[tor-talk] Thoughts on Tor-based social networking?

[Roger Dingledine]

On Sun, Oct 27, 2013 at 06:25:41PM -0400, Bill Cox wrote:
> I want to support free speech and other Internet freedoms, but
> unfortunately the world has lots of people who enjoy ruining it for
> everyone else.  Would it be possible to reduce the griefers by
> having a social network of Tor based secret identities?  If I could
> ding a griefer's reputation after he attacks my web site or trashes
> a meeting, that might discourage Tor-based griefing.  If I could
> specify OpenDNS-like settings for traffic I allow to be routed
> through my Tor node, I could get a lot of the illegal video sharing
> and porn off my router.  If I could specify that only people of a
> certain level of reputation can route data through my node, I'd feel
> better about the encrypted traffic I help route.
> 
> This kind of idea has probably already been discussed at length...
> what was the outcome?

Hi Bill,

Check out
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2013-August/thread.html#2558
including my response at the end
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2013-August/002575.html
for the latest version of this answer.

As for "Tor based secret identities that can accrue reputation",
check out Nymble:
http://cgi.soic.indiana.edu/~kapadia/nymble/
(and there are several other research groups with similar ideas).

But nobody has deployed a Nymble-like service in a usable way, and also
it's not clear that it would solve the types of problems you describe.

--Roger