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German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

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Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#161

Post by thinkingemote »

onion2k wrote: post #111
thinkingemote wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also had 20 servers seized which also gives an indication on size.

That doesn't give any indication of size at all. For a start "a server" isn't a standard size. That could be 20 Raspberry Pis or 20 machines equivalent to Amazon t2.2xlarge resources. Even if it was 20 Raspberry Pis, a site could handle tens of millions of transactions a year with a moderately well designed architecture. "servers" is not a useful metric.

Very true, and likely to be news spin without further details.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#162

Post by krageon »

brazzy wrote: post #125
that_guy_iain wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience talking to the people whose job it is to provide support and services to those who abuse substances. Most experts in substance abuse normally say Alcohol is the worst of all the substances. With many stating, it causes more havoc in families on scale than heroin. More people die because of Alcohol, not just from drinking it but from drink drivers, drunken fights, etc. The general violence caused by…

But note that all those statement are about the amount of harm in an environment where alcohol is legal, cheaply available in every supermarket, widely advertized, and its consumption socially accepted, even expected . Can you really say in good conscience that other drugs wouldn't be worse if they became equally ubiquitous?

Less criminalisation inevitably means less drug harm. Any other stance can only be made in bad faith. Just look at relative harm numbers, the stats (especially at something like the EU level) are available publicly.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#163

Post by throwaway287391 »

pengaru wrote: post #75
martin_a wrote: post #70

"the largest market" always reminds me of "Bin Ladens right hand". Obviously the next one becomes the largest, but nevertheless it's like they kill at least one of those markets a month. Probably legalizing weed would stop most of that more effectively than all those police operations after month of preparation.

Uhhh... weed is not even close to the most purchased drug via the dark web. Certainly not in plant matter form. They'd have to legalize all the club/party drugs to make a dent; pills and powders, lsd.

Why do you say that? Anecdotally there are tons of cannabis listings, and from a quick search I found this study [0] (Fig. 3) showing cannabis was easily a plurality of drug sales on one darknet market (31%, with the next most common being dissociatives+psychadelics, which is also a broader category, at 22%).

[0] https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/13042...

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#164

Post by Broken_Hippo »

spurgu wrote: post #151
ath92 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet Scandinavian countries have had great success by raising the price and limiting the availability of store-bought alcohol. I think this is similar to some UX patterns we see in software: most people will go with the default option because it is easier. Raising the amount of effort needed for something means fewer people will end up doing it.

Not sure what you mean by "success"? In Finland at least so many people (especially from the south) regularly (pre-COVID at least) take the ferry to Estonia to buy alcohol in bulk because of the insanely high alcohol taxes. If that option didn't exist I'd expect moonshine (and/or illegal exports) to become much more common.

Folks in Norway would go to Sweden pre-COVID to buy alcohol. The in-country alcohol sales rose enough post-covid that the government is actually lowering the taxes on alcohol slightly, though whether it is enough to keep folks buying in Norway is debatable. I'd not be surprised if there wasn't a thriving black market even with all this.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#165

Post by JimBlackwood »

martin_a wrote: post #70

"the largest market" always reminds me of "Bin Ladens right hand". Obviously the next one becomes the largest, but nevertheless it's like they kill at least one of those markets a month. Probably legalizing weed would stop most of that more effectively than all those police operations after month of preparation.

Afaik, weed is a small part of the market.

Agree on the legalisation though. In the Netherlands at least, I find it hard to name more than a few individuals in my social group (university students from a range of studies) that aren’t recreational users of XTC/psychedelics. Having visited festivals and clubs in other European countries, I think the situation is not much different there.

It seems a bit pointless to keep spending money on hunting these markets when the market consists of such a large percentage of the population. Most people still get it through dealers aswell, delivery is quicker than ordering pizza.

More concerning are obviously the weapons, credit cards, etc. sold on these markets. Taking away the sales of drugs would probably help in that fight.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#166

Post by aeyes »

cm2187 wrote: post #118

I get how these market places are used for digital goods (malware, credit cards), but I don’t understand how people can trade physical goods on those. If they have to exchange products, they must either meet in person or use the mail, either is trackable by the authorities. I see how the seller can protect himself for local transactions. He could leave the goods hidden somewhere and tell the buyer where to go. But th…

> But the buyer has to be exposed 100% of the time.

In Germany, apartments have mailboxes accessible without entering the building. Mailboxes have last names on them, we don't send mail to apartment numbers.

If you need a secure dropbox you go to a random building with some vacancies, look for an unused mailbox, change the lock (many have them on the outside as well) and put a random name on it.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#167

Post by Broken_Hippo »

red_trumpet wrote: post #92
martin_a wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, let's just legalize them all and hope that people will use them responsibly. As a German, I can, with no problem whatsoever, go into the next supermarket and buy enough alcohol and cigarettes to severly hurt myself. No one gives a shit, probably because the state earns money when I do so. Either we find (all) drugs bad, or we stop being such liars in regards to this.

> No one gives a shit, probably because the state earns money when I do so. That's a bit shortsighted though. Because if you end up in the hospital or with lung cancer, you will cost the public insurance lots of money.

The war on drugs is expensive, though, and most drugs don't make you wind up in the hospital. We can educate folks to try to lessen hospitalization, like ensuring purity and strength. We already do this with alcohol.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#168

Post by epanchin »

cm2187 wrote: post #118

I get how these market places are used for digital goods (malware, credit cards), but I don’t understand how people can trade physical goods on those. If they have to exchange products, they must either meet in person or use the mail, either is trackable by the authorities. I see how the seller can protect himself for local transactions. He could leave the goods hidden somewhere and tell the buyer where to go. But th…

Mail is not traceable. There is no record of sender, and a parcel being addressed to you is not proof you ordered it.

I suppose this might differ worldwide, but I’m guessing most countries have post boxes?

Wapo did an article on it some time ago: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/10/16/postal-se...

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#169

Post by brazzy »

krageon wrote: post #162
brazzy wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But note that all those statement are about the amount of harm in an environment where alcohol is legal, cheaply available in every supermarket, widely advertized, and its consumption socially accepted, even expected . Can you really say in good conscience that other drugs wouldn't be worse if they became equally ubiquitous?

Less criminalisation inevitably means less drug harm. Any other stance can only be made in bad faith. Just look at relative harm numbers, the stats (especially at something like the EU level) are available publicly.

> Less criminalisation inevitably means less drug harm. Any other stance can only be made in bad faith.

That is in itself an extremely bad faith statement.

> Just look at relative harm numbers, the stats (especially at something like the EU level) are available publicly.

Yes, look at them. They do not support your statement because you are asserting that the corellation is basically linear, but I was talking about an (entirely hypothetical) scenario that is completely outside the data, namely full legalization.

No EU state has legalized heroin or cocaine. The poster boy for decriminalization is Portugal, but they haven't even legalized use, let alone production or distribution. They have merely turned use into an administrative offense rather than a criminal one and are providing a lot of harm-reduction services.

There is a huge difference between that and full legalization where big business spends billions on advertising to market addictive substances - which is the situation we have with alcohol that leads to a lot of harm.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#170

Post by brazzy »

nerbert wrote: post #158
brazzy wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But note that all those statement are about the amount of harm in an environment where alcohol is legal, cheaply available in every supermarket, widely advertized, and its consumption socially accepted, even expected . Can you really say in good conscience that other drugs wouldn't be worse if they became equally ubiquitous?

Rat park comes to mind. The issues are not the drugs, but our well being in society.

The drugs have a huge negative effect on well being, and that is not just because they're criminalized (though that is part of it).
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