Free the Internet: the Tor Project's Annual Fundraiser

Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago

pabs3

111 points

15 comments

blog.torproject.orgTechstory

controversialmixed

Debate

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Tor ProjectOnline AnonymityDark WebCensorship

Key topics

Tor Project

Online Anonymity

Dark Web

Censorship

The Tor Project is holding its annual fundraiser, with donations matched, but the discussion highlights concerns about the project's role in facilitating illicit activities while also providing essential anonymity for users.

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01Story posted
Oct 17, 2025 at 12:10 AM EDT
3 months ago
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Oct 17, 2025 at 12:50 AM EDT
39m after posting
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7 comments in 0-2h
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04Latest activity
Oct 17, 2025 at 7:31 PM EDT
3 months ago
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Discussion (15 comments)

Showing 14 comments of 15

phkx

3 months ago

2 replies

Do these donations also support the operation of nodes? If not, how to support the network (other than running a node myself)?

pabs3Author

3 months ago

1 reply

Check out this post, but its better for the health of the network for there to be a diversity of exit node providers, so its better for folks to run one themselves, especially if they are in an under-represented country, or not in the cloud etc.

https://blog.torproject.org/support-tor-network-donate-exit-...

Another group I heard about that turns donations into exit nodes:

https://nos-oignons.net/

tombert

3 months ago

2 replies

I support the Tor project but I have to admit that I am far too much of a coward to run an exit node on any network associated with me.

I know most usage of Tor isn’t illegal, but I don’t think it’s much of a secret that there is a fair amount of illegal stuff available on Tor, and I don’t want the FBI knocking on my door because my IP has been tied to some kind of kiddie porn site.

GauntletWizard

3 months ago

1 reply

Having run an exit node for a couple of years, the worst part for me was the spam associated with torrent traffic. I got several notices per week of copyright requests, which I responded to with a form letter fuck off, but it was still obnoxious because my upstream required me to do so, creating a ticket that they would not close until I had responded.

As far as dark websites, you are supporting them whenever you create any node, because any node can act as a hop for onion sites. On the balance, I think that it is worth having anonymity through Tor, but I will admit that that balance often seems a razor's edge.

tombert

3 months ago

In this particular case, it's not about supporting them, so much as I am just scared of being questioned by the FBI or something, or having my bandwidth throttled because people are stealing porn or movies.

I might still run a middle node at some point, because I do support Tor and want to help.

bauruine

3 months ago

You don't have to run an exit. A middle node is as important as an exit. And running a non-exit relay is pretty hassle free. You will get blocked by some sites, especially banks and governments unfortunately so be aware of that if you want to run one at home. There is a list for ISPs that allow Tor nodes [0] but diversity is important so if you know an ISP with generous traffic allotments that's better. Just check the TOS that they don't explicitly forbid running a relay. Or you could run a bridge to help censored users connect to Tor.

There is also some information on the community site about running and setting up all kinds of relays or bridges [1]

[0] https://community.torproject.org/relay/community-resources/g...

[1] https://community.torproject.org/relay/

bauruine

3 months ago

No the relays are run by the community the Torproject doesn't run any relays. You could donate to a relay associations if you don't want to run a relay yourself.

https://community.torproject.org/relay/community-resources/r...

nananana9

3 months ago

5 replies

I would throw some money each month at Tor if all the project did was provide a way to access the Internet anonymously, but I find it very difficult to support it, given that .onions are a thing and we all know what gets hosted there. I'll never run a node for the same reason, I don't want computers of mine to be used for CSAM distribution.

The ability to connect to the Internet anonymously is invaluable, but I consider the server obfuscation part of the project straight up evil. Which is unfortunate, they could've easily stopped at the good thing.

bigbadfeline

3 months ago

1 reply

You've got some snarky replies here but TOR policies, inadvertently or deliberately, push TOR into being exclusively a crime tool.

Hizonner

3 months ago

Like what policies? And how have they failed, since in fact Tor is not exclusively a crime tool?

But, yeah, Tor is often a crime tool.

It's a crime to be actively gay, or to support anybody in that, in a surprising amount of the world.

It's a crime to have the wrong religion, or no religion, in a roughly similar amount of the world, at least if you dare to talk about it.

It's a crime to criticize the government, or plan even the most peaceful action to undermine its policies, in an even more surprising amount of the world.

It's a crime, in a lot of places, to talk about embarrassing war crimes. It's a crime almost everywhere to talk about classified war crimes... which is awfully convenient if you're in a position to classify your embarrassing war crimes.

The Party claims it's a crime to for US citizens to tell US other citizens what US federal officers are up to. Oh, and the nonexistent "Antifa" is now a designated terrorist group, and you can absolutely expect them to try to treat planning totally peaceful protests as "material support for terrorism". Not real crimes? They're lying pieces of shit? That's nice, but the security measures you need are the same even so.

Anything that can support things that need to be supported is also going to be useful for things that are illegal, and even for things that are truly evil. That's part of the price. The technical needs are inseparable.

You don't want a world where it's totally impossible to get away with breaking laws under any circumstances whatsoever. Or at least you shouldn't.

Right now, especially, is a hell of a bad time for people on this US-dominated site to be trying to make things easier for police states.

atomic128

3 months ago

There is a wide variety of activity in the Tor hidden service ecosystem. I publish up-to-date HTTP response dumps from all the major hidden services here: https://rnsaffn.com/zg4/ Much of it, but not all of it, is illegal activity.

crtasm

3 months ago

.onions also power tools such as https://securedrop.org/ from https://freedom.press/

mnmalst

3 months ago

What's the point of having free access to the internet if there is no free internet? Seeing in what direction the world goes, access to a space where content can be distributed freely becomes more important than it ever was.

Hizonner

3 months ago

Your admirably narrow obsession has been noted with approval. Congratulations on your usefulness. We look forward to manipulating you further.

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