I suspect that history will show the vast majority of "dark web" coverage to be simply another moral panic, analogous (and in some cases almost identical) to the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic of the 1980s.[1] Happy to see an article which goes against that flow.<p>1: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse</a>
They gave numbers on Tor but not on either of the other 2 dark networks mentioned. They also don't have any size numbers; is every wordpress blog considered a "site"?<p>I'm also not completely clear on what they think is a myth; it would be helpful if excerpts of other media were included and shown to be false.<p>edit: there's a legitimate point that people confuse the deep web with the dark web, but that doesn't make either a myth.
Hype sells. A secretive back room internet where nefarious types hang out en-mass evading law enforcement is more marketable than reality.<p>As someone who's done a fair bit of 'dark web' browsing, still the most frightening things I've seen have been on 4chan.<p>And of course the govt would love for you to think that the dark web is something only for criminals.
Nice article, and I agree wholeheartedly that a large part of what is hyped up in the media as "The Dark Web" is nothing more that what used to the refereed to as "The Invisible Web".<p>I wrote this way back in 2001, and I'm not convinced that in the intervening years much has changed: <a href="http://www.alphadevx.com/a/30-The-Invisible-Web" rel="nofollow">http://www.alphadevx.com/a/30-The-Invisible-Web</a>
It would be great if journalists could stop conflating the dark web with the deep web (formerly also known as the dark web) and stir frying statistics between the two (omg! 80% of the web is the dark web and 80% of the dark web is child pornography!).
Talking about the "Dark Web" is sort of like talking about a "Criminal Underground".<p>It <i>sounds</i> like you're discussing some grotesque subterranean civilization, but it's really an awful lot of people walking around the same city you are, with crime that isn't really that organized.