Silk Road forums
Discussion => Off topic => Topic started by: abby on May 02, 2013, 07:44 pm
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22381046#
I think that means SR is famous and it means the BBC are prowling around here too.. sigh, can't anyone do their own journalism these days? I suppose it could be worse, at least the BBC aren't as consistently wrong as CNN.
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Kind of interesting that BBC is sneaking around here. Surely they are not the only ones of the bigger more famous names on here. Who knows they probably get their shit from here as well and felt the need to report this tragic event.
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I hate BBC....
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lol, very probably. :)
DPR should probably have draped the forum in a black armband during the troubles, there were certainly enough people here shedding tears of frustration.
It's all good fun. :)
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Practically every mainstream piece of reporting on SR has got something in their articles completely wrong or suffers from a lack of perspective, mostly due to the fact they need to lurk moar. Eily does quite well since she's embedded here and so has the insider perspective.
If you want to read some stuff about Silk Road that isn't either blandly uninformative or misreporting, then I recommend you read these:
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1. Patrick O’Neill has a fantastic piece on the history of SR. Clearly he has read the forums closely.
http://weirderweb.com/2013/01/01/a-history-of-silk-road-the-nets-largest-hidden-service-and-drug-marketplace-weirder-web-8/
2. Gwern has a brilliant analytical mind in general, here he applies it to SR:
http://www.gwern.net/Silk%20Road
3. Eileen Ormsby is always the first to get the scoop before the rumor bird hatches.
http://allthingsvice.com/
4. Alan Greenberg, despite Pine's merciless critique of his PGP key export skills*, is one of the people who "gets it".
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/08/06/black-market-drug-site-silk-road-booming-22-million-in-annual-mostly-illegal-sales/
Overall I am disappointed in the British press. I have not yet seen a single article that either comprehends the link between between cypherpunks, anarchocapitalism and the Silk Road, or indeed any article that understands the wider picture in relation to the Drug War. In fact one of the most accurate pieces on the Silk Road was a Daily Mail piece a while back, which is a bit like saying USA Today got the drop on the New York Times.
I am also a bit disappointed in the financial press such as the Financial Times, the Economist and Wall Street Journal. None of them seem to have picked up on the cryptocurrency angle and explored it in any great depth. It has all been extremely precursory.
I think lots of people at those institutions are interested in SR, are interested in cryptocurrency, but they are hobbled some degree of inhibition that comes with habitual self censorship.
They, prompted by exposure to law enforcement, are being encouraged to think of SR as "just another website selling drugs", like the reports of IOPs selling counterfeits, when all evidence points to something much... stranger going on.
And for the record: Darknet != Dark Web != Deep Web. They all have different connotations.
* Use the <pre> tag! PGP public keys are not ornaments!
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I think you're a few years ahead of the pack yet. From what I've seen even that Keiser (?) dude on RT doesn't get bitcoins and I've yet to see anyone else in the press who has a glimmer of understanding of just what they represent as a mechanism for currency or investment but then, there have been variations of the alternative currency theme since time immemorial and none of them have stood the test of time. I see bitcoins as product of 21stC technology but really, they're not a lot different to the time banks that were popular in the 70s and 80s or even tulips back in the 17thC.
As for the rest, I'd say cypherpunks et al are only going to be of interest to sociologists at the moment. They're just another tribe in an already fragmented world. Even academics haven't quite got their head around just what is happening here. If you grabbed a copy of the paper that the researcher published last month (I can't find the thread in my post history but I do have a copy of the actual paper on tormail, so if you're interested pm me your email address and I'll send it over) you would have noticed that his paper doesn't really add anything substantial to human knowledge, all it does is open the door to other academics and set the scene for how SR operates and why one person uses it (I wouldn't even say it contextualised it) but it does set him up for years worth of papers in whatever academic field takes his interest.
So my guess is that it's too complex for a newspaper to want to tackle just yet and it will take more public awareness before they'd even consider it to be something worth writing about - think about bitcoins, it took a critical mass before the media really became interested in it. if you saw this http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/may/02/drugs-web-revolution-changing-world-high you can see one of the latest articles around the area of accessing drugs/drug use/drug war that are bubbling along in the anglo saxon media (remember that other countries are more civillised in their drug approaches so some are not so interested in a drugs war - that's really a US construct).
You think you're seeing the beginnings of a sea change that goes beyond consumers being able to make rational choices around their recreational drug use, so write it up. Either blog it or submit it to your media outlet of choice and see what they say. You seem to be allowing yourself to be defined by the old fashioned approach where it's up to the "professionals" to write this. Society has changed and every occupation is DIY now, so do it! I'd certainly be interested in reading any articles you write as I'm still stumbling to get my head around the cultural underpinnings.
tl;dr? - go write it yourself, don't wait for the shallow end of the pool to start spreading misinformation.
eta: the thread I was thinking of has just turned up in my unread posts so here it is. http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=147885.0 if you drop him a note he will email it over to you.
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Practically every mainstream piece of reporting on SR has got something in their articles completely wrong or suffers from a lack of perspective, mostly due to the fact they need to lurk moar. Eily does quite well since she's embedded here and so has the insider perspective.
If you want to read some stuff about Silk Road that isn't either blandly uninformative or misreporting, then I recommend you read these:
--
1. Patrick O’Neill has a fantastic piece on the history of SR. Clearly he has read the forums closely.
http://weirderweb.com/2013/01/01/a-history-of-silk-road-the-nets-largest-hidden-service-and-drug-marketplace-weirder-web-8/
2. Gwern has a brilliant analytical mind in general, here he applies it to SR:
http://www.gwern.net/Silk%20Road
3. Eileen Ormsby is always the first to get the scoop before the rumor bird hatches.
http://allthingsvice.com/
4. Alan Greenberg, despite Pine's merciless critique of his PGP key export skills*, is one of the people who "gets it".
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/08/06/black-market-drug-site-silk-road-booming-22-million-in-annual-mostly-illegal-sales/
Overall I am disappointed in the British press. I have not yet seen a single article that either comprehends the link between between cypherpunks, anarchocapitalism and the Silk Road, or indeed any article that understands the wider picture in relation to the Drug War. In fact one of the most accurate pieces on the Silk Road was a Daily Mail piece a while back, which is a bit like saying USA Today got the drop on the New York Times.
I am also a bit disappointed in the financial press such as the Financial Times, the Economist and Wall Street Journal. None of them seem to have picked up on the cryptocurrency angle and explored it in any great depth. It has all been extremely precursory.
I think lots of people at those institutions are interested in SR, are interested in cryptocurrency, but they are hobbled some degree of inhibition that comes with habitual self censorship.
They, prompted by exposure to law enforcement, are being encouraged to think of SR as "just another website selling drugs", like the reports of IOPs selling counterfeits, when all evidence points to something much... stranger going on.
And for the record: Darknet != Dark Web != Deep Web. They all have different connotations.
* Use the <pre> tag! PGP public keys are not ornaments!
+1
Thanks for the links! I love reading articles about Silk Road. Unfortunately, most of the articles which have been written are biased and written to suit the mainstream media. They mostly criticise Silk Road and label users and sellers on Silk Road as terrible people and horrendous criminals who are selling dangerous drugs. They often have statements from the AFP (or other police agencies) saying that nobody is anonymous and users and buyers who use the site run a big risk of getting caught. It's all scare tactics because they know they cannot shut down Silk Road. Another thing I've seen is that law enforcement try and give out the message that buying drugs online is riskier than IRL and the quality will be terrible and is dangerous.
Like most buyers here, I have had a much more pleasant time buying drugs off Silk Road than IRL and the quality has been more consistent as well. Buyers leave reviews. There is no such review process for IRL drug dealers. You buy what is available and accept it for what it is.
On another note, the bitcoin rice has dropped down to $80 quite quickly.
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Also, gotta live this part:
"However, one Australian man using the site to sell drugs was arrested in February.
In a statement, local police said the arrest proved they were "one step ahead" of criminals on online networks."
Anyone who knows anything about that story knows that is a load of crap.
The man who was arrested was a total idiot. He ordered several packages of MDMA & Cocaine from the Netherlands to his own home and desite some not turning up, he kept ordering more. A total of 12 packages were seized which was 61 grams of drugs in total.
His house got raided and he told them everything about his selling on Silk Road then. They had no idea he was a seller on Silk Road until then. Although he was stupid enough to make his username the same as his car registration plates "Shadh1."
The police were not one step ahead at all. The only reason he got caught is because is an idiot and had obviously not thought any part of his plan through.
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ohh yea FY BBC !!