, to an encrypted “bucket” on your drive. After viewing, the site stays in your “bucket,” and the more users who view it, the better the access. For a while, Freenet had no forums or chats, but that changed quickly. After setup, you get some starter sites; check out the Filtered Index by NoXe, a popular and frequently updated aggregator. If you don’t want to use someone else’s aggregator, there are several scripts available.
At first, Freenet may seem dead: half-dead links, a tiny Russian segment, boring news. But after six months, you’ll see daily updates and dozens of sites with interesting content. It’s not so simple. Here gather ideologues, philosophers, storytellers, and anyone who wants to speak freely without fear of being jailed for their views. Given the way information spreads here, almost all content is free—the only price is your time. Sometimes, pages load painfully slowly, and a full movie might take weeks to download, even on a 100 Mbps connection. You can also create a private network of trusted users, where only your group can view and update certain sites, with full anonymity for the site owner if desired.
You could call this network “white” for its minimalist, ad-free pages and the variety of interesting texts and reflections on personal and collective freedom.
Should you install Freenet? No. You’ll be bored, and others won’t care about you. You probably won’t become another node supporting the network. But if you want to share your thoughts without fear of censorship, you’re welcome. Censorship doesn’t go there.
ZeroNet
Welcome to ZeroNet:
LET’S BUILD A DISTRIBUTED INTERNET TOGETHER!
Welcome to chaos.
Unlike the encrypted, anonymous Freenet and Tor, ZeroNet isn’t truly anonymous, since it’s based on the BitTorrent protocol. What can be said about this network? Not much. It’s a young, mostly empty network—there are plenty of those now. The first launch was in 2015, and back then, it was empty. Now, the main chats and forums are active, and there are enough users to talk to. There are plenty of Russians, and their forums are just as full as the others.
Even the Chinese love it!
Overall, you could call this space one big social network—a rebirth of the internet without all the crap like boobs and cats (though those are there, too). Surfing is easy, and users are responsive. There’s still a sense of discovery: information that was relevant yesterday might change twice overnight. You have to stay on your toes—at least, it feels that way sometimes.
At the start of this article, we said we’d “seen some shit” online and can’t unsee it. Searching for boundaries revealed an eternal truth: there are no boundaries. You are your own judge and jury. We’ve seen tons of content from the dark web—some we wish we could forget, some we wish we could erase. But it all teaches you that the world is a harsh place. The person next to you on the subway could be a pedophile, a drug addict, a murderer, or an animal abuser. It helps you accept the idea that “man is a wolf to man” and teaches you to be careful—if you have any sense. But it doesn’t make you cruel, gloomy, or forget how to smile.
That’s thanks to the clearnet:
THE CLEANEST AND MOST HONEST INTERNET IN THE WORLD.
A space full of cats and boobs, overrun by bloggers, praying prostitutes, and piles of dumb memes that brainwash the masses. The “free internet” is populated by completely sold-out media. They’re not sellouts—they just want to eat. It’s cozy, full of all kinds of social networks pushing fake news. Social networks are perfect tools for social engineering, making it easy to control the masses. No? Fine, let’s say SMM is just a conspiracy theory.
Gluttonous, consumerist, bloated (in every sense), and utterly uncultured—the clearnet is what destroys any consciousness.
Of course, the clearnet also has plenty of shock content, trash, and filth. The lying clearnet turned out to be the most truthful environment we all deserve. That’s why so many people prefer to sit and complain about restrictions, panic, and lament changes—instead of just installing a browser in three clicks, like they did with any other software before. It used to be hard. Now it’s very, very easy.
The darknet doesn’t give you freedom or open doors—because no one ever closed them.
The whole point is what and how you search for, %username%.
The whole point is who you are.