Silk Road forums
Discussion => Off topic => Topic started by: TorXic on June 26, 2013, 09:52 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFwPjUpv-9M
and an IAmA on reddit
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1fwi48/im_the_ceo_of_an_online_underground_black_market/
what do you think?
he said
"Law enforcement is going to be aware of us (and probably already is) regardless of the way we choose to put our product out there."
not wrong imo, they already know about SR, Atlantis, or even worst website.
too dangerous to engage a "war" directly?
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I think it's a bit stupid (and arrogant, which LE does not like...), but they are right: LE knows about all of this activity.
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:o
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That's so fucking lame dude.
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This has to be LE. There is no way Atlantis is a legit marketplace, I just can't imagine it. Nope, no way. Sure they make sales, but it's a honeypot.
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This has to be LE. There is no way Atlantis is a legit marketplace, I just can't imagine it. Nope, no way. Sure they make sales, but it's a honeypot.
True, true. - I still think that Atl was behind the DDoS attack in April. I also think that LE is behind Atl.
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LE mostly want the dealers, not buyers. There aren't enough cells in the world to lock up all the users. I don't think it's LE, they charge for a vendor account. I'm sure that wouldn't be allowed, and people have bought from it. And this vid would be entrapment. I think it's competition, and they may have been responsible for the DoS attacks, but I also am not sure, I think the attacks could have been solely to drop the price of BTC, like the attacks on MtGox and Bitstamp. The attacker of MtGox made his intentions very clear from the get go that it was to drop the price of BTC as it shot up so much.
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ew
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I haven't even been to the page and I refuse to. Won't go. It's a honeypot.
And NoAddedSugar, you realize that in order to GET the dealers they need to entice buyers, right? There's no way to get dealers if there are no buyers for their product.
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An article was written about this and is currently posted on a very popular news aggregator site...
The article:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/26/4467136/illegal-online-drug-bazaar-begins-massive-advertising-push-atlantis-silk-road
Illegal online drug bazaar begins massive advertising push
In the world of illicit virtual marketplaces, there is one clear leader: Silk Road, which has been in business since February of 2011. However, a few competitors have recently sprung up. The most visible is Atlantis, which has completely discarded the paranoia and caution that usually accompanies the online drug-dealing industry. Today, the site announced it is planning a "big social media campaign," which kicked off with a video ad done in the style of a cutesy Silicon Valley startup.
The video opens with a cheery tune and a cartoon man in stunner shades and a tie. "Meet Charlie," reads the narration. "He's a stoner, and recently his job made him move cities, and he can't find any dank buds." The movie ends with Charlie getting "high as a kite" after using Atlantis, which the video is sure to note offers "no fees for purchases" and "next day delivery."
Atlantis has also been pitching journalists and offering discounts to top Silk Road sellers.
Isn't it a bit indiscreet for Atlantis to advertise its illegal service so brazenly (and flout YouTube's user guidelines in the process)? Silk Road, by contrast, does not even advertise its address; it must be shared person-to-person or found by following links from deep-web sites such as The Hidden Wiki or other guides to the digital underground.
It's very difficult for the police to crack down on either the operators or users of virtual marketplaces, however, so operating in the open may be the same as operating in the shadows. Owners can station themselves anywhere in the world, taking precautions to protect their identities. Atlantis and sites like it also operate completely under the table using virtual currencies such as Bitcoin and Litecoin. These "cryptocurrencies" also offer users ways to protect their identities. Atlantis and sites like it are only accessible through Tor, the distributed network that anonymizes traffic by bouncing it between nodes around the world.
"We want to bring attention to the site and bring our vendors more buyers," a user purporting to be the CEO of Atlantis said on Reddit. "Law enforcement is going to be aware of us (and probably already is) regardless of the way we choose to put our product out there."
Atlantis says it has processed more than half a million dollars in sales since it opened in March, so the aggressive advertising strategy may be working. The company is also hiring an online marketer — to be paid in Bitcoin, of course.
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he said
"Law enforcement is going to be aware of us (and probably already is) regardless of the way we choose to put our product out there."
not wrong imo, they already know about SR, Atlantis, or even worst website.
too dangerous to engage a "war" directly?
It's true, of course law enforcement, journalists and authorities know about all these websites. I think that is somewhat different to sticking your finger up at them in a dare.
In the lane behind where I live, there is a heroin dealer. Everybody knows it. He does a roaring trade, day and night. Has done for years. No doubt the police get periodic calls from neighbours telling them about him, and no doubt they say there's not much they can do, need to catch him in the act, need probable cause yada yada yada.
But what do you think they would do if the dealer himself put out a sign in front of his house and rang the police yelling "HEY PIGS I SELL HAMMER AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT??"
I think their reaction would be a little different, just quietly ::)
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he said
"Law enforcement is going to be aware of us (and probably already is) regardless of the way we choose to put our product out there."
not wrong imo, they already know about SR, Atlantis, or even worst website.
too dangerous to engage a "war" directly?
It's true, of course law enforcement, journalists and authorities know about all these websites. I think that is somewhat different to sticking your finger up at them in a dare.
In the lane behind where I live, there is a heroin dealer. Everybody knows it. He does a roaring trade, day and night. Has done for years. No doubt the police get periodic calls from neighbours telling them about him, and no doubt they say there's not much they can do, need to catch him in the act, need probable cause yada yada yada.
But what do you think they would do if the dealer himself put out a sign in front of his house and rang the police yelling "HEY PIGS I SELL HAMMER AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT??"
I think their reaction would be a little different, just quietly ::)
I wish I knew where you lived. ::) I'm so dry right now.
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It's true, of course law enforcement, journalists and authorities know about all these websites. I think that is somewhat different to sticking your finger up at them in a dare.
In the lane behind where I live, there is a heroin dealer. Everybody knows it. He does a roaring trade, day and night. Has done for years. No doubt the police get periodic calls from neighbours telling them about him, and no doubt they say there's not much they can do, need to catch him in the act, need probable cause yada yada yada.
But what do you think they would do if the dealer himself put out a sign in front of his house and rang the police yelling "HEY PIGS I SELL HAMMER AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT??"
I think their reaction would be a little different, just quietly ::)
sure, but the dealer can be found easily, it put a sign in front of his house.
Not the same with atlantis, but probably LE can do really better.
will see, it's just started a war, on the clearnet this time.
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It is a little brazen to do it the way they're promoting it. Even if it is a big honey pot, how will that help them if they do not know the buyer's nor vendor's genuine address/information?
One of the funny things about Atlantis is they went through the trouble to include a copyright notice on their pages. That just seems kind of odd. If you view the source of their pages you can see it's 100% custom code like SR (not some kind of commercial CMS). It just seems funny to include a copyright notice.
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true, but i don't think its a honeyspot.
i like that there is competition, but SR got me in ideal as well. I will stay right here.
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For everyone saying Atlantis is a honeypot for LE, if LE was going to try to bust anyone they'd target the site with more users and vendors not less. I thought the commercial was kind of funny.
I think SR is a much better resource simply because it has more vendors which gives the buyer more of a choice, and there are way more forum reviews on SR than Atlantis. Calling Atlantis a honeypot for LE is kind of ridiculous though.
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This is definitely an interesting route they've taken as this will permanently make them different from Silk Road, either they're going to crash and burn due to Law Enforcement or have a very real chance of competing with Silk Road in the long run. With that said the commercial itself had some major flaws, the main one being linking their TOR address without explaining what TOR itself is. I would reckon something like 95% of the people who saw the commercial who weren't aware of TOR beforehand won't research it in detail as they won't understand the connection, which is a bit unfortunate as they are no doubt the main demographic for the commercial itself. I'm sure they're going to refine their commercial and/or get some site up explaining the TOR concept, but if they don't I don't think this commercial will have that much impact.
Some say this is just giving the finger to Law Enforcement, but the Pirate Bay has doing this for years and it's still up: http://thepiratebay.sx/legal and they're not even on TOR network. What can be said for sure is if Atlantis continues down this road they will have a major advantage over Silk Road if legalization occurs in a couple of years and they're still up at that point in time.
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the commercial worked anyway, it's not an how-to buy drugs online, but a lot of talk about atlantis in a "good" way.
most of times SR articles are about someone get caught, security issue, ddoss, or something else.
They are hiring, 2 position available: Marketing and SEO ( seo on tor! ), so it's just the begin.
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I'm sure they're going to refine their commercial and/or get some site up explaining the TOR concept, but if they don't I don't think this commercial will have that much impact.
I've had a sneak preview of a second commercial that explains the how-to
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the commercial itself had some major flaws, the main one being linking their TOR address without explaining what TOR itself is. I would reckon something like 95% of the people who saw the commercial who weren't aware of TOR beforehand won't research it in detail
They give instructions on how to download TBB and access the site in the video description, which is a better place to put it than in the video, since people can copy-paste the address.
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So funny , Atlantis using youtube to post it. Cops can easily track the user. So funny.
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So funny , Atlantis using youtube to post it. Cops can easily track the user. So funny.
They are LE. They have to be. People saying they aren't a honeypot aren't thinking straight and they're going to fall right into LE's hands. ::)
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So funny , Atlantis using youtube to post it. Cops can easily track the user. So funny.
They are LE. They have to be. People saying they aren't a honeypot aren't thinking straight and they're going to fall right into LE's hands. ::)
I have seen cops here use youtube to catch people for doing a burnout in there car or a little argument in public transport that a complaint has been made they chase it up and catch them. The Atlantis thing on youtube takes away any sort of credibility that they had. How comical.
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So funny , Atlantis using youtube to post it. Cops can easily track the user. So funny.
They are LE. They have to be. People saying they aren't a honeypot aren't thinking straight and they're going to fall right into LE's hands. ::)
I have seen cops here use youtube to catch people for doing a burnout in there car or a little argument in public transport that a complaint has been made they chase it up and catch them. The Atlantis thing on youtube takes away any sort of credibility that they had. How comical.
Thank you for thinking on the side of reason.
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So funny , Atlantis using youtube to post it. Cops can easily track the user. So funny.
The person they hired to do the video knows nothing about who runs Atlantis or where to find them, so I don't think they are worried there.
I interviewed the guy who did the vid, by the way: http://allthingsvice.com/2013/06/28/interview-with-the-creator-of-that-video/
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he said
"Law enforcement is going to be aware of us (and probably already is) regardless of the way we choose to put our product out there."
not wrong imo, they already know about SR, Atlantis, or even worst website.
too dangerous to engage a "war" directly?
It's true, of course law enforcement, journalists and authorities know about all these websites. I think that is somewhat different to sticking your finger up at them in a dare.
In the lane behind where I live, there is a heroin dealer. Everybody knows it. He does a roaring trade, day and night. Has done for years. No doubt the police get periodic calls from neighbours telling them about him, and no doubt they say there's not much they can do, need to catch him in the act, need probable cause yada yada yada.
But what do you think they would do if the dealer himself put out a sign in front of his house and rang the police yelling "HEY PIGS I SELL HAMMER AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT??"
I think their reaction would be a little different, just quietly ::)
^^^This!
If we allow ourselves to get cocky, arrogant and complacent you watch how quickly they will mobilize to shut this down, resources won't be an issue, it will be about face saving and we all know how our governments like to prove a point.
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It's true, of course law enforcement, journalists and authorities know about all these websites. I think that is somewhat different to sticking your finger up at them in a dare.
In the lane behind where I live, there is a heroin dealer. Everybody knows it. He does a roaring trade, day and night. Has done for years. No doubt the police get periodic calls from neighbours telling them about him, and no doubt they say there's not much they can do, need to catch him in the act, need probable cause yada yada yada.
But what do you think they would do if the dealer himself put out a sign in front of his house and rang the police yelling "HEY PIGS I SELL HAMMER AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT??"
I think their reaction would be a little different, just quietly ::)
sure, but the dealer can be found easily, it put a sign in front of his house.
Not the same with atlantis, but probably LE can do really better.
But that's what I'm saying. The police already know where the dealer lives. They know he's a dealer. They've been there. But they need a lot more than 'knowing' and the phone call of a concerned neighbour to search his place. If they put in lots of time and resources they could stake him out, catch him in the act and bust him. But they don't have that many resources.
If, however, the dealer made a big fuss of openly taunting them, they would allocate more resources to catch him in the act, or they would lose face in the community.
Same principle.
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But that's what I'm saying. The police already know where the dealer lives. They know he's a dealer. They've been there. But they need a lot more than 'knowing' and the phone call of a concerned neighbour to search his place. If they put in lots of time and resources they could stake him out, catch him in the act and bust him. But they don't have that many resources.
If, however, the dealer made a big fuss of openly taunting them, they would allocate more resources to catch him in the act, or they would lose face in the community.
Same principle.
Either TOR will protect the privacy of the users and the websites, or it won't.
Anyway the attack vector for LE is NOT attacking TOR. Rather the attack vector is to limit the ability to cash out from BTC to real money.
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So funny , Atlantis using youtube to post it. Cops can easily track the user. So funny.
No they can't!
"So funny" because you clearly have no clue about how to setup a fake YouTube account using something like www.fakenamegenerator.com, use a VPN like www.privateinternetaccess.com and furthermore the fact a commercial enterprise that's dealing in a very competitive industry made a commercial is somehow strange to you shows that all these things combined means you are probably not smart enough to be down here on the Darknet at all and I would recommend you turn around and leave now before you yourself get caught through using inappropriate security or understanding anything about proper privacy protection.
Atlantis are a perfectly good website and if something happened to Silk Road we should all be thankful we have them to fall back on!
If Silk Road were Amazon, Atlantis is eBay and competition is both healthy for the businesses competing with one another AND the consumers who have the freedom of more choice and helps prevent monopolisation and market saturation.
Think Nintendo & Sega, Playstation & XBOX, IBM and Crapple... ahem, I mean, Apple, Mercedes & BMW, Puma & Adidas.
Vladmir is respected by DPR and vice versa and BOTH should be treated with respect by people like yourself also because they took a huge gamble and paid a lot of money to code up that site and are not getting paid that much ay present, have many features I would like to see at Silk Road and I would like to see you code up your own Darknet site with all the security and shit involved it takes to keep it operational, stay on top of heavy scam attempts and last of all if it weren't for them and DPR dropped dead tomorrow from a heart attack or was hit by an on coming truck on the freeway you would be left with BMR to have your ass fucked each time you used it.
Finally Silk Road was not the first of it's kind, The Farmers Market was, and if it weren't for the fact Bitcoin came along a short time after they existed and instead were born at the same time, DPR would still be a vendor selling his shrooms on there instead of the CEO of Silk Road.
Some of the idiots on this site never cease to amaze me, hence my neg karma when I call shit how it is continuously and people like you who think I actually give a fuck about it neg me out as if it's somehow going to effect my opinion or how and what I write.
Personally I think they have a well regulated forum also done by Cicero that doesn't have the stupid shit karma OR spammers and karma doesn't exist, but then again neither does God and idiots still believe in that so there you go... idiots everywhere!
- JWM
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Anyone with the knowledge and resources required to set up something like SR/atlantis is almost certainly capable of making and posting a video on youtube with(near) complete anonymity.
I don't think that atlantis/TBR will ever really get to the level SR is at, if for no other reason than the $500 deposit required to open a vendor account. Not only does it discourage(but not completely eliminate) scammers, it gives a sense of exclusivity, so the "rabble" from atlantis/TBR who can't afford the price of an SR vendor account won't be around.
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I love it.. I haven't checked out Atlantis yet, but I love seeing the competition.
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If we allow ourselves to get cocky, arrogant and complacent you watch how quickly they will mobilize to shut this down
Wasn't SR described by some senator as "the most brazen attempt to peddle drugs by light years"? ;)
Compared to the secret, invite-only forums of the previous decade, creating an open registration drug market was considered cocky as fuck, so we're already there.
The only way to win the war on drugs is to normalize the drug trade. As long as it's a secret market, it will be a marginalized market.
So, I for one applaud Atlantis for making that commercial, and I await the day these commercials are on regular TV.
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If we allow ourselves to get cocky, arrogant and complacent you watch how quickly they will mobilize to shut this down
Wasn't SR described by some senator as "the most brazen attempt to peddle drugs by light years"? ;)
Compared to the secret, invite-only forums of the previous decade, creating an open registration drug market was considered cocky as fuck, so we're already there.
The only way to win the war on drugs is to normalize the drug trade. As long as it's a secret market, it will be a marginalized market.
So, I for one applaud Atlantis for making that commercial, and I await the day these commercials are on regular TV.
Hahaha yeah fair comment astor, I just don't like the idea of poking the bear so to speak, just because we all know about this place there are a shit load more people who have literally no idea SR even exists, that is changing fast though I know.
Well we are all on for the ride, lets see where this goes... ;)