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Trends in the Silk Road 2.0

lau.im

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Re: Trends in the Silk Road 2.0

#81

Post by justathrow2k »

_bdog wrote: post #79

Drugs are a fascinating topic in my opinion, because they have affected humankind and it's decisions since ever and more than anyone wants to admit. It's a topic that is everywhere, and that simultaneously nobody has a clue about (a bit like climate change or high finance). People don't know which drugs there are, how they work, how dangerous they are, how much they are used etc. I talked to many people who are affec…

Brevity is your friend, good sir. I don't mean this is any ill way - it just seems you have said so much but said so little at the same time.

Re: Trends in the Silk Road 2.0

#82

Post by araes »

_bdog wrote: post #79

Drugs are a fascinating topic in my opinion, because they have affected humankind and it's decisions since ever and more than anyone wants to admit. It's a topic that is everywhere, and that simultaneously nobody has a clue about (a bit like climate change or high finance). People don't know which drugs there are, how they work, how dangerous they are, how much they are used etc. I talked to many people who are affec…

In general, liked the post, and generally agree that drugs have completely permeated our society, and we mostly need to accept, and deal with, the fact that they're here.

Oddly though, I disagree with the summary points, although they're almost impossible to prove.

For example, I think the large majority of Americans can tell you a decent amount about marijuana. Maybe not purchasing info, but general effects, and good guesses on how much folks smoke. I would also guess that if its being legalized in places, than it can't be much more excessive than they're comfortable with. I do agree that they probably can't tell you much more. LSD, Ecstasy, Heroin, Cocaine - they're probably all mysteries to the vast majority of folks.

I would also guess that the vast majority of drug use still happens on a sofa. Obviously, there are people like you say, who use drugs while they're driving or out on the job. Heck, I'm sure a lot of the fast food industry is constantly out of it (see American Beauty). But drugs are still a disorienting state change for many folks, which means a lot of them want to be in a comfortable, safe place when they use them - namely at home on a sofa.

Re: Trends in the Silk Road 2.0

#83

Post by spenuke »

justathrow2k wrote: post #81
_bdog wrote: post #79

Drugs are a fascinating topic in my opinion, because they have affected humankind and it's decisions since ever and more than anyone wants to admit. It's a topic that is everywhere, and that simultaneously nobody has a clue about (a bit like climate change or high finance). People don't know which drugs there are, how they work, how dangerous they are, how much they are used etc. I talked to many people who are affec…

Brevity is your friend, good sir. I don't mean this is any ill way - it just seems you have said so much but said so little at the same time.

So he sounds stoned?

Re: Trends in the Silk Road 2.0

#84

Post by gwern »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #7
tedks wrote: post #6

It's interesting and probably not surprising that the most popular drug on the Silk Road 2.0 (and probably other darknet marketplaces) is MDMA. MDMA is difficult to find in pure forms and impurities can kill you. If you buy MDMA from a vendor with a 4.9/5 rating, you can be reasonably certain you're getting quality product (comparable to old pressed pills you can hear aging ravers wax nostalgic about) at a fair price…

> MDMA is difficult to find in pure forms and impurities can kill you. If you buy MDMA from a vendor with a 4.9/5 rating Could this be selection bias? If you're dead you can't give a bad rating?

Think about it quantitatively. MDMA has always been tops in the rankings (not just this one, but DARCs and others), implying it's been sold to at least tens of thousands of customers. If the worst MDMA would rank 1 and normal MDMA 5 and half the MDMA sold is bad (to maximize the possible impact on the rating), then you'd have to have thousands of people croaking after taking the bad MDMA in order to produce an average of 4.9 (to pull down the average by .1 using ratings of 1). In contrast, I've seen media reports of maybe 2 deaths clearly linked to drugs bought off the black-markets (psychedelics which were RCs and led to fatal accidents).

Re: Trends in the Silk Road 2.0

#85

Post by gwern »

> I somehow doubt this guy has sold half a million dollars worth of MDMA at $1.5k a pop in such a huge quantity, but the price seems to be in line with other sellers for an equivalent amount.

Actually quite possible: the Dutch seller SuperTrips sold into the millions range, so half a million for the top seller is possible.

> I’m not entirely sure what the rules are regarding who can give feedback, but there seem to be people buying huge quantites if a user must buy a product to be able to review it. I have never purchased anything from the site, and I wasn’t presented with any choices to review an item.

You can only review a listing if you have ordered it & paid for it (SR2 no longer does escrow); but you are also allowed to review a listing before your order arrives, which means scraping feedback can be very biased given that most users who are scammed will never go back to update their feedback. (That is, suppose a well-regarded seller has decided to quit selling; they put up a bunch of listings, accept orders & payment, withdraw all the money since there is no longer escrow on SR2, and continue until they're banned. The buyer will leave item feedback like '5 stars: Trusted vendor, waiting eagerly for package' and when it dawns on them that they've been scammed, never switch it to '1 stars: got scammed'. So anyone who scrapes the feedback of this seller will see a sterling 5-star-average profile.)

Re: Trends in the Silk Road 2.0

#86

Post by extempore »

malka wrote: post #76
Havoc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine something along the lines of "knowing about a crime being committed without reporting it".

I'm not sure the cops would like it, if each person who ever visited SR out of curiosity gave them a phone call.

The purpose of criminalizing such activity is not to discourage people from engaging in it. It is to guarantee that everyone is a criminal, thereby ensuring that leverage is always available.

Re: Trends in the Silk Road 2.0

#87

Post by Havoc »

desdiv wrote: post #35
Havoc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that reliable though? I'd imagine the DEA is more likely to investigate a dealer declaring their location as Washington DC than one declaring Netherlands. So their is a definite incentive to falsify this.

But a buyer from the US is far less likely to order from the Netherlands since international mail goes through customs and there's no 4th amendment protection on them at all.

Not sure about that.

The majority of the buyer are going to buy on feedback. And a US supplier using fake Netherlands location is likely to get good feedback based on fast shipping (seeing how its fake Netherlands) and gain the benefit of the "positive" Netherlands connotations (Hollywood's view of the Netherlands in the average person's eyes).

4th amendment - true but not relevant to an environment dominated by non-lawyers and buyer's reviews I think.

Re: Trends in the Silk Road 2.0

#88

Post by Havoc »

dobbsbob wrote: post #37
Havoc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heard the same from friends - they were sending meat products that were a little on the grey side of import rules across a border. Vacuum packing + bleaching it overnight seems to keep the sniffer dogs away. Whether that works for drugs I can't say though.

Dealers use moisture barrier bags that are heat sealed now as apparently dogs can detect vacuum sealed bags though unclear if it's outside contamination, like somebody putting together a package in a room full of weed shavings or smoke.

>apparently dogs can detect vacuum sealed bags

Both heat sealed and vacuum sealed are air-tight, so that difference should be a non-issue. Its the stuff sticking to the outside of the bag that might be an issue. For meat I'd imagine bleach should do the trick...no idea what you'd need to remove drug traces though. Not a skillset I plan on deploying anytime soon so didn't research it.

Re: Trends in the Silk Road 2.0

#90

Post by gwern »

fubu wrote: post #75
tedks wrote: post #6

It's interesting and probably not surprising that the most popular drug on the Silk Road 2.0 (and probably other darknet marketplaces) is MDMA. MDMA is difficult to find in pure forms and impurities can kill you. If you buy MDMA from a vendor with a 4.9/5 rating, you can be reasonably certain you're getting quality product (comparable to old pressed pills you can hear aging ravers wax nostalgic about) at a fair price…

I'm not that aware of how Silk Road 2.0 works, but with all the anonymity involved, would it be very difficult for a seller to complete transactions to herself with dummy accounts to pump up their ratings? This was very common in the Amazon and Ebay world when I was around those several years ago.

It would not. Of course, they still have to pay the SR2 commission on all the turnover. There have been a lot of complaints on the SR2 forums over the past year that a lot of feedback is untrustworthy compared to SR1, among many other complaints about the poor operator performance.
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