(C) Alec Muffett's DropSafe blog.
Author Name: Alec Muffett
This story was originally published on allecmuffett.com. [1]
License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.[2]


censorship – Dropsafe

2024-04

This is a topic that I keep having to re-explain every few years, so here’s previous attempt in a slightly different context, re: the story of how a “OH MY GOD IT’S CENSORSHIP” classifier-burp that blocked Tor led directly to Facebook’s “joining the dark web”:

To go back through my own history at Facebook Engineering, the turning point was this Reddit post from June 2013:

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1gkxje/facebook_blocks_logins_from_tor_browser_putting/

…where one of Facebook’s IP reputation systems burped after eating some new config software, and blocked a large number of Tor exit nodes.

The civil society & reddit communities started commenting at speed, flaming Facebook for “censorship”; and I had to argue against my own management, some of whom suggested “why not just block Tor totally?” – because it apparently caused nothing but vitriol and bad headlines.

I said “Give me a chance” and pinged Runa Sandvik (who was then at Tor) asking her on behalf of Tor to explain the situation to the world:

https://blog.torproject.org/facebook-and-tor

quote> A number of users have noticed that Facebook is blocking connections from the Tor network. Facebook is not blocking Tor deliberately. However, a high volume of malicious activity across Tor exit nodes triggered Facebook’s site integrity systems which are designed to protect people who use the service. Tor and Facebook are working together to find a resolution.

…and the anger faded. People were nonplussed: Facebook had merely goofed. Facebook was working with Tor to “fix things”. As I think one commenter put it: “What do I do with this pitchfork, now?”

The important thing is what happened next:

This single event – proving that it was possible to get constructive assistance from Tor – was enough to provide me traction for the concept of building a Facebook onion site; I started building it 1 year later (needed to learn some stuff, first) and launched it 3 months after that.

It’s no coincidence that Runa subsequently helped with testing & launching facebookcorewwwi, nor that three years later the New York Times launched its own onion site.
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[1] URL: https://alecmuffett.com/article/tag/censorship
[2] URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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