New Books in Economic and Business History Ben Collier on Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy
Mar 30, 2026
Paula Bialski, Associate Professor of Digital Sociology who studies digital communities, and Ben Collier, Senior Lecturer and author focused on Tor, digital infrastructure, and cybersecurity ethnography. They explore Tor’s origins, how it provides anonymity through volunteer relays, the community tensions and maintenance that keep it running, and how Tor might be integrated into future privacy-preserving tools.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Fieldwork Took Me To Hacker Festivals
- Fieldwork in Tor involved attending three kinds of real-world gatherings: academic conferences, NGO conferences, and hacker festivals.
- Ben enjoyed hacker events most, describing vivid scenes like people riding giant mechanized spiders at Hereford.
Join Tech Communities By Contributing
- To join closed technical communities, participate and contribute rather than wait passively for access.
- Ben entered Tor by presenting at conferences and doing small contributions so people recognized and engaged with him.
Usability Made Tor Successful
- Tor succeeded by trading extreme technical security options for speed and usability, which attracted many more users and thus more anonymity.
- Ben explains the design choice to prioritize performance over maximal security created a larger crowd to hide within.
