
A Dark Web Version of Wikipedia - hbcondo714
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7x4g4b/theres-now-a-dark-web-version-of-wikipedia-tor-alec-muffett
======
ikeboy
>That means your traffic never leaves the safely encrypted confines of Tor,
keeping it hidden.

Yeah nope. He says it took a half hour to set up, that means it's not using a
wiki dump, but fetching it live. That means the traffic is going from his
server to wikimedia's servers, same as if you used tor to visit Wikipedia
directly.

If wikimedia set this up themselves, it could be true, but this clearly isn't
and can't terminate without touching clearnet.

Never trust the news, even when they cite sources and sound like they know
what they're talking about.

~~~
dzdt
So this is at best exactly as secure as visiting wikipedia directly in a TOR
browser? TOR itself operates by routing packets through a hidden layer so that
the exit node which talks to the end site doesn't know who is the requestor,
just a hidden node address to send data back to. Here he is essentially
operating an exit node that only talks to wikipedia.

~~~
jacobush
With aggressive caching it could generate less traffic to wikipedia. So
something like it could be marginally useful, at least for _reading_
wikipedia.

------
amingilani
Yesterday the government in Pakistan banned Facebook and Twitter while it
cracked down on religious protesters. The facebook hidden service [1] has been
wonderful for me! I wish more companies opened up hidden services.

[1]: [https://facebookcorewwwi.onion](https://facebookcorewwwi.onion)

~~~
WillyOnWheels
Wait until Pakistan figures out how to ban Tor, like China does.

------
matt_wulfeck
It’s such a Silicone Valley-centric idea to think behind every social problem
is some technical solution. Technical issues aside, a tor-enabled Wikipedia is
going to do nothing to help people living under murderous, totalitarian
regimes.

You want to help people living in Syria? How about you give them some of your
money. A little bit of your own excess will go a lot farther than these half-
baked technical “solutions”.

~~~
time4hn
This project is about helping Wikipedia, which is an existing technical
project. I don't see anything in his tweets that makes it sound like he's
trying to solve some deep social issue.

------
WillyOnWheels
I'm not sure why this is necessary.

Wikipedia has very strong user privacy policies.

