ABSTRACT

Drawing on Raymond William’s concept of the ‘magic system,’ this article argues that advertising on the Dark Web is a ‘dark magic system’. The article first defines ‘Dark Web’ and then analyzes over 300 banner advertisements appearing on Tor onion service search engines. The advertisements are categorized into navigation, individual vendors, services, and markets. Next, the article traces the associations the advertisements make between advertised objects and values. The predominant values the advertisements invoke include navigation, OPSEC politics, and a justification to exploit the openness of others. The article then traces the limits of the dark magic system, including the system’s inability to offer metrics, the problems of ‘onion cloners,’ and the constant threat of scams. The article concludes with an argument that the dark magic system is incapable of addressing the sort of anonymized political communication the Dark Web might afford.

摘要

本文借鉴 Raymond William 的“魔法系统”概念，认为暗网上的广告是一种“黑暗魔法系统”。文章首先定义了“暗网”，然后分析了 Tor 洋葱服务搜索引擎上出现的 300 多个横幅广告。广告被分类为导航、个体供应商、服务和市场。接下来，文章追踪广告在广告对象和值之间建立的关联。广告调用的主要价值包括导航、OPSEC 政治以及利用他人开放性的理由。然后，文章追溯了暗魔法系统的局限性，包括系统无法提供指标、“洋葱克隆者”的问题以及持续存在的诈骗威胁。