Tor Project removes relays because of for-profit, risky activity
Discussion
"Operating relays for profit goes against the noble-spirited principle of volunteers fighting internet censorship and pervasive surveillance, which sustains and powers the community.
If the "for-profit" element is to take scale and consume a large percentage of the Tor network's relays, power from the community would fall into dubious hands, and the network's safety would be undermined by invasive centralization."
good decision if true - people should abuse it rather use it prudently clearnet+tor
"If the "for-profit" element is to take scale and consume a large percentage of the Tor network's relays, power from the community would fall into dubious hands, and the network's safety would be undermined by invasive centralization."
The is true #free #public #relays of #nostr - use it but dnot abuse it.
>>> without endorsement or approval of The Tor Project.
Communism, socialism, authoritarian or “hoho, great guys fighting for greater good <3”?
What the... So fake decentralisation if they can dictate who can contribute to the network. (Albeit, even if it scams)
Imagine if fiatjaf and the github collabs could decide what relays were able to contribute...
Interesting... So it seems likely the TOR team would have flagged those nodes as bad, thereby dropping them from the directory list, which is what clients/browsers use to know how to route requests through entry/transit/exit nodes. Effectively blocking those nodes through enforcement with the directory servers. That seems pretty centralized imo.
Yikes... And all 9 of the directory servers are within 17+ eyes countries
https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/flag:authority
The argument that a threat actor or nation-state would need to contribute an unlikely feasible amount of exit nodes for monitoring traffic seems irrelevant when you consider they wouldn't need to by simply comandeering only 9 directory servers to geosteer traffic as they see fit... 🙃
i had similar questions and concerns when i first found out, so i did some more digging. i certainly wouldn't call tor decentralized. it's good stuff, just ask Snowden.
i believe the axiom tor is holding to here is that freedom only exists within boundaries, otherwise it's just chaos.
tor is decentralized and there are relay requirements, relay policies, and criteria for rejecting bad relays in order to prevent corruption of the tor network.
the shitcoin-scheme (likely ATOR) that was incentivizing relay runners seems to have involved misconfigured relays, relays in high-risk locations, and putting users at risk from lack of awareness of what they were contributing to.
still it's good to know that the tor project, is looking into a better way of incentivizing relay runners that doesn't involve the potential of putting:
"user anonymity at risk in designs that prioritize some traffic, to legal classification and liability concerns that would arise with the introduction of real money to loss of location diversity and many more."
nostr is a pioneer in the space of incentivizing relay runners and we haven't agreed on policies for running relays or how best to handle malicious operators yet. we're still figuring it out while arguing over nips like 94/95 and fleshing out their use cases among many other things. nostr does not yet have the mission critical privacy and anonymity that the tor network is used and known for, but i do feel we may serve as examples or models for each other.
i use nostr over tor and recommend others do the same
check out their official respomse statement here:
https://blog.torproject.org/tor-network-community-health-update/