[tor-talk] Misogyny on tor-talk is an existential threat to Tor (was: Re: Comcast looking for Tor traffic, contacting customers to threaten termination of service.)

Ted Smith tedks at riseup.net
Mon Sep 15 16:29:41 UTC 2014


This thread is a good example of basic human rights for women being
neutrally debated on tor-talk, by men.

While this is a subject that most if not all men can discuss neutrally,
it's a much more personal topic for most women, and seeing this
"discussed" (or rather: seeing the sexual assault of women defended) on
this list can polarize people against the Tor project.

Tor as a technology and community helps women and humans far more than
it hurts them, but some hidden services I won't contribute further to
their popularity by naming make compelling news stories, and quotes from
tor-talk are easily misquoted as official statements of the Tor project.

Since Tor's infrastructure relies entirely on volunteer contributions,
this makes discussion of the morality of some hidden services an
existential threat to Tor. These discussions should not be tolerated on
this or other Tor Project mailing lists. There are plenty of other
places to have those discussions, but these lists are not an appropriate
venue.

The Tor Project could actively kill these threads, and in my opinion
should, but if they disagree, I hope that others on this list who agree
with some or all of my position help by *never responding* to such
discussions.

Please do your best to ensure that we can build a world without
surveillance, without panopticon, and with the basic human right to
privacy defended and respected by technology and people.



On Sun, 2014-09-14 at 06:27 +0200, John Pinkman wrote:
> >    As for PinkMeth, disgusting people do disgusting things all the time
> > without using Tor.  If I could burn that hidden service to the ground, I
> > would, but that doesn't solve the underlying problem in our society.
> 
> PinkMeth case only points out the underlying problem in society, which
> doesn't accept certain types of behavior. The service itself, just
> like the internet in general, only allows information to be freely
> distributed. And people make their own conclusions based on it. If
> these conclusions end up being not very likable, this isn't the fault
> of the particular service.
> 
> John

-- 
Sent from Ubuntu
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