> It is sad to watch the Tor Project implode.

I don't see this as an implosion. I am not fond of the majority of SJW rhetoric as a lot of the defenses seen in those circles seem to be constructed as thought-terminating cliché.

I have much respect for Virgil, but I also think Tor is in need of a rebrand at home.

Ancap/cypherpunk messages are not agreeable to the mainstream, and they do not maintain a project when it becomes this close to mainstream. The common Western observer begins to equate the network with the abusive practices inherent in anonymous communication. The average user sees "Tor" and thinks "child porn" or "drug dealers", or "Mr. Robot" hacker types. These are things that economic resources that have to answer to Western political authorities will run from, and if the project needs funding, it needs to have a feel-good message that supporters can parrot to politicians and others that actually have power.

I, too, am an anarchocapitalist cypherpunk type. But I'm realistic enough to recognize you can only push that platform so far as an organization scales. Most people still won't care.

Full disclosure: I am not affiliated with Tor, but I have run relays in the past and will likely run more in the future.

> I have much respect for Virgil, but I also think Tor is in need of a rebrand at home.

Thanks! I love you too.

> These are things that economic resources that have to answer to Western political authorities will run from, and if the project needs funding, it needs to have a feel-good message that supporters can parrot to politicians and others that actually have power.

This is a totally reasonable response. I would be delighted if Tor Project could make a pronouncement like this.

As a reply, I saw no indication they were having trouble appeasing western authorities---e.g., they had no trouble getting DARPA money for the big MEMEX project. They are voluntarily cutting themselves off from defense because they dislike the politics of the funders. Instead, they are piloting themselves into a position where they are forced to take money from human-rights funders just to stay afloat. And becoming "Human Rights Watch for Nerds", makes Tor work vastly more difficult in the Asia Pacific.

I agree with you that Tor could use a rebrand, but this is a poor choice of one.

The problem is that the average or "mainstream" person does not care about privacy, or even human rights. Not really.

The second they learn that tor can and will be used to spread "hate speech" or the classic CP, Drugs, Terrorism, the "mainstream" will (and is currently) demand that Tor sacrifice privacy in the name of defending Social Justice, stopping terrorism, ending CP, or catching drug dealers.

Under new board of Tor, and this new direction I fear Tor will cave to these demands.

Edit..

and just to be clear. Social Justice is not the same as Human Rights. People of late seem to be confusing the 2.

So long as the technology continues to work I will continue to support it through donations and running nodes. People who need services like Tor do not care about mission statements or director drama. They need something to protect their privacy and Tor does that. Until that changes you should continue to support the network.

Kicking out a serial abuser from their ranks = Social Justice?

Clearly you do not follow the Project closely or the inner workings of the Project if you believe Jacob Applebaum was the only person in the project forced or kicked out.

Thanks for being condescending instead of offering up more information to someone, who in fact does not follow the Project closely.

Sad, isn't it? It's even sadder that there are people who use terms like "social justice" as epithets. I don't know that I've ever met one of these "SJWs" in real life (and I live in the Bay Area FFS) but I've met so many effing people who have somehow convinced themselves that not only do these people exist, but they exist in such large numbers as to have an influence on what other people are or are not allowed to say.

At this point I'm 99% sure that (a) SJW backlash is some form of mass hysteria where large groups of people have convinced themselves and each other that these people exist in vastly greater numbers than they actually do (I'm talking multiple orders of magnitude) and (b) many of the most vocal anti-SJW warriors (let's call them ASJWWs) are simply people who at some point in their lives had experiences where they were being a-holes (probably without realizing it), and somebody called them out on it, but rather than learning from the experience and feeling slightly guilty about being a jerk, they decided it was all a big conspiracy against courageous truth-tellers such as themselves.

All based on anecdotal evidence of course, but I'm old enough (and have lived in every corner of the US, around pretty much every demographic there is) to have accumulated an embarrassing amount of anecdotal evidence on this topic.

"social justice" is nothing more than mob rule.

Having taught in academia/higher education before moving to the private sector, these clowns use public shaming techniques to silence people of differing opinions using threats of intimidation and violence.

It's completely anti-ethical to a healthy society where free speech is stifled socially, to say nothing of a lack of govt interference.

tl;dr, pull your head out of your ass

So, either there's a global conspiracy to silence you, or you might be immature and/or kind of a jerk. Go back and read what you literally just wrote right here on HN; one of these is far more likely than the other.

that is not the only 2 options,

It does not need to be a conspiracy for SJW to be a movement.

Try none of the above! There is no "large scale movement" that I can see, this literally only exists in your imagination. If you say something that pisses people off, you could blame their negative reaction on (1) some abstract "movement" that is brainwashing people on a large scale, or (2) you could be voicing an unpopular opinion, or (3) you could be deeply wrong in whatever this truth is that you feel like you can't say. Just because someone takes exception to something you say doesn't mean that there's some grand conspiracy to silence you, although I'm sure believing that makes you feel better about yourself.

There is a difference between "taking an exception" and shouting someone down

Here are some example in everyday real life that have occurred recently and been recorded, situations like I link below happen every day, and are often never recorded. There are also HUGE numbers of people that self censor so as to not draw that attention of the rabid SJW.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMT3vuSQk3g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeNJFz-WCZs

It should be pointed out, that the people shooting the video believed they were in the right, believe they where showing the world a bigot, or racist, or misogynist. They believe their actions is the proper reaction to encountering such a person. So the question I posit to you is. Do you agree with their actions, would you agree with their actions if the target of their rage would have actually been a racist, or misogynist?

If you believe these are proper reactions, and the persons in the video are simply "calling out" behavior they dislike, then you prove my point that you are infact a SJW and can not identify them because of that fact.

The people highlighted in the video are I admit extreme example, but not too extreme. SJW is a raising trend, it started probably 10 years or so ago in Universities, and is spread on a massive scale to HR dept's in major companies, and to every day interactions like the ones shown in the video.

It is not a conspiracy, it is reality.