The problem of social media

[Neven]

Russiagate has many consequences. One of them is tied to social media. Besides the negative aspects of social media, like the (distracting and addictive) effect it has on people and the insidiousness of commonplace marketing, it seems that more and more social media are used for astroturfing and foreign meddling in elections.

One of the outcomes is that social media have started censuring the content on their platforms. Which is slippery at best, and slippery on a slope at worst, as the definitions of what is propaganda and what not are malleable and open to abuse.

Is it possible to solve these problems? And if so, how?

[Neven]

Would a solution be to prohibit anonymity on social media? No more nick names or pseudonyms, etc, only real names. Or pseudonyms, but showing the real names when clicking on them or some such.

Would that work? What would be the cons?

[greylib]

Wouldn't it be possible to display where a news-item comment comes from?

I'm sure the experts would be able to fake a US IP address rather than the real Kazakh one, but would they be able to fake a separate address for each worker in the troll factory?

[TerryM]

Would a solution be to prohibit anonymity on social media? No more nick names or pseudonyms, etc, only real names. Or pseudonyms, but showing the real names when clicking on them or some such.

Would that work? What would be the cons?

Would limiting each IP address to a single name or pseudonym help? - perhaps with exceptions for libraries?
Terry

[Neven]

Something along those lines, Terry. Trolling depends almost entirely on anonymity.

This is probably impossible, but a not-for-profit version of social media, where there's no advertising and people can only post under their real names (paying a small fee), could be a step in the right direction.

Anyway, I don't know anything about this subject. I'm sure smarter people with more skills and experience have thought it through.

[Pmt111500]

I've got like... Umm... Some 7? Pseudonyms in use for generally one site each. I disappointedly noticed some providers of discussion forums do not allow changing the pseudonym according the site. Thus have mostly stopped posting comments in at least four sites. I don't have any suggestions to this.

[TerryM]

I've got like... Umm... Some 7? Pseudonyms in use for generally one site each. I disappointedly noticed some providers of discussion forums do not allow changing the pseudonym according the site. Thus have mostly stopped posting comments in at least four sites. I don't have any suggestions to this.

Not necessarily a criticism, but why the need for all of the different names?
Terry

[Pmt111500]

After choosing a fantasy name on a fantasy forum it felt pretty natural to choose a separate nick for many sites. Yours, <part7ofafusedmutatedtownsmonster>, who occasionally writes his own blog by a differtent nick. Should check what my AOOO-nick was, coming up with an idea of a story of an internet user in a fascist Confederate state.

[TerryM]

The only time I changed user names was when I lost the password for the old one after a computer glitch. 


It's nice to be recognised when posting in other venues. People will often welcome you and introduce you to the regulars.


I appreciate a modicum of anonymity if only to protect those who share a name, but not viewpoints. There is an American Mensan with a large internet presence, and a right-wing attitude, who shares my name. My friends know it's not me because of our political differences, but I wonder what casual acquaintances might think.


Terry

[Pmt111500]

anyway most the forum hosts know the email-address and I.P. at least, so full anonymity in net requires quite a bit more than just a change of nick. I think the easiest way to get a near anonymity is to buy a used smartphone, find an open wifi, connect through it to a select I.P. scrambler (or what the dark web connection was called, anonymity servers?), create a webmail-account while using the I.P. provided, and use it to login to regular net. So difficult and laborious usually only government paid spies and trolls bother doing. Thus they have something to hide and are automatically suspect, by some logic. On the other hand someone might actually need full anonymity.

[TerryM]

I'd wanted to converse with someone who was in hot water here in Canada because of his publication of some Arctic studies he'd carried out in Canadian waters.
A longtime member informed me that it was by then illegal to encrypt a message so that the government couldn't break the code. I backed away.


The recent arrest of a person for altering and selling untraceable, unhackable blackberries has cooled my interest in the matter.


Terry

[Pmt111500]

Yep, the encryption stuff in legislation is really odd and scary. I don't know if you still have the one-time code I sent you by snail mail, but Dkkor 2obgg &ejka #6lsq ;-)ya ¡Гwee, and now we're both suspect in the eyes of a couple of intelligence services. LoL. Better not teach children to encrypt anything, else the bad FBI might come knocking.
PMT.

[Neven]

There is an American Mensan with a large internet presence, and a right-wing attitude, who shares my name.

There's a problem right there: People sharing the same name.

[Neven]

TYT weigh in on the problem, towards the end of the segment:

[Archimid]

I think the problem of social media and the web at large is that not enough people use it and not enough people understand how powerful it can be. Most people think it is just entertainment, apart from real life. That is understandable. This is totally new to the human species.

With the internet we have the capacity to transfer thoughts codified in letters to anyone one in the world instantly. We have the capacity to reach thousand of people with a few well placed clicks. The internet, and social media is free speech on steroids.

Words are important. The right words can change other people's lives. That was true  even back when we wrote on stones. Today, when we can transfer words at the speed of light, words are more important than ever.

In the 20th century the power of the word was confined to radio, TV and press. TV is a one directional medium. It beams thoughts encoded into words and images into the minds of the audience. Very powerful stuff. Press and radio are also mostly one directional but correspondence and the telephone allowed a bit of back and forward. If information is power, then power concentrates on those who can best transfer information.

Social media and the web changed the balance of power. Now we have a way for the common man to transfer their words across the world for a ridiculous cost. This is an extreme power to the people, but it can (and it is) be exploited for nefarious purposes.

The solution is that people need to talk. People need to let their opinion heard, even if their spelling is not good or the opinion is crap. The voices of the people must be louder than the voices of propagandists, and it can be. All they need to do is just dare to speak.

Comments matter. Posts on Twitter and Facebook matter. Sharing links matter. A post on the ASIF matters. Even if it is just 1 person that hear your thoughts, it matters.

[TerryM]

Ramen Archimid


Another huge benefit the internet offers is the democratization of knowledge. 
In the late '80's I became interested in Ancient Sumerian nautical ship design. I was living in a reasonably large city with a university, yet as far as I knew no one shared my curiosity.
I search used book stores and eventually acquired a reasonable library on the subject. I began a multi-year project of building a timeline documenting the architecture, culture, trade routes and of course what little was known of the ships themselves.
In the early 90's using list servers I was contacting world leaders in the field. Thor Heyerdahl was excited by my work and wanted me to meet him in Washington state! Heady days indeed.


I'd recently married and didn't feel comfortable making such a long drive towing my model, and the expenses this would have entailed, so I never met Thor face to face.


10 years later I could go to Wikipedia, do an afternoon of searching, and have access to far more data than I'd managed to accumulate in those many years. In minutes I can be in contact with hundreds of others who share my curiosity.


The internet has been the most wonderful thing that man has ever invented. If it's attacked, or restricted we've got to put up one hell of a fight to keep it. Net neutrality, no censorship. no blockage. We can sort the wheat from the chaff by ourselves.


Terry

[Brigantine]

The first step in finding a solution, is properly specifying the problem.

But I'm having a hard time putting my finger on what, *specifically* the problem is. I sense intuitively that it's a big, nefarious problem, but...

Large budget co-ordinated advertising is ok. Coca-Cola anyone?
Political advertising is ok. Billions of dollars spent in US elections, and that's above board.
Overseas political advertising is considered ok in the west - though I remember India for example was cracking down on Greenpeace etc. a while back.
(though political campaigns accepting money from overseas is generally not allowed).
Stealth / native advertising is considered rude but not really more than that.

Does it make a difference if it's co-ordinated by a government vs by an NGO, if the result is the same? Usually the worst type of propaganda is when it's your own government doing it - though mainly when individual free speech is limited as well.

The only other thing I can think of that feels in the same category as Russiagate - in terms of intuitively being a big problem - is tobacco advertising. Logically though, I can't think of what they have in common.

[Neven]

What they have in common, is maintaining the status quo and maximizing profits.

I agree with everything everyone said in the comments above, but just like with markets and sports, the Internet needs to be free, but bound by a set of rules. One of these rules seems to be some sort of transparency. Or maybe we need to make a distinction between Internet and social media. Transparency on social media has become a critical issue. Advertising in itself is nefarious enough, but when astroturfing is amplified through non-existent voices, society and democracy are faced with a very big problem.

The problem is also that people are addicted to social media and thus take it far too seriously.

[P-maker]

Neven (as quoted from another thread):

I've already solved it for myself: I don't use social media.”

But, but, but this blog and the forum is the essence of social media! I already commended you for your clever use of tweets and other stuff on the ASIB the other week. I’m following a course on SoMe these days, and many will envy you your presence in virtual social media and the engagement you create through these activities.

Condemning social media means excluding 90 percent of the population, which are on Facebook in this country. It is either ignorant or elitist, but hardly a clever way forward.

[idunno]

This and associated other articles in the Observer lifts the lid on how Cambridge Analytica/Mercer/Bannon used Facebook data of dubious legal provenance to unleash psychological warfare on the US electorate in 2016...

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-faceook-nix-bannon-trump

[Archimid]

After the hurricane, Facebook was my best source for local news and the best way for me to know about people. Facebook, like social media (forums included) are a powerful democratic tool. It gives everyone a voice that can be heard.

I think this whole campaign against facebook will only serve to remove voices from the collective echo chamber.

[wili]

The problem is that some of the 'echos' in the echo chamber are AI controlled bots, honing their skills at individual manipulation 24/7.

[Archimid]

I do believe that type of AI exists already. It should, the technology seems to be there.

[Stephen]

Carl Sagan seems to have predicted it all, especially that last highlighted sentence, "...a kind of celebration of ignorance"

[Neven]

I don't know if YouTube qualifies as social media, but it's going down the drain (I also constantly get recommended videos from corporate media news sources that I hardly ever watch or want to watch):

[TerryM]

Neven


You first made me aware of Jimmy Dore. In the light of what has been going on over at U-Tube may I ask that you promote his shows more aggressively?
I've never watched a show of his that I didn't get something out of.


Thanks
Terry

[Iceismylife]

I don't know if YouTube qualifies as social media, but it's going down the drain (I also constantly get recommended videos from corporate media news sources that I hardly ever watch or want to watch):

I've got an idea about how to "fix" this, and make some money tooo!!!!!! Wana talk?

[sidd]

Rob Pike (yes, the Unix luminary among many other things) has some posts about withdrawal from social media. I really like Pike's writing, and am greatly indebted to him.

"A sort of voyeuristic panopticon that exploits our weakness for variable reward and pushes us to participate in a strange sort of corporate surveillance that is ever consuming in our lives."

https://nomasters.io/posts/nonparticipation/

"
    You keep using your phone after it’s no longer needed to solve a problem.
    You spend more and more of your time on your phone to get the same effects
    You feel strange when you don’t have your phone.
    You can’t stop yourself from using your phone, even if you don’t want to.
    You have a hard time giving yourself limits. You might say you’ll only use “so much” but then can’t stop and end up using twice that amount. Or you use it more often than you meant to.
    You’ve begun having trouble doing normal daily things without your phone.
    You drive or do other dangerous things (like use heavy machines) while you are on your phone.
    You borrow money to pay for your phone.
    You hide some phone use or the effect it is having on you from others."

https://nomasters.io/posts/dumber-phone/

sidd

[Neven]

It's not a phone. It's a computer.

[sidd]

From the man responsible for C++

“I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my phone” -- Bjarne Stroustrup.

sidd

[Hefaistos]

Censorship by big social media platforms is now becoming a real issue.

While reading an article in the Guardian, I was trying to search for some reference with Google, it was a name of a person related to the war in Syria.
I thought the search results looked odd, because they didn't show what was written in the article. So I tried a 'clean' search engine, DuckDuckGo, and I got the correct results.

So, now I have dumped Google. I don't want my search engine to censor my information.

[Hefaistos]

Facebook shadow censorship hits Craig Murray.
"I am among those who argue that the strength of the state and corporate media is being increasingly and happily undermined by our ability to communicate via social media. But social media has developed in such a way that the channels of communication are dominated by corporations – Facebook, Twitter and Google – which can in effect turn off the traffic to a citizen journalism site in a second. The site is not taken down, and the determined person can still navigate directly to it, but the vast bulk of the traffic is cut off. What is more this is done secretly, without your being informed, and in a manner deliberately hard to detect."

Awful.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/04/blocked-by-facebook-and-the-vulnerability-of-new-media/

[sidd]

Apart from their panopticon tracting, Google has been gaming results for a long time.  About a decade or more ago, I noticed that pages which i knew existed had disappeared from their exhibited results. I quit dealing with them, except thru cutouts even before then.

duckduckgo,ixquick are alternatives, but i would not trust that their private keys are no compromised, and not only by state level actors. So i assume that my searches are known and might be scrutinized, no matter which engine i use. One defence is a personally controlled VPN or Tor, your searches may be seen but you remain anonymous as long as you are sufficiently careful.

And for a long time i have been caching copies of web resources on storage media under my control. As we see again with the recent wayback machine/Reid case, you cannot count on web resources remaining publicly available, even on archival sites. I was fortunate since i have always had access to copious storage resources, but these days a few terabyte USB drive is not so expensive.

After one has assembled a large enuf corpus, search and indexing becomes more difficult. I used to use a combination of opensource codes for that, these days i run Solr/Lucene from the Apache Foundation.

sidd

[TerryM]

Hefaistos
I'll switch to duckduckgo as soon as I post this.
Thanks


sidd
A sight much larger than this one was stripped from the internet and the archives were destroyed a few years ago. A notice was given but everyone assumed that archived copies would remain. Oh well.
We knew we were visiting a honey pot site for all the spooks out there, but no one expected everything to have been virtually sent to a crusher and melted down. When I first began lurking there were an excess of 9,000 pages of data & it was a full time job just keeping up with all of the new entries.
I wouldn't have had the courage to cash that site, and apparently no one else did either.


Yandex is a Russian search engine and apparently you can shield whatever you are doing from our spooks at least. 
Terry

[Neven]

The problem with social media is getting progressively worse (for left-leaning people and alternative media):

[Neven]

I still think some way needs to be found to prevent social media abuse by people/organisations with bad intentions, but don't know how. This non-existing propaganda used as counter-propaganda stuff is simply insane:

[etienne]

Would a solution be to prohibit anonymity on social media? No more nick names or pseudonyms, etc, only real names. Or pseudonyms, but showing the real names when clicking on them or some such.

Would that work? What would be the cons?

One of the problems of internet is that all what is written might be found back later. I remember writing a stupid comment in a forum around 1996 or 1997, and for many years after, when I was searching myself on Google, I found that comment. So anonymity is interesting when you discuss subjects that you don't really know and where you might say things that are really wrong or stupid.

This is also an argument against full transparency in parliamentary commissions and other political circles: if everything is open and public, if anything they say can be published, politicians might not say anything that is not fully controlled and this might increase the difficutly to find good deals.

[Red]

It occurred to me while reading the link below that if the population at large wanted to cause a multi-national corporation like facebook to commit suicide, all that has to be done is post links and stories about anti establishment crap and get them to ban you. At some point they will ban themselves out of business. Lets take this thought a little bit further. If these internet companies are going to work for the elites and warmongers of the world then maybe the way to stop this foolishness is to cause their rush to suck up to the ultra rich is to play their game back at them. Everybody who has twitter and facebook accounts that think this censorship is too Orwellian than get banned on purpose. Can you go without your crackbook or whatever for a couple of weeks? This censorship could be stopped  in that short of a time with enough participation. Take away their meal ticket and you will affect some change very swiftly I would think. I wouldn't think it wouldn't be too hard to change this course with the right people organizing it. If they lose enough accounts fast enough advertisers are going to run. Its algorithms that are doing the banning so by the time a human sees this problem they may well be already in dire straits.

https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=59592&utm_source=samizdat&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=free

Texas congressman Louie Gohmert has introduced a bill to remove social media companies' "special legal protections" if they behave like biased publishers rather than neutral platforms.

[Red]

Dear Minds,
Over the past few years, countless businesses and individuals have experienced a pattern of unethical and anti-competitive practices from Google, Facebook and other closed-source networks. These unfair practices, that we know of, include excessive surveillance, data mining, algorithm manipulation, subjective bans, inconsistent enforcement of terms and even complete de-platforming.
In response, Minds is suspending our support of all Google and Facebook products until the above mentioned items are resolved. Centralized payment platforms like Stripe (which powers Patreon) and PayPal have also been removed from our monetization systems and we are working tirelessly to evolve the Minds token into a true solution for creators. The beauty of the blockchain is that it cannot be censored.
For Android users, our mobile app can now be downloaded here: https://minds.com/mobile (also located in our footer under "Android").
A free and open Internet is our goal, and we urge others to join us. Privacy focused alternatives such as DuckDuckGo, Brave, Minds and many others are emerging and gaining momentum with this strategy. Let’s boycott Google, Facebook and other networks’ manipulative business models relying on proprietary software, censorship, surveillance and unfair monopolistic business practices. The movement to #DeleteFacebook and #BanGoogle is already underway (recently featured on Redacted Tonight and CNET). The platforms we give our energy to will become the future of the web.
Minds is prepared to take any and all steps necessary to protect your digital rights. We are powered by freedom -- the most powerful idea in human history. So we ask for your continued support in the ongoing fight for a free and open Internet by staying active on Minds and inviting your friends to join.
Sincerely,
The Minds Team


https://www.minds.com/blog/view/920414642387533824

[etienne]

I feel that I don’t really understand why people are on social medias like facebook. I checked the Minds page, looks good, but it really doesn’t interest me. I’m happy with the forum, I have a web page if I want to publish something, I can make comments on other people’s blogs, I have linkedin to stay in touch with ex-work colleges… I really don’t see why I would want more, but much more is possible without going on facebook type of application (blogs…). If I have something to say, I can always write an e-mail or make a phone call. I really don’t like the concept of publishing all the time what I do and think, I like to have some private space around my life, it’s also why you won’t find a picture of me if you google my name. I have also always refused to have a smart phone because I think that if something is important, people can call or make an SMS (just for fun, I designed this T-shirt that I never ordered https://schrondweiler.teemill.com/product/smarter-than-my-phone/). For professional reasons, I believe that I won’t be able to go much longer with just my old Nokia, but a tablet without SIM, with just WIFI as link to the Internet might be enough. During the last months, I have regularely borrowed a smart phone for a few hours, mainly for the camera feature and to check systems connected to the Internet. I also have been borrowing the kids tablets, but now that they grow older, they don't want that anymore.
Seeing what the kids do on social medias, I feel that it is mainly a waste of time. The old landlined telephone system would probably be more efficient for what they do. When they organize something, it always ends with a phone call to finalize the partical details. Looks more like playing a game than like a media to communicate.

[Neven]

I still think that prohibiting anonymity on social media platforms would solve a lot of problems:

[b_lumenkraft]

I still think de-privatising of social media platforms would solve a lot of problems.

And since we are on it, i would even go broader:

I really think de-privatising media would solve a lot of problems.

[SteveMDFP]

I still think de-privatising of social media platforms would solve a lot of problems.

And since we are on it, i would even go broader:

I really think de-privatising media would solve a lot of problems.

What would "de-privatising" look like?  Government ownership and control?  Seems to me the world has had problems with that model, too.

[b_lumenkraft]

Steve,

that's a good question. I think every nation needs to find out for themselves.

Personally, i like the German model. Every household pays on monthly basis an institution (GEZ) which is decoupled from the government but is a public entity acting within the boundary of strong regulations.

No one should be able to make money off of invading other peoples privacy but this is actually the situation we are in today.

I'm open to any constructive idea that would stop this malicious and manipulative business model. In general, i'm a big fan of free markets. But some things cannot be playthings of markets. Any kind of infrastructure falls into this category imho.

[SteveMDFP]

Steve,

that's a good question. I think every nation needs to find out for themselves.

Personally, i like the German model. Every household pays on monthly basis an institution (GEZ) which is decoupled from the government but is a public entity acting within the boundary of strong regulations.

No one should be able to make money off of invading other peoples privacy but this is actually the situation we are in today.

I'm open to any constructive idea that would stop this malicious and manipulative business model. In general, i'm a big fan of free markets. But some things cannot be playthings of markets. Any kind of infrastructure falls into this category imho.

Good response!  I'm not familiar with GEZ, but it sounds similar to the BBC funding model.  Publicly-funded, but by a formula that shields the programming from the shifting winds of any individual government. 

Perhaps independent media should be required to be non-profit entities?  That might also work.

[b_lumenkraft]

Yes, i think you can somehow compare it to the BBC.

The non-profit model might work for the US better since they hate socialism so much.

[Martin Gisser]

<snip, off-topic and pretty silly for someone with such a big brain; N.>

[Neven]

Re: " I maintain that ending anonymity on the Internet, would reduce a lot of the hate."

It might. But it will also take away a shield that some need.

The net is built on numerical addresses, not identities. If you want to mandate that all addresses must be associated with identifiable identities, you already got that, look up or subpoena the billing identity for that address.

But i think you want more that that, you want everyone with access to that originating address to be associated with an identifiable entity. You will find most of them are corporations. They sell access to joe blow from anytown, idaho to spout anything he wants. They harvest his data, know his hat size, look into his soul. You want the corporations to disclose his identity to all.

Good luck with that. But lets say you do force disclosure. Immediately, there will be hidden networks and  black market in identities. Gee, in fact, there already is ...

Now if you want to stop hidden networks, thats impossible. There is a theorem about steganography being fundamentally impossible to detect, one man's noise is another man's signal. That applies in spades to internet traffic. The earliest example on the internet that i recall was in message passing through tailored nameservice requests in the early nineties, but there are a myriad of other examples since.

Given sufficiently draconian law and enforcement, you could probably id all but a few percent of the users. NSA is already doin it, so is goofacetwit.

My position remains unchanged, I will not participate in a forum that forbids anonymity. Not because i am naive enuf to imagine that the identity associated with the user "sidd" on this forum is very hidden; in fact i think that anyone with half an hour on his hands could easily find my fone number and a street address. Rather because i cannot abide by the privacy violation of forcing identity disclosure.

sidd

I agree that it is practically impossible because corporations make huge profits off this diseased system. Still, it would help if on places like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter that reach the largest amount of people, it would be impossible to use pseudonyms, set up fake accounts or do Cambridge Analytica-style stuff.

As for the dark nets, how many people actually use those? I'm not completely useless with computers, but I've never considered delving into that stuff because of all the work it entails. 90% of the population are useless with computers or simply not interested.

Of course, there's the perhaps more interesting discussion of freedom vs censorship as well. If you could completely end anonymity, not only on the big social media channels, but on all of the Internet, would that morally be the right thing to do?

[oren]

I agree that it is practically impossible because corporations make huge profits off this diseased system. Still, it would help if on places like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter that reach the largest amount of people, it would be impossible to use pseudonyms, set up fake accounts or do Cambridge Analytica-style stuff.

As for the dark nets, how many people actually use those? I'm not completely useless with computers, but I've never considered delving into that stuff because of all the work it entails. 90% of the population are useless with computers or simply not interested.

Of course, there's the perhaps more interesting discussion of freedom vs censorship as well. If you could completely end anonymity, not only on the big social media channels, but on all of the Internet, would that morally be the right thing to do?

Oh dear. Obviously you are living in a (currently) civilized society.
When discussions (political or otherwise) turn threatening or violent, ending anonymity is a wonderful way to shut one side up and hand a major win to the bad guys. I know from experience, as for years I have shut up on political matters except thanks for the blessed anonymity of the Internet, or among close friends whom I know are of like mind.
You should see what terrible stuff people here write on Facebook under their real name. It is very similar to the same terrible things written in anonymous comments. Then you'll realize that removing anonymity will not prevent these brainwashed people from doing so, but will prevent the other side from responding (even weakly).
I personally think the problem of social media, and current life in general, is the lack of a moderator. All those lies on YouTube should be marked as lies, or even removed completely. All those fake news on Facebook should be filtered or removed. But we are living in a post-truth world, and I am not aware of a quick solution to the problem.
It used to be that knowing the truth (/science/knowledge) advanced you in life, either personally or through advancing the society you were part of. Thus evolution was on the side of truth. In post-modern society these advantages are too weak, and one can go on happily being ignorant and act in ways that cause long-term damage. The same applies for societies and whole countries, even the whole civilization. This state will not last forever, as evolution has a way to reassert itself over the long term. But of course, in the long term we will all be dead.

[sidd]

Re: how many on darknets ?

very few. At any given time there are a million or two machines on the Tor network. How many humans behind them ? dunno, but the fraction is probably less than 1% of all internet users.

The other darknets like I2P are much smaller than Tor. But remember there are huge darknets in the internal networks of large organizations inaccessible (without some effort) from the open net. And then there are private darknets run by actors who think it important not to be tracked but do not connect to Tor or the like. I run one myself, essentially just a series of encrypted tunnels with roughly constant traffic flow to evade traffic analysis. There are typically less than a dozen users, all personally known to me.

sidd