Reduce hops when privacy level allows to save Tor network bandwidth

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>
> My question is: do you really think it would help? If people are using
> Tor inappropriately (meaning they could get what they want with a
> simple anonymous proxy), what are the chances they're going to have it
> configured appropriately to reduce the bandwidth they use?
>

I don't want to weigh in on the more substantive issues here, but I do think
that this specific question can be answered without too much difficulty.

For those who require a lower level of anonymity than that which Tor
provides, but choose to use Tor anyway, Tor's poor performance is probably a
major complaint. If they had the opportunity to change a setting from 'high
security' to `one-hop proxy', and got better performance from the latter, I
think that many of this group would change that setting. This would make Tor
more useful to them, and decrease the network load per person in this group.

This is not to say that more use wouldn't immediately crop up to fill this
gap, nor that more `one hop' users wouldn't start using Tor likewise. I
don't want to say whether building one-hop functionality is a good idea, but
I certainly think that some people would use it.
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