Technology

I dont think this article is suggesting everyone use Tor Browser as their main browser (and if they are, thats obtuse), but that people use Tor / Tor Browser at all, even for just sensitive searches or websites that dont require a login.

Aren't bridges meant to prevent that?

Try i2p

I also heared that bit about the secret service owning nodes a few years ago. It was trough a teacher that's also really in the stuff outside of teaching, and has a network of non-teaching proffesionals in the field.

It's something to keep in mind, at the very least. Tor already has some weaknesses anyways. You shouldn't trust it blindly just because it's Tor. If anything, I think it more has a false rep for how strong it is over struggling with a stigma.

Most of the nodes are hosted by Tor Foundation itself

I don't think a single credible source has shown this to be a vulnerability. You're talking about an attack that would cost, what, millions of dollars to run per day?

Cloudflare is pretty TOR-friendly, they even offer onion routing for your website.

https://developers.cloudflare.com/support/firewall/learn-more/understanding-cloudflare-tor-support-and-onion-routing/

Yeah, we need to make it illegal to block someone from doing a simple GET request just because they're using a privacy tool.

It should only be legal to block access based on how you act, not based on how you look.

No. Use it for everyday tasks. If Tor is used by only people who need them, they will be easily detected. The whole reason US Navy released Tor to public was so normal users can scramble the usage detection. One more advantage is that right now lot of website block tor users if more users will use tor then they might stop it.

This is an incorrect, unrealistic way to view this. By using the Tor network normally (you argument certainly applies to doing overly traffic intensive tasks like torrenting over Tor) you are normalizing its use, protecting those who really rely on it. If the only people using Tor were criminals and people who needed the protection, listening on Wifi networks for connections to Tor could lead to immediate prosecution (look what the UK is trying to do with encrpytion, and that French case where all of the evidence against a suspect was use of open source technology like Tor.) By default, Tor does not hide the fact its being used from your network (thats what a bridge is for), so the more people use Tor, the safer everyone is.

If you really want to help those that need Tor's protection, run Snowflake on your desktop or Orbot's 'kindness' on Android. This allows users to use your device as a bridge, bypassing censorship in other countries / networks.

Yes, but you lose all data after exit

You can, but you really shouldn't.

Yes. Alec Muffett was the guy who setup the most popular Tor darkent site: Facebook. I think he did Twitter's too. He maintains an excellent list.

https://github.com/alecmuffett/real-world-onion-sites

The US government would never allow Tor to die. They need it to conduct ~terrorism~ cyberwarfare

If more people use it there will be more nodes made. The reason tor isn't fast or convenient is because it nitch and "underground". Using the public net doesn't have an adverse affect on the daily lives of 99.9999% of it's users, so why would anyone look for alternatives?