I don’t think any typical internet user would accept Tor’s latency. User behavior has indicated again and again that convenience and frictionless-ness is the overriding priority for the majority. I appreciate the work done by the Tor community, but I also think we need to be realistic about what the threat model is and what viable solutions are on the table:
* If you’re concerned about the MAANGs of the world hoovering data for targeted adverts I think you’d get far more traction with aggressive privacy legislation and brutal oversight, or (and I recognize this is extreme) straight nationalization of some of their products with a mandate to operate them in the public interest like PBS or the Beeb
* If you’re concerned about an authoritarian state actor Tor was pwned years ago. TBH I think trying to win against ex. US TLAs in straight cryptography or protocol supremacy is kind of a fools errand (you’re ultimately going to get clobbered purely on the resource differential) and that the best bet is security through obscurity.
Just my 2c, maybe overly fatalistic so curious about counter views
* If you’re concerned about the MAANGs of the world hoovering data for targeted adverts I think you’d get far more traction with aggressive privacy legislation and brutal oversight, or (and I recognize this is extreme) straight nationalization of some of their products with a mandate to operate them in the public interest like PBS or the Beeb
* If you’re concerned about an authoritarian state actor Tor was pwned years ago. TBH I think trying to win against ex. US TLAs in straight cryptography or protocol supremacy is kind of a fools errand (you’re ultimately going to get clobbered purely on the resource differential) and that the best bet is security through obscurity.
Just my 2c, maybe overly fatalistic so curious about counter views