Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 28052815

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Computers in Human Behavior

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh

A review of the available content on Tor hidden services: The case

against further development
Clement Guitton
Department of War Studies, Kings College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Available online 14 August 2013
Keywords:
Anonymity
Tor
Hidden services
Unethical content
Censorship

a b s t r a c t
Deindividuation theory informs us that anonymity is likely to beget unethical or violent behavior. Since
2002, Tor has implemented hidden services that allow users to host platforms anonymously and these
have behaved accordingly with deindividuation theory: the services are used mostly for unethical content. This article realizes the rst systematic analysis of users behavior on Tor hidden services. After classifying 1171 services into 23 categories, and carrying out a content analysis of 2165 posts, the article
concludes that unethical content is quantitatively and qualitatively more preponderant than ethical content. The advantages of anonymity to store and access this ethical content do not balance the negative
impacts caused by the unethical content. Freedom of expression and the lack of censorship, if theoretically praiseworthy, are overshadowed by what users have done with it: using Tor hidden services in
unethical ways. Unethical content is undesirable by its very nature of affecting people negatively, which
should lead us to reconsider the development of the Tor hidden services. For users simply wishing to stay
anonymous and to act ethically, the use of Tor and of web services located in countries with a morally
balanced legal system are sufcient. The support for the further development of Tor hidden services
should hence stop, which would not hinder the functioning of Tor as an anonymity provider to those
needing it.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
In June 2007, Tariq Biasi, 23, blogged criticisms of the Syrian
policy on the use of their intelligence services. He argued that Syrian intelligence authorities focused on domestic spying instead of
focusing more appropriately on foreign military sources (Spitzer,
2009). Not long later, the Syrian intelligence services arrested
and questioned him. They charged him 6 months following his arrest with undermining national sentiment and publishing false
information (Spitzer, 2009). A year after his arrest, in May 2008,
a court sentenced him to 3 years in prison. The case of Tariq Biasi
is not uncommon, and is a reality for many activists who put their
life in jeopardy by criticizing the authorities of the country they
live in. For activists like Biasi, remaining anonymous can be a matter of avoiding life-threateningconsequences. Furthermore, for
many activists, remaining anonymous is not enough; they also
need to ensure that their writings will not be suppressed by
authoritarian regimes. For instance, in 2010, while Tunisians, Libyans, and Egyptians were successfully toppling their authoritarian
regimes, they were circumventing censorship in their own coun-

Tel.: +44 (0)74 3530 4640.

E-mail address: clement.guitton@kcl.ac.uk
0747-5632/$ - see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.07.031

tries by posting on foreign blogs or foreign platforms (Park et al.,

2011; Youmans & York, 2012).
To circumvent censorship, bloggers bypassed lters using
techniques linked with being anonymous online: a proxy, a secure
virtual private network solution, or Tor. Tor, a software which provides non-traceable and anonymous connections, emerged in 2001
from the US government-funded Onion Routing project. The
project is well funded ($1.3 million in 2010) with funds from,
among others, advocates of free speech such as the International
Broadcasting Bureau and Internews Network (Tor Project, 2011).
Tor, since 2002, also implements hidden services. Like the web
they also allow users to browse pages. But Tor hidden services
are quite particular and also different from the web: the servers
hosting the content are not locatable, removing all prospects of
censorship, and the services guarantee its users anonymity (Dingledine, Mathewson, & Syverson,2004). Tor hidden services are
separate from the software Tor, and Tor can function very well
without Tor hidden services. Tor ensures that an Internet user will
remain anonymous; Tor hidden services are on the other hand
another type of web, with different protocols, protecting the host
of content. Tor hidden services are part of the so-called deep
web, or dark web. Both terms refer to any part of the web not
indexed by any search engine on the web. It is therefore difcult
to have an overview of the content available on Tor hidden

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C. Guitton / Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 28052815

services, which can be advantageous if one does not seek to broadcast their ideas to a large public audience, but which also constitutes a hindrance for researchers.
Following Tors technical efforts to offer solutions to protect a
users anonymity and to circumvent state censorship, it is fair to
ask: What do users do with their anonymity on hidden services?
What type of content do users generate? How do they behave on
Tor hidden services?
No previous studies have looked systematically at the content
available on the Tor hidden services. Opponents to unrestrained
free speech often invoke the threats to national security and to
the weakest members of society that a complete censor free society represents (Gelber, 2002; Stone, 2009). On the web, threats
to individuals and unethical behaviors already take place. For instance slander damaging peoples reputation and disturbing their
mental equanimity. But victims can at least attempt legal actions
as a remedy to remove this damaging content (Levmore & Nussbaum, 2010). With hidden services, this is not possible. In this article, looking at the behavior of individuals acting under the
condition of anonymity reveals what users have done with this
anonymity. Unfortunately, the study of 1171 sites, and a content
analysis of 2165 posts showthat unethical content and behaviors
overshadow ethical ones, quantitatively but also qualitatively.
The viciousness of stances and content dwarf the low benecial
impact that hidden services have.
This article is divided into four parts. Firstly, the article provides
a short literature review that supports the elaboration of two
hypotheses the research addresses: content on Tor hidden services
relates to challenging the State authority in order to establish a
democratic order; and, content on Tor hidden services challenges
ethics. Secondly, the methodology is explained. Thirdly, the article
presents the results of the research in detail. And fourthly, the article delves into a discussion of the implications of the results for Tor
hidden services.
2. Research context and two hypotheses
Hidden services differ from the web technically speaking in two
ways: they cannot be shutdown hence preventing censorship, and
they guarantee the complete anonymity of the users of the services, unlike the web, as the users use Tor to access the services.
On the web, anonymity, understood as the noncoordinatability
of traits (Wallace, 1999), is supercial. A trait can be a persons facial features, their name, or their IP address. When these traits are
linked together, a person can be recognized and is therefore no
longer anonymous. Various agents (e.g. law enforcement agencies
and Internet service providers) have the possibility to coordinate an
IP address to a persons identity. When using Tor, this possibility
does not exist. It is not possible to know a users IP address.
Furthermore, hidden services evade censorship at two different
levels. A site on the web has at least two features: the IP address of
the server, and the name associated with the IP address. A law
enforcement agency wishing to ban or enforce the ban of certain
online content can try to bring either of these features down. For
the former, the law enforcement agency can rst ban the IP address
at the level of the Internet service provider. It can also use the IP
address to localise the server, and disconnect it or remove the content directly from the server if located within its jurisdiction. For
the name associated with the IP address, law enforcement agencies
can, again if it is located under its jurisdiction, delete the entry in
the authoritative Domain Name Server that a user needs to contact
to obtain the match between the name and the IP address. The
architecture of the web is hence prone to censorship and hidden
services remove these two weaknesses. In Torhidden services,
the server hosting the content gives his name generated from its
public key to introduction points. These points do not know either

the IP of the server or its location, but know the circuit that links to
the server. When someone requests the website, the request goes
rst to a distributed hash table that contains the location (still by
circuit rather than by real IP) of the introduction points. The query
is then re-routed towards the server. Hidden services hence can
prevent anyone from censoring content on them, as it is impossible
to know under which jurisdiction the service hosting the service is
located. On Tor hidden services, anonymity also means that it is
not possible to nd the administrator of the service in contrast to
the web.
These technical differences between the web and Tor hidden
services are critical for a few people. The arrest of the Syrian blogger Tariq Biasi presented in the introduction epitomized what writers and leaders of subversive movements require: an environment
free of censorship and where the authors cannot be easily identied if they are located in a country where their writings can put
them into jeopardy. Tor hidden services offer such an environment.
The rst of two hypotheses considered is therefore positive in considering what the development of Tor hidden services brings to
society:
H1. Content on hidden services relates to challenging the State
authority in order to establish a democratic order.
If the rst hypothesis H1 is valid, it will form a strong argument
to justify the praiseworthiness of the use of Tor hidden services.
Challenging the States decision without fearing repression is an
essential component of democracy, and Tor hidden services would
support this purpose. But anonymity, as implemented by Tor hidden services, may further nurture less praiseworthy sentiments
within individuals, leading to content of a completely different
nature.
Anonymity has two consequences. The rst one is to minimize
accountability (Wallace, 1999). The second one, less trivial, is to
protect informational privacy. Privacy has an inherent value that
serves to remove pressure to conform, to be free from censure
and ridicule, to promote autonomy and to promote human relations (Gavison, 1980). People are more likely to conform and to
censor themselves when under the watch of others. But the promotion of non-conformity can also result in expressions of values
undermining and threatening the weakest members of societies,
with hate speech or child pornography surging up on networks.
The legal expert Ruth Gavison notes that criminals and con artists
need this privacy for their offenses (Gavison, 1980). What are the
effects of ensuring the anonymity of usersand non-censurability
of material on hidden services?
We have no account of the effects of anonymity on the hidden
web or of users behaviors. On the other hand, accounts exist in the
eld of psychology of the effects of anonymity on self-interested
unethical behavior in laboratory conditions (Nogami, 2009). An
unethical behavior is a behavior affecting another individual negatively in their interests, welfare or expectations of others, but it
does not have to affect the instigator of the behavior positively
(Brass, Buttereld, & Skaggs, 1998, p. 32). A self-interested unethical behavior is on the other hand carried out for the sole purpose
of affecting the actor positively in his own interests. In one experiment, the researcher Tatsuya Nagomi tested self-interested unethical behavior with regards to money. She asked four groups of
students to ip a coin twice and away from her gaze and to come
back totell her the result. She told the rst group of students that
their results would be identiable; the second that they would
be identiable and that they would have a reward if they obtained
two times tails; the third group that their results would be anonymous; and the fourth one that their results would be anonymous
and that they would receive a reward if they obtained two times
tails. Both groups that were not identiable obtained a much

C. Guitton / Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 28052815

higher number of two times tails than the two identiable ones,
regardless of the reward (17 percentage points higher in average).
She concluded that anonymity fosters self-interested unethical
behavior.
The experiment empirically demonstrated what the philosopher Plato had imagined 24 centuries earlier with the rings of
Gyges. He imagined a ring that can make a person invisible. One
such ring is given to a just person, and another to an unjust person. He writes:
No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when
he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into
houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release
from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God
among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions
of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point
(Plato, 2000, p. 34).

2807

without having law enforcement agencies willing to spend many

resources to try to nd the individuals for a matter that would fall
in any case within the remit of the First Amendment on the protection of free speech. Similarly, users of hidden services, due to the
still limited outreach of the Tor hidden services outside technological savvy circles, must be well aware of the technological limitations faced by law enforcement agencies. Ofcials cannot nd the
location of content to try to remove it, and users can enjoy complete anonymity. These two aspects count towards their assessment of their own accountability, bringing down their level of
moral responsibility for behaving ethically.
Theory, experiments on anonymity carried out outside the web,
and observations of behaviors on the web leads to the second, less
positive hypothesis, regarding the value of hidden services to
society:
H2. Content of hidden services challenges ethics.

For instance, possible self-interested unethical behavior on the

hidden web includes scamming users. But there are also unethical
behaviors that are not self-interested, such as hate speech.
Still in laboratory conditions, the psychologist Philip Zimbardo
showed that anonymous individuals were more likely to give electric shocks, and with higher voltages, to other participants than the
ones who were not anonymous (Zimbardo, 1969). He explains the
behavior within deindividuation theory, a theory describing the
psychological state of the loss of inner restraint when individuals
do not see others as individuals (Silke, 2003, p. 493). This loss of restraint is more likely to happen with anonymity, group presence
and physical arousal. The resulting behavior is also more likely to
be violent than when not anonymous and alone. Further, the psychologist John Suler calls the removal of self-censorship online disinhibition, and categories behaviors into toxic or benign
disinhibition (Suler, 2004, p.321). Toxic disinhibition contrasts
with benign disinhibition, where an individual tries to better
understand himself by writing about his own interpersonal and
intrapsychic problems (Suler, 2004, p. 321). Both types of behaviors can happen on hidden services, and the question is therefore
to know if one type is more prevailing than the other.
Certain forums on the web already provide examples of such
unethical behaviors. The legal scholar Brian Leiter describes the
website AutoAdmit, originally a message board for law students
and lawyers, as: half the thread had to do with law and another
half had as their primary purpose racist, misogynistic, and antiSemitic abuse or simply vicious harassment, defamation, and
implied threats against named individuals, usually other law students (Leiter, 2010, p. 157). The site opened in 2004 and is still
running in 2012, protected by the US rst amendment of free
speech and the potential cost that lawsuits represent.
Women and minorities are especially victims of targeted attacks on the Internet. In August 2008, a woman blogger who wrote
about the lm The Dark Knight received 200 comments of the
type:
This is why women are too stupid to think critically and intelligently about lm
Or, again:
Get a life you two dollar whore blogger, The Dark Knight doesnt
suck, you suckh! Dont ever post another blog unless you want
to get ganged up.
Of the 200, only 3 did not threaten her or mention her gender
(Citron, 2010, pp. 3637).
Another aspect that can inuence such disinhibition is the
known lack of potential accountability for ones action on the Internet. On forums like AutoAdmit, legal students may well know that
they can act unethically, and still remain within the limit of the law

The denition of unethical can change depending on ones own

moral values and cultural background. As given above, the denition taken in this article of an unethical behavior is a behavior
affecting another individual negatively in their interests, welfare
or expectations of others (Brass et al., 1998, p. 32). It includes
anti-social behavior (e.g. targeted discrimination of a specic
group), drugs, weapons, hacking, cannibalism, bomb making, hit
man services, black markets and child pornography. It also counts
pornography as unethical as it raises moral concerns, but exclude
topics dealing with surveillance as they belong rather to the eld
of politics and governance than morality. Moreover, le sharing
also challenges ethics, especially if it involves the sharing of pornography or copyrighted materials. But le sharing is unethical
only in cases where the platform offers unethical services (e.g.pornography and copyrighted material), as the practice is otherwise
inherently not unethical. There are for instance platforms for le
sharing on the web, which provide ethical services, such as Dropbox for the sharing of personal les.
The distinction between ethical and unethical behaviors is more
relevant than the distinction between legal and illegal behaviors
for two reasons. Firstly, to assess the legality of an action implies
to know at least which jurisdiction the author of the content was
in when publishing it, or the location of the server hosting the content. But as one of the main features of Tor hidden services is to
thwart the localization of the servers and of its users, it is not possible to fully assess the legality of the content. Secondly, if one
takes the case of a very liberal country on the topic of speech, for
example the US, everything expressed as content on webpages will
very likely be legal and fall under the First Amendment protecting
free speech, excluding child pornography.
3. Methodology
In order to gather empirical evidence to support or reject these
hypotheses, a two-fold statistical and content analysis that distinguishes semantic and contextual features on Tor hidden services is
carried out. The results are not compared with content and behavior from the web, as the questions and hypotheses are not to assess
if the content on the hidden services is qualitatively different than
the rest of the web but to assess its intrinsic ethical value for
society.
3.1. Data collection
There is no search engine functioning similarly to Google or
Bing on the hidden web. Instead, there are databases listing many
of the hidden services. Using three main databases allows the

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C. Guitton / Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 28052815

application of a quantitative analysis about the type of content and

services available on the Tor hidden services. The three databases
contain an extensive list of services, totaling 1171 individual entries. Each service was classied into one of 23 categories (see
Appendix A). The categories pertain to the content found, and also
address the two hypotheses (the categories were for instance subversive content, pornography, or drugs). The main databases were:
Hidden Wiki, which is the place most users will start with when
going on hidden services, Snapp BBS, which lists many bulletin
boards (this is equivalent to forums with mandatory registration,
even to merely look at the posts), and Ahmia., which lists servicesaccessible from Tor hidden services. A comparison with other
databases showed that these three databases spanned a representative and very comprehensive part of many listed hidden services
at the time of the research (July/August 2012). Regarding the large
overlap of the overall data extracted with these three databases, it
is fair to consider that the most prominent hidden services have
been taken into consideration. The remaining ones are less well
known and less well listed, which mean they also affect less
people.
For each listed service on the databases, two factors were taken
into account. Firstly, the description of the service on the database
was used to know in which category the service fell into. Secondly,
when this category did not relate to child pornography, the link
was veried in order to check that it was working and matching
the given description. Of all services considered as unethical, only
the access to a specic type of content is illegal: child pornography.
By avoiding the verication of links advertising content related to
this, the research remained within the boundary of the law. The
data collected focused on a restricted time window of a month (between 24 June and 27 July 2012), and were collected between 27
July and 9 August 2012. Despite the restricted time-window, the
data is considered representative of the general population of posts
taking place all year around on these platforms regarding the high
number of samples collected.
While blogs play a prominent role in online discussions on the
web, blogs on hidden services are scarce, especially ones that
would answer to the following criteria: constant and recent publishing, interactions with other users, topic not touching upon
the technicalities of onion routing or hacking. These three criteria
are important in so far as the research context is to determine
the inuence of anonymity on online behaviors. A few blogs listed
on the databases have only very short posts (i.e. approximately
three sentences), and do not engage in debatable topics. Blogs
answering to these criteria may exist but further hidden away,
with a poorer outreach.
Instead of blogs, users of Tor hidden services rely on forums for
interactions and disseminations of ideas. Many forums listed on
Snap BBS have a low activity, or focus on only one topic. Analyzing
general forums is important to formulate a comprehensive assessment of the second hypothesis. Only four forums researched
agreed with the criteria of being general, and active. But as one
of them had only less than a hundred posts at the time of the research (Freefor), only three were analyzed: OnionForum, Das
ist Deutschland hier and talk. Of the three, the second one was
also country specic (Germany) and in a foreign language. The data
collection yielded 2165 posts, on which the same statistical tool
applied for the 1171 services was carried out, as well as a content
analysis of the post when relevant.
3.2. Variable and coding framework
Answering to the two hypotheses requires only one variable
classifying the content of hidden services. By looking at different
categories of content, it is possible to answer if there is content
of a subversive (hypothesis 1) or unethical nature (hypothesis 2).

The different categories for the services and posts found were
created empirically following data collection. The different
categories of content were used to classify the content of the
1171 services, as well as the content of the discussions on the forums. All content was parsed into 23 categories (e.g. weapons,
drugs), which are listed in Appendix A. Nine categories were used
to describe unethical content, while 13 categories describe ethical
content, and one category was reserved for content of unknown
type.
3.3. Analytical instruments
Firstly, in order to determine if ethical services and unethical
services differ quantitatively, the frequency of ethical and unethical
posts as a proportion of all posts was calculated. The quantitative
analysis was used in order to be able to assess if one category of
services was more preponderant than the other, and to what
extent.
Secondly, a content analysis of representative examples was
carried out to gauge the qualitative relevance of the content about
subversion, and the relevance of the difference between ethical
and unethical content. The mixture of quantitative and qualitative
data which was used to ensure that the inferences drawn are valid
is not unusual in the eld of studying online communications
(Hara, Bonk, & Angeli, 2000; Henri, 1992). There is no single approach to content analysis, but the method is particularly well suited for comparing and categorizing sets of data (Schwandt, 1997).
As the primary aim of content analysis in the context of this research is to differentiate between three categories subversive,
ethical and unethical content the method is appropriate. The categorizing of the topics into 23 categories identied asethical or
unethical is insufcient to comprehensively describe the available
content on Tor hidden services. All unethical topics can be discussed in a certain manner that may still be regarded as ethical.
For instance, drug consumption is unethical. But academic studies
on drug uses will strive to approach the topic so it is considered
within ethical boundaries. Furthermore, people who have been
subject to trauma, for instance child abuse, can feel more condent
talking about the topic on Tor hidden services as they are anonymous this is what the psychologist John Suler referred to as benign disinhibition (Suler, 2004).
Content analysis can grasp and reveal the psychological and social elements of users interactions on Tor hidden services. More
specically, it can answer the following questions: do users show
signs of disinhibition? And if yes, is it a type of benign (ethical)
or malign (unethical) disinhibition? Suler, who rst explained reasons for disinhibition online, acknowledged that the distinction between the two concepts can be complex (Suler, 2004). One could
use lists of words to try to categorize a post as being neutral, or
as a case of benign or malign disinhibition. Researchers, such as
Goodwin and Goodwin (1992), have developed frameworks to look
for verbal markers which could be used to categorize the text
depending on the display of polite, rude, or aggressive makers.
But this is not sufcient. The context of the post, for instance a user
politely requesting crude photos of cannibalism, must still be taken
further into account to assess the ethicality of the post. Suler
reached a similar conclusion that merely looking at hostile words
was insufcient for separating benign disinhibition from malign
disinhibition (Suler, 2004).
The main criterion to identify benign disinhibition is the sharing
of personal information in an attempt to better understand and
develop oneself (Suler, 2004). Such a criterion requires an in-depth
analysis of the content of the posts. Naturally, judging peoples
intention only from their own written words online to determine
if they truly engaged in a psychological process of self-reection
is dependent on the person making the judgment. By analyzing

C. Guitton / Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 28052815

the content and highlighting the thought process behind categorizing behaviors as malign or benign, the rationales behind the judgment should become clear and convincing. As not all 2165 posts
could be analyzed in-depth, a few examples were chosen in function of two criteria: rstly, in function of the most quantitatively
relevant categories that emerged from the rst variable, and secondly, in function of identied recurring themes within theposts.
4. Results
Of the 1171 services surveyed, quantitatively the most representative one belongs to the list of unethical services: it concerns
child pornography (18%). Adding unethical services up, they represented 45% of all listed services, representing an essential portion
of what is present on hidden services Appendix A details the full
results. A few of the categories within unethical services are substantially shocking with for instance talks of cannibalism, of child
abuses, or the category black market which includes woman trafcking and the sale of organs. Assuming that the sale of organs
advertised on hidden services really takes place, the repercussions
on humans lives are far reaching. As it is impossible for law
enforcement agencies to know the location of the posters, it will
prove difcult to shut down the services, to stop the transactions
from happening, and to arrest the individuals behind potentialhuman atrocities. Tor hidden services are hence used in this context
to help support violators of human rights. This is in contrast to
the context for the rst hypothesis content challenging the
States authority to improve human rights.
Furthermore, by simply looking at the list of available services,
there is little evidence that Tor hidden services are used by political
activists at all. There are very few dedicated places to discuss politics (2% of the surveyed services), and it must be noted that the
standard of discussion is rather poor. The posts in these services
are very short, in general no longer than two lines, many consisting
of discussing conspiracy theories in the US, or being very provocative with racist stances. Social movements to subvert authoritarian
regimes do not represent a signicant part of dedicated forums on
the subject, but users could still discuss the topic on general forums.
Yet, on forums, the number of posts in the subversion category
also represents a low average at 1.6% of all the posts across the three
forums (see Appendix A for the details of the distribution). The
posts are quantitatively few, and on top of that, they are short
and are not comparable to the blog posts of political dissidents such
as Tariq Biasi mentioned in the introduction. Many posts are only
provocative discussions that lack in-depth or real political ground.
The following anti-Semitist snippet translated from Das ist Deutschland hier posted between 12 July 2012 and 25 July 2012 illustrates this provocativeness and the lack of real political debate:
war-for-victory: Heil my comrades. We must go to war against
the Turks. Sieg Heil!
adolfs-son: Yes we must massacre the Turks. Sieg Heil from
Bochum
white-power: Im in and join the war from Frankfurt
bernd: ha ha! Look at it kids: three idiots. Wage your imaginary
war you psychos, then well lock you in jail, and society will
simply have spared three psychos. Then the three of you can
ght in your cell with other idiots. Stop with the kid shit and
act like grown men. Really. Grow up.
berndi: Siegheil Siegheil Peeeennniiiissss XDDD
lars: Sieg Heil Comrades fuck all jews Sieg heil Berlin
for-it::)
again::)

2809

Sieg Heil was a Nazi salute often chanted on public occasions.

Such discussions of changing the worlds order based on racist discriminations are not uncommon on Tor hidden services. Another
example comes from a thread entitled Niggers, They are unpleasant to be around. Three excerpts of the conversation by three different users illustrate the tone in the discussion:
Guest1: ALL niggers and jews should eat the ground.
Guest2: Jews and niggers are all not humans. They are dirty animals. They should live in zoos cages. Simple like that. White
man shouldnt fuck black females. It is like fuck cows or dogs.
Shame for white who fucks this shit.
Guest3: A good nigger is a dead nigger.
Of particular notice, most of the users who posted on the thread
did not try to challenge the views. Of the 50 posts on this thread,
only six showed disagreement. Similarly, on the forum talk, a topic entitled Niggers are useless attracted 76 posts, of which 57
supported a racist stance. Two questions arise from these observations on the current form of the political debate on Tor hidden services: Is there any utility in this type of content? And should we
take the content at face value?
The emerging consensus and the lack of sensibility of responses
make it difcult to discern any utility for the greater good of society of such racist stances, let alone for a debate on subverting the
states order to establish a working democracy. Yet, the value may
reside in strengthening ones thought for the right reason. Tor hidden services is the perfect example of John Stuart Mills concept of
supporting freedom for the thought that we hate (Bleich, 2011, p.
3). Mill saw three main raisons for supporting such a freedom.
Firstly, we may be wrong and this is why we should hear dissident
opinions. Secondly, if our beliefs are only partially true, we will
appreciate their value to a greater extent. Thirdly, if our beliefs
are wholly true, we will hold them true for the right reasons (Leiter, 2010, p. 164). The US, with its strong laws to protect freespeech,
also values this argument. In fact, the racist debate entitled Niggers, They are unpleasant to be around could also happen on the
web without fearing censorship as the example of the web forum
AutoAdmit showed. In other words, if Tor hidden services did
not exist, it would not undermine the validity of Mills argument
as posters could still share their views with the rest of the Internet
population for instance on a US based platform, and they could still
stay anonymous by using Tor.
It is possible that the posts should not be taken as face value, as
they may not be genuine. The authors of the aforementioned messages can be trolls. Trolls are people who post controversial,
inammatory, irrelevant, or off-topic messages to provoke other
users into an emotional response (Resnick & Kraut, 2011, p. 5).
In the case of trolls, the provocative nature of the message does
not reveal if it reects the genuine thought of the poster. As it is
not possible to know this, and as the interest of this research lies
in the inherent face value of the post as subversive or unethical,
the argument that trolls do not genuinely represent an unethical
form of speech is dismissed. The presence of the post in and of itself is sufcient to inform on the type of content available on Tor
hidden services with regard to subversion and to establishing a
democratic order.
In light of the low number of posts discussing politics, and their
poor quality, the rst hypothesis must be rejected. Hidden services
are not being used as a place to prominently discuss politics in order to subvert the state structure for a better democratic option.
The lack of outreach of Tor hidden services can explain why activists and bloggers do not use Tor hidden services prominently.
Activists seek their argument to be heard (Youmans & York,
2012). As the demography of users of hidden services remains
limited in contrast to the whole population of Internet users, a

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C. Guitton / Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 28052815

better and more appealing choice for them is to use the web in
combination with Tor. Yet, this does not explain per se the poor
quality of the debate on political issues, or the very restricted range
of political issues being debated. The users interests on Tor hidden
services are clearly not on political issues, or on debating them
freeof any slurs. Taking a step further, it is becoming apparent that
the value of Tor hidden services may not lie in keeping the moral
high ground. The analysis of the posts on the forums will exemplify
this point.
In the three forums surveyed, unethical topics far outnumbered
ethical topics. Unethical topics are quantitatively more numerous
than ethical topics, representing 86%, 67% and 62% of all topics
for Das ist Deutschland hier, talk, and OnionForum respectively.
As mentioned in the methodology section, users can address
unethical topics in a sensitive manner. But this does not appear
to happen often. For OnionForum and the German forum, it happened only in 2% of the unethical discussions. On talk, it occurred
a bit more frequently, in 16% of cases.
Three main themes can be distinguished on the three forums,
and which are worth dwelling into: ethical topics, drugs, and child
pornography. Regarding ethical topics, the quality of the content is
in itself disappointing by its banality. The following non-exclusive
list of topics discussed illustrates this: how to survive an apocalyptic event, the Olympics, Jennifer Lopez, the weather forecast, shipping of items, platforms for online poker, global warming, Atlantis,
chemistry, pit-bull ghts, UFOs, albino cockroaches, tea, getting a
girlfriend, poetry, the sinking boat Concordia, the difference of
strength between an elephant and a ant, and purpose of life. This
is an excerpt of such banal conversation on talk posted on 4 July
2012:
m15: What tea do you like to drink? I always mix and match,
but I always include chamomile.

m18 @m15: Earl Grey, neat.

This type of conversation, which could very well take place on
the web as it does not require the authors to either evade censorship or be anonymous, is of low interest for anyone, probably even
for the poster. From a psychological standpoint, the lack of personal and emotional recounting makes it apparent that the post
does not classify as a type of benign disinhibition.
Within this theme of ethical content also belong posts which
simply replicate material from open access news sources or other
websites. Many posts were simply users requesting specic information, or asking if there were other users from specic countries.
Both of these types of content were actually common practice, but
again, banal and of low interest. Of the posts surveyed, the following percentage of posts simply offered specic material by posting
a link or copying and pasting information directly from another
source: 37% on talk, 54% on Das ist Deutschland hier, and 44%
on OnionForum.
The ethical content, including the copy/pasting of news, sharply
contrasts in terms of intensity with the unethical content. The
unethical content represents 64% of all the posts surveyed (see
Appendix A for details). Within the category of unethical content,
two recurring and prominent topics can be identied: drugs
(touched upon in as many as 35% of all posts on Das ist
Deutschland hier) and child pornography (touched upon in as
many as 32% of all posts on talk). We should note that the
distribution of unethical services is more homogeneous on OnionForum 2.0. But as racial discrimination has already been addressed
above, the focus for OnionForum 2.0 is also kept on drugs and
child pornography, the most unsettling two types of content.
Table 1 shows the recurrence and prominence of these topics within eachforum.

The preponderance of these two very unsettling themes, drugs

and child pornography, is conrmatory of the second hypothesis,
namely that the content of posts on Tor hidden services challenges
ethics. Furthermore, while ethical content does not have much to
offer, the content from these two unethical categories can be very
damaging for society in their own different ways. For example the
sale of hard drugs damages the consumers health, which is in turn
a cost for society to bear. Also, the access to child pornography as
well as discussions with sex offenders can push would-be-offenders to commit child abuses (Endrass et al., 2009). Discussions can
foster the would-be-offenders perception that committing an act
of child abuse is the norm within the community where he interacts, a theory well developed within the criminology literature
about sub-cultures and their perception of a deviant act as not
being deviant(Braithwaite, 1989). Therefore, the negative effects
of unethical content on Tor hidden services, while potentially indirect, should not be lightly dismissed.
For the case of drugs, posts tend to discuss three topics: the creation of drugs, the use of a major online drug shopping platform on
Tor hidden services called The Silk Road, and the sale of drugs. For
instance, on 24 June 2012 on the forum Das ist Deutschland hier,
theUnknown asked the community:
Has anyone the instructions for the synthesis of Speed?
After a couple of messages warning theUnknown of the difculty of the process, users were quite helpful in redirecting him
to the right resources. Similarly, the request for drugs is also
straight forward, as in the example below (Das ist Deutschland
hier, 17 July 2012):
Konzi: Hello, looking for a dealer from which I can get 50 g of
weed every week. Best by RLT in the area of Oberbayern
SpliffStar: RLT doesnt work out as it is not secure, but otherwise
you can get it form here: [URL of another thread where SpliffStar details his prices] spliffstar@mail.ua
But the direct sale of drugs requires trust, mainly from the
buyer. Drug sellers have therefore to create their reputation, and
they do so by inviting former buyers to post comments about the
sale. The link that Spliffstar sent to Konzi was a thread where
the seller, Spliffstar, detailed his prices, and that contained 23 reviews from various buyers or potential buyers. Although everyone
can sign in and write from any pseudonym, it seems that buyers
still trust the various comments left by the different pseudonyms,
which could easily have been left from the same person, the vendor
himself. Similarly to the case about trolls, only what is apparent
can be taken into account.
For the case of child pornography, the posts revolved around
two topics: requesting links, and discussing pedophilia. Requesting
links occurred often the same way as for drugs, and the following
conversation that happened on talk between 30 June and 2 July
2012 is quite representative:
lwa: I want a fucking link to CP [child pornography]
lqi [post originally in Spanish]: Could copy the link for me I
dont mind if its in English
eov: Fuck off, hang yourself by your balls, you sick fuck, ect.
The posters usually do not obtain the link they were after, and
the threads usually contain a certain number of people who express disgust using, it seems, as many slurs as possible against
the original poster. Sometimes the conversation also discusses
pedophilia per se.
Discussions about pedophilia can also be separated into two
kinds: the general, and the personal. General discussions, like the
ones about politics, are full of posts that do not exceed a couple
of lines, full of slurs, and rarely insightful. They represent the

C. Guitton / Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 28052815

Table 1
Distribution of unethical topics touched upon on each surveyed forum and ranked by
their prominence within each forum (percentages computed with regards to all
unethical posts in each forum).
Das ist Deustchland

talk

OnionForum 2.0

1. Drugs (44%)

1. Child pornography
(50%)
2. Racial discrimination
(24%)
3. Other unethical topic
(11%)
4. Pornography (6%)

1. Racial discrimination
(19%)
2. Other unethical topic
(19%)
3. Pornography (17%)

2. Black market (16%)

3. Child pornography
(13%)
4. Racial discrimination
(10%)
5. Other unethical topic
(6%)
6. Weapons (4%)
7. Pornography (3%)
8. Hacking (3%)
9. Hit man (0%)

5. Hacking (4%)

4. Child pornography
(13%)
5. Hacking (8%)

6. Black market (3%)

7. Weapons (1%)
8. Drugs (1%)
9. Hit man (0%)

6. Drugs (8%)
7. Hit man (7%)
8. Black market (7%)
9. Weapons (2%)

majority of the type of discussions on the topic (99%). The following is an excerpt from such a conversation in a thread with 121 responses entitled Why the fuck people are pedophiles?:
t45: Its because, like all sexual deviates, they are morally
bankrupt.
t4b: Yes of course. And why is that? Because God says so. And
why does God exist? Because the bible says so. And why does
the bible say so? Because god created the bible. And how do
we know that is true. Because the bible says so.
t4d: Do you hear voices in your head?
t4 g: Fuck you all Pedos are motherfuckers
t4u@t4 g: No, they are daughterfsckers.
t5f: Why are we even discussing if its right or wrong? In the
end the Pedos will not get of Tor and they will have fucked up
image boards of young girls and boys because they can, and
they will.
t5 g: I discuss it because I want the nazi scumbags, religious
scumbags, puritan scumbags and the like to know their place,
and want to make it very clear what kind of scum they (you)
are.
t5 l: Wait. Nazis were okay with pedo. As long as the result was
blonde no one had issues!
These posts, again, are not very interesting from a utilitarian or
psychological viewpoint. Other posts of general nature can be a lot
more unethical, not only in the slurs but also in their extreme content. The following excerpts posted on talk under the thread title
Young pedo are a perfect example of it:
s0d: As a 17 year old pedole, I dont know if theres anyone like
me I can talk to, I mean, sure theres a bunch of old, or violent
assholesm but I dont know if theres any other underage pedos
like me, thoughts?
s7j I am 45 and have loved adult cock as a child 615 and then
little girls and boys 311 since I can remember. Ive fucked
them, been naked with them outside literally in public. Granted
it was late at night but we had fun going nearly every place we
wanted and left our clothes at home. At one point we even
played truth or dare and got nearly caught doing so.
w5i 17 yr pedo here, u aint alone but u were a little harsh w/the
violent assholes because idk why but something about the
tears, screaming, pain, blood, RAPE of younglings gets my pepe
tingling:D

2811

The other type of discussion, more personal, can however be

very useful to the posters and to readers. In a few posts, victims
of child abuse told their stories, protected by the anonymity of
the service, and exemplifying Sulers application of the disinhibition effect to resolve [ones] interpersonal and intrapsychic
problems (Suler, 2004, p. 321). The posts were qualitatively different and much longer. For instance, in a thread about child pornography, 30% of the posts (36 posts of 121) contained 500 words or
more, very similar to blog posts. The following example is an
excerpt from a 1000 word post from the user enw on talk posted
on 15 February 2012, entitled Um... its a rant, I guess. While
outside the timeframe for the collection of data for the quantitative
analysis, the thread in which the message was posted was kept
active until the collection of the data. It is a response to a provocativethread about childrens sexual pleasure, and the post, included in full in Appendix B, is worth considering:
I mean, heres my experience with pedophilia. Kind of personal,
mine was in my family. From around 6 until I was 13 and I
started catching on, my stepdad would do mild sexual things
with me. No penetration, he didnt like, rip through my hymen
or anything, but hed do other shit, and hed always try to be
sneaky about it.
Im pissed at my dad for A, not guring out how to keep is dickthoughts away from his legal daughter, and B, he really, REALLY
SCREWED UP MY SENSE OF WHATS NORMAL. He fucking
RUINED my childhood. Subtle shit can do that too. Dont need
to see somebody fall through a woodchipper to get screwed up.
I liked barbies. I was just like other girls, or I tried to be, except
my dad was just... weird about me. Like, I noticed VERY EARLY
ON how I couldnt really connect with other girls, couldnt make
friends easily.
My sexual relationship with my father basically made me super
fucking insecure, like I was a black hole of lovelessness, I needed
SO MUCH VALIDATION to be happy.
My dad couldve NEVER guessed what he was doing to me. I
mean, Im sure he felt guilty, Ive never spoken to him about
it, but hes a timid guy, not like an abusive type. Im sure he
would never hurt me on purpose.
The post is very personal and emotional, with repetitive slurs to
accentuate what the person thinks. For the author, many psychological and health benets can come out from writing about the
different facets of the authors trauma, for instance the aspect of
betrayal, of insecurity, or about the physical trauma per se (Freyd,
Klest, & Allard, 2005). It is understandable that the author may not
want the story to be attributed in any way to the authors real identity. However, using Tor and the web would provide the author the
same level of anonymity. While in this example about child abuse
many participants seized the opportunity of Tor hidden services to
share their personal story, it needs to be emphasized that, even on
talk, this remains the exception rather than the norm: personal
posts represented less than 1% of all the posts considered!
The other unethical types of posts, while quantitatively not signicant, also touch upon topics that are very unsettling such as
cannibalism, necrophilia, bomb making or the illegal selling of
weapons. The full list is available in Appendix A. All the evidence
therefore supports the second hypothesis, namely that the content
on hidden services challenges ethics. Along with considering the
result from the rst hypothesis (i.e. content on hidden services
does not prominently relate to challenging the State authority in
order to establish a democratic order), such a conclusion forces
us to reconsider the societal value and utility of Tor hidden services. Do they merely support criminals and the publication of
unethical content? From the quantitative and qualitative results
of this research, it appears that the positive advantages for Tor

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C. Guitton / Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 28052815

hidden services are scarce, and that the unethical content trumps
the utilityof any ethical one.

5. Discussion
The unethical content on Tor hidden services can have several
negative impacts. The consumption of child pornography, as already mentioned, may incite the user to become an abuser himself. Similarly, racist speech can nurture incitation to racist action.
An example of such a leap from speech to action happened on 5
August 2012. Wade M. Page was part of a hate group who used
music as a medium for their racist feelings. On 5 August 2012,
Page opened re and killed six people in a Sikh temple in the
US. Two scholars researching hate groups, Robert Futrell and Pete
Simi, explained Pages action by saying: when extremist ideas endure, so does the potential for extremist actions (Futrell & Simi,
2012). Hidden services is similarly a medium used to broadcast
these unethical considerations, and which can foster an individuals thought about committing such acts, especially as he receives support from a communityof like-minded individuals, be
they trolls or not.
On the other hand, the benets from Tor hidden services are
scant. We have seen that blogs are scarce, and those who express
their opinion tend do so using offensive language, often with very
short statements. One could have expected the use of hidden services as a place for benign disinhibition and where political dissidents express their ideas (and support for more open
government, or democracy) in a coherent and comprehensive manner, free of the fear of censorship or repression. But this is not the
case, and as this analysis of public content has shown, it is predominantly used to evade repression from the state, but for matters
that are highly unethical. Dissidents may still use hidden services
such as social network platforms (e.g. with the service mul.tiver.se)
to hold condential and anonymous discussions, for instance to
coordinate their actions without fear of a third party eavesdropping. A plausible explanation for the lack of content from politicaldissidents is the lack of outreach and easy dissemination of content
on hidden services. By posting content online on a server that is located in a democratic state and that supports their movement, a
political dissident does not need to hide the location of the server,
as he already deems the state as unlikely to censor his content by
his very act of posting it there.
The depiction of content available on Tor hidden services brings
us to re-consider what is the role of the services. At the moment,
the hidden services act as a protector of unethical content rather
than as the promoter of a censor-free place for ethical content.
By looking closely into it, one notices that Tor hidden services
are mainly used to evade law enforcement agencies, but not from
non-democratic states, but from liberal ones with laws that have
strong moral and ethical grounds.
Tor hidden services do not promote more anonymity for the
user than Tor itself does. For users wishing to be anonymous, it
is sufcient to use Tor on the web, and the content posted online
will not be attributable to the poster. No one will be able to nd
the IP address of the poster, ensuring the users anonymity. If the
hidden services do not promote more anonymity for the users
than Tor itself, it does however promote a censor-free environment by protecting the hosts location and identity. But we
should note that Tor hidden services are not the only way that
individuals can ensure that some unethical content will not be
censored: users can use servers located in countries with a strong
and very exible jurisprudence on understanding free speech. The
US is such an example. Users wishing to post even racist or Nazi
stances can do so freely on US-based services, and can moreover
remain anonymous if they wish to do so by simply using Tor.

Legally speaking, UScourts have constantly forbidden restrictions

on freedom of speech, even if it was offensive, unsettling, insulting, demeaning, annoying, snarling, bilious, rude, abusive or
nasty (Stone, 2010, p. 174). But the understanding of freedom
of speech in the US, even for unethical content, does have certain
limits: for instance, child pornography cannot be protected. More
generally, freedom of speech does not cover any speech likely to
produce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil,
and in some cases, if it is defamatory, obscene or incite to unlawful conduct (Stone, 2010, p. 175). Two law cases are particularly
relevant, Watts v. United States for direct threats, and Brandenburg
v. Ohio for speech that incites to commit illegal actions. In the former, the defendant made a threat to the US President and the
Court heldin 1969 that threats should not be protected under
the rst amendment. In the latter, the Supreme Court of Ohio upheld that Clarence Brandenburg, a member of the hate group Ku
Klux Klan, incited to hateful action in a televised speech (Ruedy,
2008, pp. 340341).
Libertarians who seek to have networks free of any state control
may not be ready to accept the restrictions to their freedom that a
state like the US can impose, although it mostly does not. The famous speech from John Perry Barlow comes to mind, although largely pre-dating Tor hidden services, from 8 February 1996:
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of esh
and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On
behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone.
You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where
we gather (Barlow, 1996).
Yet, the potential price to pay for such a liberty is tremendous.
An unregulated environment, such as Tor hidden services, mainly
benets users looking for a censor-free place to host unethical
and immoral content. The current research showed how these
users have used Tor hidden services. For other users, hosting content in a state with a liberal approach to freedom of speech already
guarantees that the content will not be removed, except if it
crosses unacceptable boundaries, for example with child pornography. This leaves us with a question: does Tor wish to be the promoter of an unregulated place where unethical content is the
norm?
Four possibilities exist to change the current norm relating to
the demography of content on Tor hidden services; but only one
is really viable: stopping the development of Tor hidden services.
Lawrence Lessig, an inuent legal scholar and expert on
Internet issues, identies four elements to regulate online
behavior: laws, market, norms, and technology (Lessig, 2006, p.
249). As users on hidden services are anonymous, and as it is
not possible to know their real IP address, it is difcult to enforce
the rule of law. Laws limiting the access or broadcast of unethical
content cannot be enforced, as the servers hosting unethical
services are not easily locatable. The arrest of drug dealers who
operated a Tor hidden service known as The Farmers Market is
rather an exception than the norm. It required the use of extensive traditional police methods and tracking of drug packets to
nd their sources (The United States of America v. Marc Peter
Willems, Michael Evron, Jonathan Colbeck, Ryan Rawls, Jonathan
Dugan, Brian Colbeck, Charles Bigras, George Matzek,2011). The
second and third options to change the distribution of content
are linked together: by changing the market environment, the
type of users representing and establishing descriptive norms will
change.
The private sector has until now offered the majority of services on the web, but has still not entered the market for hidden
services. A greater demand for hidden services may stir the content away from being dominated by unethical behavior, and

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C. Guitton / Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 28052815

may help create a different demography of available services. It

would consequently attract a more diverse crowd of users, which
would diminish the saliency of unethical content as being the
norm for available content on Tor hidden services. But why would
the demand change for such services? One of the reasons private
companies have remained away from hidden services may be
because of the latency of the network. This latency is a nuisance.
In general, users favor small advantages, like the connection speed
of the web, over privacy or anonymity (Acquisti & Grossklags,
2007). New laws challenging users privacy have the potential to
warrant a greater demand for theservices by changing this
balance. The yet-to-pass Cyber Information Sharing and Protection
Act in the US is such an example. It seeks to increase the access by
the government of information retained by companies, and the
public has strongly reacted against the law (BBC News, 2013).
Should it come to pass, users could turn to Tor hidden services
for e-mails and social-network platforms if they deemed the cost
of latency and changing platforms was less than what they feared
a government could do with their private information. But the
current technical know-how required to access the hidden
services and the current speed of the Tor network make this
option, at the moment, not worth considering for most users.
There is therefore little doubt that the demand will remain
the same. And this leaves us with the fourth option: stopping
the development of Tor hidden services, as they are only useful
to a handful of people, and mainly only to further their unethical
goals.
Stopping Tor hidden services would not affect the functioning of
Tor as an application for protecting anonymity. We should note
that in any case, not all Tor users use hidden services, and many
simply utilize the service that Tor offers to access the web anonymously. The number of Tor users is also still limited in comparison
to the overall population of Internet users: there were in 2012 an
estimated number of 400,000 of Tor users, representing a mere
0.015% of Internet users (ITU, 2012; Tor Project, 2012). The use of
the web with Tor, under the fair assumption that many Western
countries with liberal values have instituted a morally balanced legal system, should be sufcient to cover the wide range of ethical
activities that any user wants to carry out. For the others, the removal of hidden services would simply thwart their unethical,
and often illegal, activities contributing in making the Internet asafer and better place. Stopping the development and the support of
Tor hidden services will therefore only undermine the activities of
those involved in producing and consuming unethical content. The
recourse of stopping the services appears hence as praiseworthy,
especially in light of the current demography of services available
on the network.
In conclusion, the current research supports this unavoidable
conclusion: efforts should be made to stop the development of
Tor hidden services. As much as having a network free of any
regulations can be appealing, one cannot ignore the negative
effects of anonymity in a censor-free environment. The environment has spurred the publication of unethical content, which is
at times highly unsettling. It is difcult to imagine how turning
a blind eye on these negative effects can be productive in any
way. Stopping the services will require arguing further against
many hard-believers in unconditional freedom of speech. And this
article is the rst stone to pave the way for an informed debate
about it.
Appendix A. Demography of the content available on Tor
hidden services
Table 2. Demography of the content available on Tor hidden
services.

Category

Hidden OnionForum Das ist

Talk
services 2.0
Deutschland
hier

Unethical services
Child
206
28 (6%)
pornography
(18%)
Hacking
77 (7%) 16 (4%)

42 (11%)
8 (2%)

427
(32%)
37
(3%)
25
(2%)
49
(4%)

Black market

70 (6%) 14 (3%)

52 (13%)

Pornography
(excluding
child
pornography)
Drugs
General forum
with unethical
topics
Hit man
Weapons

68 (6%) 35 (8%)

10 (2%)

50 (4%) 16 (4%)
15 (1%) 39 (9%)

141 (35%)
20 (5%)

6 (0%)
91
(7%)

15 (1%) 15 (3%)
11 (1%) 5 (1%)

0 (0%)
13 (3%)

0 (0%)
11
(0%)
207
(16%)
853
(65%)

Racial
8 (1%)
discrimination
Subtotal
520
(45%)

40 (9%)

32 (8%)

208 (47%)

318 (80%)

76 (17%)

5 (1%)

73
(6%)

0 (0%)

File sharing
Informatics

136
7 (2%)
(12%)
72 (6%) 33 (7%)
51 (4%) 50 (11%)

Bitcoin

29 (2%) 10 (2%)

31 (8%)

Everything

27 (2%) 0 (0%)

0 (0%)

Search engine

27 (2%) 0 (0%)

0 (0%)

99
(8%)
0 (0%)
153
(12%)
19
(1%)
35
(3%)
10
(1%)
9 (0%)

Ethical services
Ethical and
specic topic
(other)
Personal

164
(14%)

0 (0%)
35 (9%)

Subversion of the 18 (2%) 9 (2%)

state power
Surveillance
11 (1%) 38 (8%)
Politics
9 (1%) 16 (4%)

8 (2%)

Anarchism
Energy politics
Communism
Subtotal

2 (0%)
1 (0%)
0 (0%)
242 (53%)

0 (0%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
83 (20%)

0 (0%)

0 (0%)

Unknown
Total

5 (0%)
4 (0%)
1 (0%)
554
(47%)
97 (8%)

1171
450 (100%)
(100%)

0 (0%)
4 (0%)

401 (100%)

0 (0%)
69
(5%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
467
(35%)
0 (0%)
1320
(100%)

Appendix B. An example of benign disinhibition with a personal

story of child abuse
Ive been reading all these comments, and Im just getting pissed off hearing what some of you think about childhood, and
about the way kids are. I just cant fucking believe what Im seeing. BLAHBLAHBLAH Kids like it! Why cant a loving man have

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C. Guitton / Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 28052815

a gentle sexual relationship with a young girl? If he doesnt hurt

her, nobody calls her a victim etc...
...what the fuck? It doesnt... IT DOESNT MAKE ANY FUCKING
SENSE is what Im thinking right now. Seriously, just sitting
here, the image of that my mind is full of fuck picture, same
pose and everything.
I mean, heres my experience with pedophilia. Kind of personal,
mine was in my family. From around 6 until I was 13 and I
started catching on, my stepdad would do mild sexual things
with me. No penetration, he didnt like, rip through my hymen
or anything, but hed do other shit, and hed always try to be
sneaky about it. Hed bathe me way beyond the age where a
father, let alone step father, should be bathing his daughter.
And hed rub my private parts a lot in the bath, like they were
extra dirty or something. I mean, I get what you guys are saying
when youre like they enjoy it!!! Sex is innocent! Cause like,
it felt good when he did that, I didnt mind the physical sensation at all. No, Im not on the internet bawling about being masturbated. Im pissed at my dad for A, not guring out how to
keep is dickthoughts away from his legal daughter, and B, he
really, REALLY SCREWED UP MY SENSE OF WHATS NORMAL.
He fucking RUINED my childhood. Subtle shit can do that too.
Dont need to see somebody fall through a woodchipper to get
screwed up.
I mean, from an early age, I had like, a vague idea of what he
was doing with me on his lap. And at that age you dont know
whats supposed to be happening, you cant draw the line and
say That! That right there! That was too far! Everything
before that was cool, but masturbating me is too far! Didnt
even know the word masturbation until I was 12. But rst of
all, I could never see him as a father gure, because guys just
arent the same when they see you as a sexual person. You
get treated differently. Again, not a clear distinction in my
mind at the time, I realize a lot of this after the fact. Like I compare how childhood is for most girls, to what I got, and how I
felt through it... And not only was I at a weird place compared
to society in general, but I started to see guys differently. You
start to hear about sex gradually when youre a little kid.
Someone tells me men put their penises in womens vaginas,
and youre like, Ew,gross!
I liked barbies. I was just like other girls, or I tried to be, except
my dad was just... weird about me. Like, I noticed VERY EARLY
ON how I couldnt really connect with other girls, couldnt make
friends easily. I went through a major slut phase through middle school, because by then I already saw myself as very much
a sexual being. Because my dad would praise me and shit when
I was doing something hot for him, like bending over in different poses and wearing shit he recommended. So I saw sex as the
way I was valuable to the world. Couldnt help it, I wasnt aware
of these thoughts in my head, I just ended up like that. My sexual relationship with my father basically made me super fucking insecure, like I was a black hole of lovelessness, I needed
SO MUCH VALIDATION to be happy. I mean, people never realize it at the time, but really this kind of thing is straight-up self
hatred. I hated myself. I just felt so bad... so much of the time...
and sexual attention was what Id learned to work for.
And through High School my self esteem was in the toilet. God
what a little bitch I was, but what was I supposed to do? I realize now how fucked up my psychology was at the time, and you
cant x that shit on your own. You cant just sit down when
youre an airbrained little teenage slut and think... WOW, my
self esteem is horrible. I wear miniskirts to feel good about
myself, how unhealthy is that? Im nearly through college
now and still sorting through this shit.
A kid is just not clearheaded enough to handle sex. Romance
and relationships are the most complex and dangerous part of

a persons psychological world, and you need a stable base to

have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, or a sexual relationship at all.
And NO KID HAS THAT STABLE BASE!!! I dont care how fucking
gentle you are with her, shes like silly putty at that age. My dad
couldve NEVER guessed what he was doing to me. I mean, Im
sure he felt guilty, Ive never spoken to him about it, but hes a
timid guy, not like an abusive type. Im sure he would never
hurt me on purpose.
and so I think about, you know, is it just because he was my
dad? And Ive realized, No. Its not because he was my dad.
Its because I was too fucking young to be in a sexual relationship. I mean, maybe if the boy involved were my age, then it
could be different. Then hes just as fragile as me, and even then
were on shaky ground. Kids do horrible things to other kids. I
was bullied so bad.
So anyway my dad was EXACTLY the type of pedo you guys
identify with. And you know what? Ive spent the better part
of my life in an emotional blackhole, unable to make solid,
meaningful friendships or have healthy, positive sex, because
of that fucker.
Fuck you and your safe pedo bullshit. I hope youre all
eunuchs.

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