Should we be using the dark web?
 

With the talk of age verification and so on, is it simply going to be easer to use the dark web, and avoid all the problems.

Even the BBC is going on the dark web: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50150981

It seems sensible to have your sites on the dark web as a backup, in case a country brings in silly laws.

Perhaps this is a service people could offer, in setting up your sites on the dark web.

Watching pron at 3kb per second is a boner-killer.


It takes like 5 minutes just to load a page and to login, good luck loading large assets like HQ images or HD video.

Not to mention the visitor's IP location = problems with things like VAT during payout, wrong GEO ads being displayed.
Also, TOR traffic is often seen as bot traffic or blocked (the list of exit nodes are all public).
Almost every site uses javascript (disabled by default in the TOR browser).

I would presume it is like the early days of the internet.

At the moment the bulk of the dark web seems to be used by geeks (even I have not used it).

But as time goes on, I presume it would become user friendly and the norm, and integrated into all browsers.

As for payment, although I hate such as bitcoin, and believe it will crash, one could suggest sites just use such as bitcoin, as it becomes more user friendly (yes I am contradicting myself).

It doesn't matter what payment type the visitor uses, VAT applies to EU visitors. But with the visitor not using his real location (IP), it's hard to determine where he/she is from.


It's a really bad idea to encourage your visitor to use an onion version of your website, simply because, let's say your monetize your site with CPA leads, partner programs usually pay a higher amount for Tier 1 countries, but when using the TOR network, a visitor from a Tier 3 country can suddenly use an IP address (exit node) located in the US... Which will sooner than later be flagged as fraud.

It likely won't take long before you (the webmaster) ends up getting all his affiliate accounts banned for suspicious activity, when all the sales, leads or traffic you send comes from TOR exit nodes.

PS: Bitcoin won't crash.

I suspect at some point sites ill move to the dark web to avoid problems.

Then again I suspect the dark web will become mainstream at some point.

It won't...


How can massive ad companies (think Google) serve targeted ads when the visitors are all "anonymous"?
How to detect fraud leads (sign ups) when every new signed up user uses an IP of the same list of IP addresses all the time?
How to serve your site in the right language if you don't know where your visitor is located?

From an advertiser standpoint, anonymous traffic is exactly the kind of traffic you wouldn't want. Google would never integrate such a feature in the Chrome browser as this would hurt their core business.

Every site that is kicked off major engines becomes the dark web. Build own search engine or ind one you like.