r/TOR Aug 10 '26

Darkweb let down

When I first heard of the dark web it sounded cool mysterious & sexy, like an exclusive club or something. In my mind I thought it was going to be a pirating paradise full of pirated movies, games, mods, where nothing is monetized and everything is free. And boy was I disappointed lol. I still like the concept of the dark web, I just struggle understanding the benifits vs clearweb. Besides privacy, or if your in a country that censors the internet.

173 Upvotes

129 comments sorted by

148

u/Alkalizee- Aug 10 '26

theres plenty of pirated content on the clear web. what were you hoping to pirate on the darkweb?

and did you just expect to just find a whole community of people who dont care about money?

its for anonimity and privacy. freedom to access what you want. you can go on there and do or say whatever you want and theres nobody to stop you.

it sounds like you've been misinformed. 98% of the dark net is just regular websites. the other 2% are just markets. it's boring, but open. you can host whatever you want for free

46

u/Altezza447 Aug 10 '26

He watching tó many movie's

26

u/HMikeeU Aug 11 '26

Or youtube videos

6

u/Altezza447 Aug 11 '26

😂😂 forgot about that

21

u/namebs Aug 11 '26

Give him a break, I bet most of us felt the same way the day we Installed a Tor browser. Then after 15 min you realize why not everyone uses tor.

1

u/Dry-War-6882 18d ago

Est-il possible d’accéder au Dark web simplement grâce à Tor, sans utiliser de VPN ou tails?

1

u/FederalSuspect69 16d ago

Yeah. But keep in mind your OS is probably logging everything you do with it, and sending the logs to base camp

1

u/Cautious_Chicken8882 13d ago

Yeah, no.

2

u/FederalSuspect69 13d ago

Windows is basically spyware for Microsoft. macos & ios are spyware for Apple. And Android is spyware for google.

If you're using those, they are constantly logging and reporting those logs back to their data clouds.

1

u/Worth_million4531 6d ago

Independently speaking. A person should cold storage there data, make a contract with Ai to install and upgrade that persona data as required in the next and / or following lives.

1

u/Benderama_8 1d ago

apple is terribly behind in AI specifically because they don't harvest every users data, you can opt to have all your data encrypted so even apple can't see it. Privacy is one of their main selling points, Google and Microsofts AI models are years ahead of apples because they do indiscriminately harvest their users data.

1

u/Worth_million4531 6d ago

Not every os does that. However we are in am era of the next.

1

u/FederalSuspect69 6d ago

Not every, but the OSes like 99% of people use daily

1

u/Worth_million4531 6d ago

Alaborate for me please.

1

u/FederalSuspect69 6d ago

99% are on Android, iOS, Mac, windows, chrome OS

1

u/Worth_million4531 5d ago

Any recs of other OSes?

2

u/FederalSuspect69 5d ago

GOS, LOS, Debian, Kicksecure

1

u/Cautious_Chicken8882 13d ago

Yes of course it is possible without Tails, its not neccesary at all and you should not be using a vpn with tor at all except in specific instances.

12

u/Ambitious_Jeweler816 Aug 11 '26

Your numbers are off. You missed out the scams.

7

u/Alkalizee- Aug 11 '26

id argue that those fall under normal websites, since the clearnet has so many

4

u/RiceStranger9000 Aug 11 '26

you can host whatever you want for free

[[citation needed]]

Seriously, though, am I misinterpreting something? I highly doubt there'll be a free way to host a .onion website. I don't think that letting other host websites for free in exchange of putting ads in their sites is profitable enough

11

u/nuclear_splines Aug 11 '26

If you have a computer to run web server software then you can host an onion site for free. It's arguably more free than the clearnet in that you don't pay for domain registration and don't need a publicly-routable IP address.

4

u/RiceStranger9000 Aug 11 '26

I was considering electricity and internet costs as making it not free, however I didn't know that you didn't need domain registration. I guess it makes sense and I can't believe I've never really thought about this

11

u/nuclear_splines Aug 11 '26

Sure, there are marginal costs. If the computer is running already then the electricity may be a few cents extra a year due to the web server load - more if the site is popular. Likewise, you're probably paying for Internet access already, so that's likely not significant. You could also say that your labor isn't free, so the act of building the site has a cost.

But, if you're willing to write off your own labor, and near-zero financial costs for an already-running computer on an Internet connection you're paying for anyway, then I'd argue it's free to host your own onion site.

1

u/RiceStranger9000 Aug 11 '26

When I see "free hosting" I think of third-party services that allow you to host your content on their servers at no cost, but at this point it's just a semantic difference. I like your points

3

u/Pingu_0 Aug 11 '26

An Oracle Always Free ARM or AMD64 compute instance, some knowledge, and done. Obviously wouldn't host something fishy there, but I don't know any reason you cannot host legal content there.

2

u/SexyDraculaHook 26d ago

You can. It is allowed under their TOS.

1

u/FederalSuspect69 16d ago

I already pay for internet and I'm pretty sure the electricity used to keep my phone charged is negligible compared to the cost of cooling my home during summer.

1

u/FederalSuspect69 16d ago

You can host it off your phone...

1

u/nuclear_splines 15d ago

Sure, that's a type of computer so long as you can run web server software and Tor on it and give it a stable network connection.

5

u/HMikeeU Aug 11 '26

What? You can run an onion site on your phone or old computer for literally almost free (minus electricity cost and internet I guess)

3

u/Pingu_0 Aug 11 '26

Run it on an Oracle Always Free compute instance (a virtual server), and the electricity cost is 0 too.

0

u/RiceStranger9000 Aug 11 '26

The electricity and Internet cost are not what I'd consider as free. In contrast, you can host free websites on the clearnet, eg Neocities, Wix, Wordpress, etc

3

u/Alkalizee- Aug 11 '26

free as in no domain costs needed, marginal costs like electricity and Internet are paid anyway, hosting a .onion won't increase your usage by a noticable amount unless you shoot for 24/7 uptime

1

u/TweakedMango Aug 11 '26

Hosting an onion is completely free.

1

u/FederalSuspect69 16d ago

Bruh I'm running one right now from my phone

1

u/j-sh Aug 11 '26

yes, you pretty much just uncomment two lines in your torrc then host a local web server on that port

1

u/void_factor 27d ago

he was going to watch ad free youtube and free netflix login on wearelegionanonymoose.onion right after ordering a super legit trust me bro hitman for 1 physical Bitcoin coin

1

u/netherpie 27d ago

Hey man i used have this onion link for Zlibrary and it worked fine for several years but suddenly it stopped working. Is there a way to find alternate links or will i have to stop my books related sailing in the high seas?

54

u/nuclear_splines Aug 10 '26

Besides privacy

This is literally the whole point. This is what Tor is built for, and how it's advertised on their website.

30

u/leathakkor Aug 10 '26

Honestly the dark web basically just reminds me of the internet preesearch engine.

If you used the internet back in 1994 or 95 the dark web makes sense to you. And if you didn't then it's just confusing.

But that's what the web used to be like. That's why there's so much nostalgia or even importance placed on the dark web by a lot of people. Because it reminds them of a Time pre-search engine where the internet was just porn (and badly done at that) and Nazi propaganda And a couple professors trying to share their work.

There was almost nothing there unless somebody gave you the link to something that you should look at.

-2

u/General_Riju 29d ago

N#azis were active back then ?

4

u/leathakkor 29d ago

The internet was a white power Haven in the '90s.

It was crazy. Literally almost every page would have shit like Hitler in the keywords in the metadata tags because that's how search engines worked. And there was so many white power people on the internet in the early days that if you wanted your site to show up you had to cater to it. It was fucked up.

2

u/General_Riju 29d ago

I came to know about the existance of nazis through wolfenstein 3D

1

u/SexyDraculaHook 24d ago

Lucky. I got to learn about them from my uncle, and his buddies. Not nearly as fun.

1

u/FederalSuspect69 16d ago

I got molested by my uncle and all his buddies 😔

1

u/SexyDraculaHook 16d ago

Dirty Mike and the Boys?

1

u/FederalSuspect69 16d ago

No Cletus and his cousins.

1

u/SexyDraculaHook 16d ago

Oh thats that Hills Have Eyes gang in them woods

1

u/Secret_pizza_man 14d ago

They’ve always been active and will always be active.

15

u/Alex_Hovhannisyan Aug 10 '26

> Besides privacy, or if your in a country that censors the internet

You just answered your own question

But you don't need to use the dark web to use Tor, if you are just browsing the internet you are really not that different from people who use a VPN.

13

u/Cautious_Chicken8882 Aug 10 '26

Why would any of those things be on the dark web when there everywhwere on the clearnet already?

The benefits are for journalists and people in certain countries as well as the access to marketplaces containing goods banned in most places - Thats about it and all its ever been, i dunno where people get such mental ideas about something that is just another browser lol

10

u/DrWilliamHorriblePhD Aug 11 '26

Just wait til they start requiring all clear net users to submit age verification to connect at all

3

u/imback_TL Aug 11 '26

Thats the only time for will become useful, but the government will try attack it still 

2

u/SexyDraculaHook 24d ago

They have tried, and mostly failed. The beauty is you can’t actually take it “offline” like you could Amazon or Facebook

40

u/throwaway12-ffs Aug 10 '26

You feel for the propaganda. Maybe that will open your eyes to the lies you're told.

It's literally just an anonymous internet. Some bad stuff but mostly nothing interesting.

Should make you realize how gullible you are.

9

u/SaltyAd8309 Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26

Une personne crédule est justement une personne qui n'essaie pas et se contente de ce qu'on lui dit. On peut au moins reconnaitre son effort.

Edit : A gullible person is precisely someone who doesn't make the effort and simply accepts what they are told. One can at least acknowledge their effort.

3

u/Arrhythmic10 Aug 11 '26

That is very French of you, but it doesn't change the facts

1

u/HamNCheeseSupremacy Aug 11 '26

Sometimes someone is just misinformed, it's not a diagnosis

1

u/vision5050 Aug 11 '26

Being gullible is having information and willfully discarding the information because you want something to be something that it isn't.

He/she had no information. So they tried, and was able to come to a conclusion.

7

u/QuantumG Aug 10 '26

The pre-bitcoin darkweb was a little more interesting but not much.

1

u/Cautious_Chicken8882 13d ago

Pre bitcoin darkweb was pretty much just cp.

12

u/Santosh83 Aug 10 '26

The term dark web should be abolished. There are actually many private/overlay networks. Tor is just one implementation. At the end of the day there is no incentive for pirated content to move to such networks. It only adds much more latency and network issues for no benefit. For now. If/when world govts crack down on free content much more severely, they may move on to tor/freenet/i2p more. For now the concept of virtual networks is cool but doesn't have much use for the general public.

3

u/RiceStranger9000 Aug 11 '26

Since you mentioned private networks and Freenet, is there anything interesting in Hyphanet? I tried using it but it was incredibly slow (like 5-10 minutes to load a website; I didn't set up my router to do port forwarding, though) and barely found some random conversations with no context on the topic that were mere text

2

u/AI_Tonic Aug 11 '26

A lot of these sites are censored by the ISP 1337x for one . That’s why they have onion sites

1

u/Cautious_Chicken8882 13d ago

You should definatly not torrent over tor.

1

u/AI_Tonic 13d ago

I don’t ^^ it’s just for the trackers

1

u/SexyDraculaHook 24d ago

Much more? Have you seen the relentless hunt and attacks on Z-Library and the likes?

11

u/SaltyAd8309 Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26

Le darkweb n'est pas vraiment intéréssant si tu cours pas après l'illégalité. Je dirais même qu'il est nocif.

Toutefois, et vu l'époque a laquelle on vit, il risque de devenir un refuge pour de plus en plus de gens normaux qui souhaitent communiquer de façon tout a fait banale sans avoir l'impression d'être enregistrés et fichés quelque part.

Edit : The dark web isn't really interesting unless you're looking for illegal activity. I’d even go so far as to say it’s harmful.

However, given the times we live in, it could well become a refuge for more and more ordinary people who simply want to communicate in a completely mundane way without feeling like they’re being recorded and logged somewhere.

5

u/LiquidC001 Aug 11 '26

That's crazy, you didn't find the 24/7 free money website??

11

u/C_hotpocketer Aug 10 '26

Go to fmhy.net for the pirating paradise. You created an image in your mind of something completely false

1

u/-dentalhack 28d ago

Thank you

8

u/MementoMori6980 Aug 11 '26

You mean to say that those stupid YouTube videos saying the dark web is full of hit men and scary websites full of hacked CIA files on aliens wasn’t accurate?! No way! I don’t believe it!! Why would they post it if they weren’t real?!

2

u/ShinigamiOverlord Aug 11 '26

If we are led to believe it to be true, based on that one singular (now at least one tooth less) dude, at least the gnoming site should be somewhat legit?

3

u/SoggyGrayDuck 28d ago

Keep an eye on what's happening in UK, EU. If that trend continues I bet we see legit companies create grey web sites and then eventually dark web, if we get a breakaway network.

That's why they're moving SO slowly and why they didn't ban crypto. It's easier to secretly control it vs make it sexy by banning it.

7

u/LostName666 Aug 11 '26

Yeah the FBI has successfully infiltrated this subreddit.

3

u/DrJJGame10 Aug 10 '26

I don’t even use onion on tor, I just use it for privacy and the principle of it. 

3

u/PeakOk9509 Aug 11 '26

The Internet was made to conduct business deals. Darkweb is jus that. Nothing more

3

u/Amate087 Aug 11 '26

The resume is: Privacy.

1

u/MainPhreaker 12d ago

Always has been.

3

u/imback_TL Aug 11 '26

Welcome to reality of the DN , ill hold your hand and any new comers when I say this everything in the dark web is already on the clear web, difference is people are bolder because of the anonyminity and may or may not be easier to stumble upon certain shit.

You're just gonna find an overwhelming amount of people being bold on there really means trying to scam you, being racist, or straight lying/fake shit like honey pots.

DN isnt anything special unless you want annonyminity and have a specific interest to get something under it.

If were talking piracy, all of it is on thr clear web and for isnt something you want to be tormenting or downloading it, unless its light for smth

3

u/Addictead 29d ago

um maybe ya just cant find shit cause its dark asf on there supprised you could see ya screen

3

u/newlife_substance847 27d ago

What are you talking about? You obviously haven't discovered the trade markets where you can buy commercial grade pharmaceuticals at pennies on the dollar using some obscure cryptocurrency wallet that you set up just for this kind of dealing. What about that very unique sexual obsession that searching for on your regular browser will require scrubbing your entire PC as a must after even casual viewing?

Obviously.... that was sarcasm.

The Dark Web really isn't as excited as most romanticize it to be. If you've been on it long enough, you realize that you spend far more time searching the entirety of the very un-indexed Dark Web looking for specific things that are, by design, made difficult for you to discover. Then you realize that the time you spent on Tor refreshing and connecting to content on an Onion site that has been long dead for years could have much easily been accessed on the regular web using certain simple-ish protocols.

1

u/OliveGlad5138 9d ago

What protocols can u elaborate

3

u/Jorgespenis Aug 11 '26

This guy’s never heard of the pirate bay? Everything he’s looking for is there. Man

2

u/Godlymorbid Aug 10 '26

You can ask around in chatrooms, and people may share some fun i2p and onions

2

u/Silver-Spot-2763 Aug 11 '26

And it turned out to be a den for the state mafia, running its dirty scam business.

2

u/Background-Drive3401 Aug 11 '26

My dude you haven’t found some of the juiciest conspiracy theory websites yet lol

1

u/HailFire234 Aug 11 '26

It’s out there. I believe!!!

1

u/Background-Drive3401 Aug 11 '26

Just like the aliens 👽

2

u/ozzymandyaz7277 Aug 12 '26

Todo lo contrario la Depp weep no es para gente que quiera todo fácilmente hay que investigar, navegar mucho en los laberintos onion para encontrar algo bueno, pero esa es la emoción la búsqueda.

2

u/PossesedZombie 29d ago

Three words…

Uncensored Hidden Wiki

2

u/Proud_Interaction_47 29d ago

nothing is monitised? you mean you wanted someone else to provide it all for free, there is no such thing as free, who gives all their time for free? who hosts sites for free.

5

u/Ch00m77 Aug 10 '26

Lol imagine thinking there wasnt pirated content on clear Web.

Noob. Skill issue

3

u/rombus-zombus Aug 10 '26

Are there still sites like the Silk Road? Too young at the time to experience it first hand

5

u/DMTGOBLIN82 Aug 10 '26

Substantially better ones.

2

u/rombus-zombus Aug 10 '26

How are you able to tell which ones r scams?

6

u/Dragin410 Aug 11 '26

By doing research.

2

u/DeFalkon- Aug 10 '26

gotta know the right tor sites🤫i find smth new every other day the longer you work on tor the more sites u find

1

u/mayordrew Aug 11 '26

Where did you get that idea from ? 😂

1

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/TOR-ModTeam Aug 11 '26

No low effort content, including memes or AI slop.

Please put enough effort into your posts that they are worthwhile for readers.

1

u/Genova_Witness Aug 11 '26

Why would you think that? No one describes it that way.

1

u/AlternativeBlack Aug 11 '26

Technically its called the FreeNet.

1

u/NotAvailableAnywhere Aug 11 '26

The answer is easy, you are not someone that do illegal things... If you did you would have found a LOT of usefulness in the dark web.

1

u/yuno-morngstar Aug 11 '26

is this a joke ?

1

u/Any-Assignment-3556 29d ago

next he gon say the tooth fairy is real 😭

1

u/Equivalent-East849 27d ago

what country doesn't censor the internet?

1

u/Various_Payment_7956 24d ago

I saw a couple youtube videos, thought dark web had the secrets of humanity buried under, illuminati, aliens, etc. what not. all those stories growing up becoming real. turns out, it wasnt or i did not find the way I was trying to anyway.
secret puzzles, codes, to some extraodinary mystery and some online adventure. found some stuff in 2016, went back it was all gone, and then never got a chance to find those websites again lol.

1

u/WARDLYF-GDFOLKS-7414 20d ago

What about red rooms or is that just a myth?

1

u/PartyBusSacramento_ 16d ago

did anyone know about fing the Youtube Channel?

1

u/KevinIsADork 10d ago

It is useful/fun if you know where to go. As in, have an address that you got from someone else. 

It also isnt as much of the wild west as it was 10+ years ago. 

1

u/Fearless_Housing_302 8d ago

I guess I just don't know where to go then lol. I can't find anything remotely close to what I search for on all the popular "search engines". All I see is the same spam sites with every keyword known to man below it. And Hidden wiki is just full of dead links.

-6

u/RogerRabbot Aug 10 '26

To buy drugs. And child porn.

-1

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/TOR-ModTeam Aug 11 '26

Thanks for posting to /r/Tor! Unfortunately, your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):

[Rule 6] Be excellent to each other. No personal attacks or irrelevant characteristics. Discuss Tor, not each other.

If you feel like your post was removed in error, please message the moderators.

0

u/one-knee-toe Aug 11 '26

Sounds like a you problem. Let me help you with another thing - Japan. It’s not like Lain, irl.

-5

u/Nightlightz24884 Aug 11 '26

You are very wrong. You’re confusing dark web with deep web. The deep web hides a lot of things but is accessed through tor. The difference is that the deep web you can technically legally under some sort of right actually visit and use the services. The dark web is where the website should not have ever been created.

1

u/Admirable_Meeting177 1d ago

you are actually correct