7 Facebook and the Dark Web: A Collision

“I2P: Who needs the IETF?”—From jrandom's collected I2P quotations Facebook's Tor hidden service, found at https://facebookcorewwwi.onion, is lightning in a bottle. It is at the intersection of all three legitimacies analyzed in this book: state delegation of rules and regulations to a standards body (in this case, the Internet Engineering Task Force [IETF]); corporate propriety (DigiCert, Facebook); nonprofit propriety (the Tor Project); hacker legitimacy (the [now disgraced] hacker wunderkind Jacob Appelbaum); and Dark Web authenticity (the notoriety of Silk Road). Thus, Facebook on Tor is an association of state-delegated power, respect of resources, and authenticity. It is also a symbol of the blurred lines between the Dark Web and the Clear Web, a collision of legitimation and delegitimation.