The Infamous Deep Web

Deep web, Deepnet, the Invisible Web, the Undernet or the hidden Web are all names given to the content that is not part of indexed information (indexed information meaning anything categorized by search engines such as Google).  The deep web has sparked many conversation on the internet, people retelling stories of their ventures to it, usually leading to a lot of controversy and speculation and even being discussed on some news sites.  With the help of a little in depth research of others accounts, I want to try and debunk some of the mystification behind it all.

Disclaimer: If you wish to surf the deep web, do so under your own risk.  However, I do not endorse doing so.  Furthermore, I have not/nor plan on ever traversing this side of the internet (most of it sounds terrifying even if there’s some good stuff out there).  All information gathered is other people’s accounts and I have tried my best to weed through what may seem like ‘fake’ claims.

What is it? And how do you get to it?

As mentioned before it is all the bits of the internet that are not indexed by any search engine.  Its size is immense holding an estimated 7,500 terabytes (only 19 TB found on the surface web).  The deep webs information is on a very, very large variety of topics.   Information created on the deep web is also done by a variety of different people from hackers, drug dealers, pedophiles to government officials, scientists, police and many more.  It contains information

that strictly speaking is off the record.  For example, everything that WikiLeaks leaked to the gen

eral public, was floating around the deep web for years prior to it’s release.  To obtain access to this part of the web, there are first a few things that need to be understood.  Firstly, many computer viruses originate here and there are hackers out there (although the common misconception is that they’re all out to get you, even though that’s not true it’s better to be safe than sorry), so before even thinking about accessing it, make sure your antivirus is up and running at it’s strongest level of protection.  Additionally, to protect your identity, you’re going to need to download a browser called Tor.  Tor was created to keep a strong presence of anonymity specifically for the navy (and it later became a public browser), by routing your internet traffic through different servers around the world, as well as encrypting the information multiple times over.  With this you can now start making your way through the deep web (although, a little more googling into what more you can do to protect yourself wouldn’t hurt, such as the use of a VPN and covering your webcam).  Since the deep web isn’t indexed sites such as The Hidden Wiki

Screenshot of the Hidden Wiki. Click the image to read an article about this darker side of the deep web and for more screenshots

exist to ‘assist’ in the navigation. It lists user made indexes and search engines specifically created for the deep web, a definite place to start your ‘adventures’.

The Dark Side

Most of the things on the ‘surface’ of the deep web are rather dark and gruesome. On the Hidden Wiki you can find links to anything from hired assassins, drug dealers, forged IDs (including passports), illegal firearm purchases and many more.  As mentioned in a news article by Christopher Williams the Technology Correspondent for the Telegraph, “it is a place where rape and murder are openly advertised…” and to some these may seem like the worst things to ever exist.  However, there are darker and more terrifying monsters lurking about.   Business Insider did a little ‘tour’ so to speak of some of the links present on the Hidden Wiki and found slightly more disturbing sites, such as ones The Human Experiment.  This site holds the gruesome details of medical professionals who experiment on unwilling patients, whether this is simply a hoax or something more is difficult to say, thanks to the anonymity of the deep web identifying who these ‘medical professionals’ are poses as quite a feat.  After reading some other people’s accounts about surfing the deep web, I can genuinely say I was shocked beyond belief.  One that really stood out to me was about a site called normal porn for normal people, of course with a title like that one would expect some kind of pornographic material.  However, there was none, it was just very strange short videos (you can read the whole story here), although seeming harmless while I was reading about it, it quickly turns dark and ominous.

So why not shut it down?

Dark things exist on the surface internet as well (especially if you know how to look for them), but does that give enough reason to shut it down? No, there is too much useful information and good things out there.  Similarly with the deep web, shutting it down would seem like the ideal thing to do, but using it for things such as online research are still a possibility (although more difficult with the lack of indexed information), including access to government documents and scientific papers that are posted in the deep web due to their sensitive nature and the author(s) not wanting to be tied to it.  There are also sites such as one created by Young & Sick a music project that released it’s newest single to the deep web, also WikiLeaks uses the deep web as a method for people to upload sensitive documents for them anonymously.  There are also ‘joke’ sites such as PoopSenders.com, from which you can send a gift of, that’s right, poop to anyone in the world and do it completely anonymously.  The internet must not be slandered, after all humans created it, and when given the freedom to whatever (such as the case with the deep web) we will run rampant with it creating everything and anything.  The deep web does not have much mainstream traffic currently, as many don’t know how to get to it or don’t even know it exists.  So even with all those sensitive things out there not many people will be aware of them, it’s relatively harmless.  Of course the issue of this vast criminal underworld still stands, due to the immense anonymity, doing something about it is strikes nigh impossible.

Social Media: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Social media has taken our world by storm.  It is no longer possible to go out somewhere, without seeing a “Like us on Facebook” or “Follow us on Twitter” attached to almost every company out there, whether it be on a billboard or a commercial.  The uprising of social media began in around 2009  (as depicted in this Google Trends graph).  Of course by this time, Twitter already existed and by the next year had 50 million tweets a day, as well as being ranked the third highest social networking site in January 2009.  In addition, during this time Facebook overtook MySpace, while MySpace struggled with a mass loss of membership.  There are of course many more social media sites (YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, Pintrest,  etc.), but these two are the main ones that almost everyone has either used or still does use it.

There is no doubt when it comes to the fact that social media, has become a part of our lives, to the point that it can affect us in any way, be it negative or positive.

The Good

Thanks to sites like Facebook, it makes it possible and easy for all of us to keep in contact with family and friends who may not live in the same country as us.  This is something that personally I find important, as I have friends who are studying in England and Scotland and many family members scattered across Eastern and Northern Europe.  In a survey done with 2277 adults, 67% percent claimed that their major reason for using a social media platform was simply to keep in touch with friends and family.  The article which discusses this survey (and can be found here), further goes on to discuss how reconnecting with old friends is also an important aspect of using social media sites.

In addition to keeping in touch with others, social media sites (specifically ones like Twitter and Reddit) are a great way to keep up with what is going on in the world around us.  People are becoming less and less dependent on traditional media (televised news reports, newspapers).  Social media sites make it easy to communicate within seconds to people who may be half way across the world from a certain incident.  Additionally, many print newspapers are now stopping their printing and moving their news to the internet because as depicted in the information graphic below, 50% of people will find out about breaking news via social media than traditional media, even if that information may not always be entirely accurate.

A great visual explanation of how many of us are switching to relying on social media for our news reports.

The Bad

As mentioned above having the news reported to you by some sort of social media it very efficient and quick; however, the information may not always be entirely true, or it even might be an entirely made up story.  It is definitely a good idea to check the sources of information rather than taking it to heart. For example, the Onion is a satirical website, that has hilariously outrageous and completely untrue “news reports”.

An example of these fake news reports, was one created by the Onion, that claimed Kim Jong Un the “Sexist man alive for 2012”, or the “cut for Bieber” incident in which 4chan (specifically the forum known as /b/), in which they created a Twitter trend to have fans of Bieber cut themselves so he would stop smoking marijuana (which is something he supposedly does not do).

 

The Ugly

So far I have covered what good social media has in store for us and also the bad things, how anyone with a Twitter account and internet access can pretend to be a reporter, whether or not the information is always true can be questionable.

Now on to the darker side of social media.  As undermentioned, pays a big role in most peoples lives to the point that it can effect them emotionally.

Less than six months ago, Amanda Todd, a 15 year old girl who committed suicide due to cyber bullying.  As a young girl would frequent video chats, during one of which she was asked to show her breasts and then was then immediately blackmailed by the individual to do more,  or the photo of her breast would be shown to her friends.

A few months later the photo was on the internet and about a year later, the individual created a Facebook page, with the photo as the profile picture and began contacting her schoolmates. She was teased and made fun of in school which lead to her making a  YouTube video titled “My Story: Struggling, bullying, suicide and self harm”.  Needless to say the video is a heart wrenching one, in which she discusses how she was bullied both online and in real life and how she attempted to take her life previously before. It is a tragic thing to see such a young girl who had barely lived her life to want to take her, all because of the simplicity created from being able to hide behind an online identity (no body said that your Facebook or Twitter identities had to be real).

Another example of the ugly side of social media, is its ability to promote “ideal body types”, which can usually turns young girls to eating disorders to try and achieve that ideal body.  Since almost everyone posts pictures of themselves on social media sites (be it Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, etc.) it is easy to compare oneself to another and become extremely self-conscious. For example, many eating disorder communities have turned to Tumblr, using tags such as: “pro ana and thinspo”, attempting to make it seem glamorous to have concave stomach and severely sticking out clavicles, when in fact this is extremely unhealthy.  They even promote and motivate other girls to join this type of lifestyle (more about this can be read here).

 

What now?

Well social media is not going anywhere any time soon, it is going to be part of our lives for a very long time and of course that gives us the possibility to make it into a powerful tool.  However, in order to achieve that we are going to need to find a way to weed out all or most of the false information and also find a way to protect people from being cyber bullied anonymously.

Piracy: Economic Crisis or A Good Thing?

Let’s go back to the 1990s for a moment, when music was still being recorded on tapes and mp3s were just being introduced.  Back then piracy was a lesser topic in society, even though it was still happening.  Songs were being recorded on to tapes off of the radio.  But was it really all that bad? Some will argue that this is where seeds of our piracy issues today where planted.  However, there is also another view on this; piracy has the ability to increase sales revenues, in a few simple steps.  For example, a song is illegally downloaded or shared, next one of two things happen, either the user does not enjoy it and does not continue to download anymore content from that artist or they do enjoy it, see the artist as a promising one and are therefore motivated to buy the actual music and support the artist.  The artist gets the money they deserve and the user does not have feel ripped off for buying an album that turns out crappy.  This “process” could be used to get rid of the music industry middleman or at least the advertising aspect, thus saving heaps of money that are uselessly spent and that could go to the artist instead.

Piracy is not necessarily make musicians lose money, but rather the fat cats that sit atop label companies and such.  So is piracy making our economies lose money, or is someone just not making the amount of millions they would want? Even if sales for music have dropped, their loss  is being made up by other types of media. In the Guardian, Charles Arthur makes a very important point: the money being lost in the [UK] music industry is being made up in by the video game industry and even DVD purchases, as shown in the information graphic from his post here.

In the USA there was a MPAA (with the help of the IPI) claims that piracy costs the US economy around $58 billion. That number along with the loss of jobs associated with that were found to possibly not be entirely true. As discovered by Businessweek that IPI was not an entirely honest organization and that an IPI employee admitted to taking bribes and fabricating material.

The exact reasons as to why the number of $58 billion seems entirely unreasonable is explained by Rob Reid in his quick “The $8 billion iPod” Ted Talk:

So why are music industries making this seems like an economic crisis?  It is their own salaries.  This infographic “The Music Industry and Online Piracy” offers a great visual breakdown for what is really happening to the money.  To sum up, music sales have decreased over time, but the salaries keep going up.  It is not the artists that are making more money, for every album sold the artist will get about $1-1.60 (depending on the album cost).  Where as the retail/label overheads and marketing/promotion will get double or triple that amount and these are the main group who complain about piracy and its damage to the economy.

Personally, I think piracy could come to some good, but if and only if they middle man was cut out.  If we got rid of the labels, who think they deserve more money than the artists themselves and money from purchasing an album (be it as a CD or digital) mostly went to the artist rather than the measly 1-2% they get today.  Even so with how everything is now in the music industry there is no way it affects the economy as it has been claimed to.  Simply put music is becoming an old form of entertainment.  As it loses revenue, video games for example, have an immense revenue and can easily replace the losses of the music industry.

If we ever do come to a conclusion on piracy as a society, I hope we will see a decrease in music industries presence (and salaries) and an increase in support of good artists and their work.

The internet creates a whole new world of power for the music industry, but that has yet to be properly harnessed.