Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy

Cheers for this, I'm the author - AMA! :) A big motivation in writing the book was to feature the voices of the people we often don't hear from in the Tor community (which is why there's a whole chapter on the people who run the relays).

One thing I'm curious about Tor: What are the incentives for running a node?

If there are no monetary incentives, then how does it achieves decentralization? Also, what stops a malicious actor with enough resources (a government) from controlling a big portion of the network?

People can do things altruistically - there doesn't always need to be a bitcoin-style monetary incentive. Lots of people run exit nodes because they believe in privacy and freedom of information.

That said, you're absolutely right about large entities being able to control a large number of nodes, which is why a great number of nodes are controlled by governments trying to do so and also prevent foreign adversaries from being able to.

> Wealth and power, the complicity of institutions, governments and communities that ignore the rights of children and disbelieve and disempower them—all of these provide far better privacy protections for child sex abusers than the Tor relay network ever could.

Either the technology is good enough to make people anonymous despite their lack of wealth, power, complicity of institutions, or it's not. It can't be a weak technology only in the context of the biggest problem with Tor.

> Some pointed out that it was bizarre for Tor to condemn neo-Nazis using its network when it had been largely silent on the documented issues of child abuse... much of the negative reaction to the activist turn in Tor was motivated by a reactionary queasiness towards feminism.

Well yeah, that is bizarre. You're making it sound like, if we understood the tribe of college and graybeard libertarians better, compared to better-known, run-of-the-mill progressives and "intersectionality," then we can forgive how "bizarre" this sounds.

I don't think that stuff matters. The commentary from the operators makes the whole effort look insincere. I don't think that relay operator actually cares that much about Turkish dissidents or whatever. That operator is definitely interested in being dramatic and provocative. That's how most libertarian ideas sound. They could align in some ways with social justice, but its failure in the marketplace of ideas is as simple as insincerity + drama.

But warring state actors competing with each other on that offers me some protection.