Clearing the darkness around the web
Living up to what we think 'good' is easy than defining what really 'good' is. If we start to define and think about good all the conflicting theories pop up in our head which would make us skeptical about the moral wall that we have erected. In the community that I am living, eating a cow is seen as unethical and inhuman. But the same cow is a daily delicacy in many western countries. If you ask the question, is it ethical or is it good to eat an animal(cow)? The answers would vary wildly depending on communities. Then how can we define good? Isn't it relative?
This was what Ross Ulbricht would've thought when he allegedly created silk road. His prime theory about a political system or a cultural system is that people have the will to do what they like and the intervention of government should be as less as Google's effort in making Google plus as a viable social platform. His values were upon the assumption that self(free will) is greater than social(restrictions kept by societies to get everyone onto a safe playground). Ross Ulbricht was the creator and the one who captained the website all through its growth and demise called 'silk road'. This is an e-commerce website which brings sellers and buyers together. All of it sounds like a good start-up idea( if established 10 years ago) but there is a catch. As I've stated before Ross Ulbricht was influenced by libertarian ideas, so much so that he left his job and put the thought into building a site that made drug dealer's life viciously easy. This kind of site where people sell drugs and other seemingly nefarious items should be tightly secure and anonymous. This is where the dark web comes into action spreading its branches to protect the identities of people from the rain of justice.
This dark web on its own is one of the very interesting topics that we can talk about all day but there is this other thing called Deep web. Before we talk about dark web let's have a little discussion on the Internet. The Internet, as we know it, is not just about YouTube, social sites, memes, and search. It is way more than that and the data, nearly 295 billion Gigabytes, that it holds is so enormous that if we assume that the data (bytes) is given as distance in meters then it takes the fastest traveler, of course, light, approximately 33,481 years to cover the whole data. But the question is, whether everything is available to everyone? The answer simply is a hard NO. The Internet can be segregated roughly into three kinds with respect to availability. The 'regular internet' which can be seen by anyone and everyone. The 'Deep Web' which needs access or some sort of permission. The 'Dark Web' which needs much more than permission(Including moral).
The above famous picture rightly shows you what the general internet looks like. This is where you find all the general searches, meaningless memes (sometimes good ones too, but why be that positive).
The extended picture here shows the deep web, deeper stuff like the emails that a spammer writes to you. If you are me then the emails I cordially write back to spammers(everybody disheartens the spammer who asks for our bank details by not giving any, I feel pity for them and write a Hi sometimes)*. There are other things like bank details and other sensitive information, only accessible by us, tucked in rather relatively safely in the deep web.
This picture adds upon the last piece of the internet called Dark Web. Let me explain this with a highly unusual example. Let us consider a hotel. The corridors, hallways, reception area, and terrace are available for all the occupants. This can be considered as the general internet serving for searches and stuff. Then there are hotel rooms and lockers specific to users and the property available inside is only available to the particular occupant with the key. These rooms can be called as deep web as the access is limited and private. Here the key can be called as the URL and login information. This site (thoughtfulassassin.blogspot.com) is more or less actually in the deep web as we didn't provide any metadata required for indexing. Then, let's say, the hotel people provide us with these exclusive hi-tech glasses which when put on will show you hidden doors on the wall including all the normal places in the hotel. These hi-tech glasses are the ultimatum which provides access to all the websites provided you have URLs and the access to browse that particular website. These hi-tech glasses I am talking about can be constituted as the special browser (generally TOR).
Okay, so how did they achieve this difference? All the websites that are visible on the general searches and general internet have something in common called indexing. Indexing for a website is the process similar to the indexing of different words in a book where the number beside the word in an index page suggests the page where the word appears. Similar to this, each website has keywords(that should be given by the website provider as metadata) that are used as an index by the search engine to find the particular website.
This indexing doesn't have to happen on all the pages because some pages are user specific and have no need to be shown to all the people. This is where the deep web comes into the picture. Here different web pages are user specific and can be seen by people with unique authorization. This kind of data is nearly 96% of the internet. When it comes to the dark web it needs a special browser and different kind of URL domain and URL routing like .onion and onion routing respectively. This is where the user is most secure as the browser (TOR browser) the user uses to access the dark web pages doesn't allow tracing the users IP address. As the Dark web access is considered secure, we can find many websites that can be considered questionable, borderline Illegal and some literally lethal.
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| Image from: https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/internet/dark-web-3593569/ |
As now we know what dark web really is, Can we really say that people like Ross Ulbricht venturing into this soup any "GOOD". Ross Ulbricht considered himself above the law and started the Amazon of illegal marketing. He thought Everyone should have the Right to decide what they want to do, which is not a bad thing as it is. But, for us to live in a social community it is required that we follow some social norms which allow the community to stay as a community and to thrive, succeed as humanity. He did this all using the dark web. Dark web being anonymous provided Ross with the opportunity to help him build an empire a little securely for a brief time. I say it is secure for a brief time because the site was taken down and the illegal activities were stopped less than 3 years after the start of the Silk Road. As I've said before "good" is relative, being good for one is not the same for others. Ulbricht thought that people acting on their own will do good and make people better off. Maybe his school of thought isn't that bad but the way he executed it isn't right because it doesn't synchronize with the community's consensus of what is good.
-Ias Luhar
More on the introduced but skimmed topics like Ross Ulbricht, silk road and dark web on the later blogs. The next blog that treads on these lines would be a continuation of this blog. Thanks for reading.
It would be much appreciated if you check out our other write-ups too
The Living dead - Here
The Ungodly Belief - Here
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