Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down

justice.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 134 posts

Re: AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down

#121

Post by s73ver »

xj9 wrote: post #112
s73ver wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then work to get it repealed. But I can't have any sympathy for you if you decide to start up a drug selling store, and then get busted for doing something you knew at the time was illegal.

i didn't ask for sympathy either. i know i'm breaking the law, i'm explaining why

Yet, this is an article about someone who did get busted for selling drugs. And people in this thread are acting like it was some kind of huge civil rights violation. It's not. He wasn't any kind of freedom fighter. He was trying to make a quick buck.

Re: AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down

#122

Post by Mz »

dalore wrote: post #103
Mz wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am actually sympathetic to your position, though I don't do illicit drugs (or any drugs). But, you would need to up your game if you really want to argue your case on HN. I can think of several good arguments, better than "Why do you care if I get high when I get home?", but this is probably the absolute worst place to have that discussion. You would also need to do a better job of picking your battles. I think nei…

You don't do any drugs at all? I find that hard to believe So no caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, aspirin etc? No vaccinations. So everything is non drugs at all? What about all the drugs in your food like meat, do you not eat meat? You can't say you don't do any drugs. You will say well of course I do X drug, but that's not really a drug like all those others.

Guilty as charged. I eat meat and I consume caffeine.

I even do so consciously and intentionally "for medicinal purposes." I even blog about that fact, which gets largely ignored by the world, never mind that it is obviously revolutionary. However, like Rodney Dangerfield, I get no respect.

But, I have never smoked, I rarely drink alcohol and it has been a lot of years since I took either prescription drugs or OTC drugs or even had a vaccine. (Now cue the folks who will accuse me of being an evil piece of shit anti-vaxxer.)

Re: AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down

#123

Post by fsociety »

MichaelGG wrote: post #43
mediocrejoker wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is currently an epidemic in Vancouver (among other cities) of overdose deaths from a drug called Fentanyl that is several orders of magnitude more potent than morphine. People want it because it is so potent, but the problem with extreme potency is that the difference between an imperceptible difference and a lethal dose is orders of magnitude smaller in terms of weight. My guess is 'poison' was a slight hyperb…

Few people actually want fentanyl. Some enjoy the patches, but it doesn't have the same feel as heroin/morphine/etc., though they're close enough to all get you high. It's just super cheap and available, illegally. When the cost of the equivalent dose is a tenth or even a quarter, well that's a huge selling point. As always with opiates, the real issue is improper manufacturing/labeling. Even IV users would be mostly…

While I think the just of what you are saying is correct, remember that the fentanyl crisis has been happening for an incredibly long time. These people know what they are buying, and many dealers openly sell fentanyl now. Not to mention that when you talk about the fentanyl crisis you are talking about a very specific subset of people.

Re: AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down

#124

Post by pentae »

alasdair_ wrote: post #62
eugeneionesco wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah man, those poor poor vendors who make money on addicted users...

The single most highly traded item in terms of volume on most of these markets is pot, then non-addictive (but still potentially dangerous) drugs like MDMA. The number of hardcore opioid addicts that have a laptop, internet connection, knowledge of bitcoin, someone to convert cash into a bitcoin balance, a tor installation, a good address to pick up from and a willingness to wait a week to get their fix delivered is…

And those types of users are, from what i've witnessed typically still highly functional members of society (lawyers, tech entrepreneurs, etc)

Re: AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down

#125

Post by Mz »

nnfy wrote: post #91
Mz wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am actually sympathetic to your position, though I don't do illicit drugs (or any drugs). But, you would need to up your game if you really want to argue your case on HN. I can think of several good arguments, better than "Why do you care if I get high when I get home?", but this is probably the absolute worst place to have that discussion. You would also need to do a better job of picking your battles. I think nei…

>But, you would need to up your game if you really want to argue your case on HN. I can think of several good arguments, better than "Why do you care if I get high when I get home?" There IS no better argument. Pardon my language, but I think a large proportion of the HN community especially agrees with the sentiment of STAY THE HELL OUT OF MY BUSINESS. If what I am doing has no or marginal negative effect on others,…

Humans are social creatures. If you wish to participate in society -- and you basically have no choice these days, because there seems to be no place on earth where you can completely get away from society -- you have to accept constraints on yourself. Laws that work well put a lot of thought into trying to balance the rights of the group with the rights of the individual. Erring too far in one direction or the other winds up being inherently problematic for all parties. You can't have a healthy group if none of the individuals are healthy, and you can't have a healthy individual if the group as a whole is a sick system.

I can think of lots of better arguments than "stay the hell out of my business." But this thread does not look to me like fertile ground for trying to get into any of that.

Re: AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down

#126

Post by Romanulus »

tetrep wrote: post #23
Romanulus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is 'selling poison instead of drugs' even a logical scare-tactic? Wouldn't even the shadiest of dealers want to keep their customers/hosts/victims around to, you know, keep bleeding money?

And that's why nobody makes fakes or knock-offs, right? Because they'd lose their customer base once their customers purchase the product and find out it is not genuine. They're are large profit margins to be made off of either cutting drugs (if you're nice, with something inert, if you're not, just with something cheap) or for things like LSD, selling research chemicals that are similar yet different and massively c…

You failed to connect the logic... selling a 'fake' or knock-off brand != selling poison. I wasn't secretly weighting the pros and cons of buying the no-name Tylenol last time I needed to cure a headache.

"Hmm, do I potentially poison myself for a savings of a couple of bucks? I might die... but it _is_ three bucks..."

Re: AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down

#127

Post by Romanulus »

jwdunne wrote: post #94
Romanulus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is 'selling poison instead of drugs' even a logical scare-tactic? Wouldn't even the shadiest of dealers want to keep their customers/hosts/victims around to, you know, keep bleeding money?

Rat poison is a bit extreme but I've seen one dealer crush up anti-histamines to cut with cocaine. He was making a fair bit of money.

Anti-histamines are not poisonous.

Re: AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down

#128

Post by jwdunne »

Romanulus wrote: post #127
jwdunne wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rat poison is a bit extreme but I've seen one dealer crush up anti-histamines to cut with cocaine. He was making a fair bit of money.

Anti-histamines are not poisonous.

Nope but it's still not pleasant. Granted they're still snorting cocaine but do they want to short sedative antihistamines when they want a stimulant? Unlikely.

The point is dealers will cut with unsavoury shit. They're not stupid enough to cut with poison but they are stupid enough to cut with shit that will turn people away.

Re: AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down

#129

Post by krapp »

nihonde wrote: post #119
krapp wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>. I was thinking more in terms of law enforcement and organized crime having a common cause in keeping foreign criminal syndicates out of Japan. But let's be honest, the yakuza want to keep foreign criminal syndicates out of Japan because they want a monopoly on organized crime in Japan, not because they want to keep the Japanese people safe from foreign criminals. The yakuza deal in extortion, blackmail, drugs, gun…

Japan's organized crime is still the biggest and best organized in the world. They very clearly play a role in keeping petty criminals from China, Korea, and South Asia off the streets of Japan, and it's no secret that the keisatsukan will turn a blind eye when the public interest is served. It's hard to overstate the tranquility of Japan in terms of crime. Yes, there is a rather open underworld of prostitution and t…

>But I've met gaijin girls in my language classes here who work as hostesses, and they clearly felt like they escaped from places like Indonesia and Philippines, and even in the seedy underworld here they had more opportunities than where they came from. (Anecdotal to be sure, but also first-hand.)

>Also, I know restauranteurs who happily pay protection money and feel like it's a valuable service for them. Go figure.

Although, one wouldn't expect them to publicly admit otherwise.

Re: AlphaBay, the Largest Online 'Dark Market,' Shut Down

#130

Post by dzhiurgis »

acchow wrote: post #47
rmwaite wrote: post #2

Don't these people know that they will never kill this. Just like Napster's death, and oink, and what, and so on. Every time they shut one of these down the next one will be harder to shut down.

Huh? What's the 2017 version of Napster?

Soulseek
Post reply on HN