Twitter Joins Facebook, BBC, Others with Mirror Site Launch
Muffett participated in the development of the mirror site and called the announcement “possibly his most important and long-awaited tweet” he’d ever written. He already had experience with this, having led the team that set up the Facebook Onion service in 2014.
Twitter itself has added Tor to its list of supported browsers. However, the platform has not made an official announcement. Muffett explains why: “Past experience with the Facebook and BBC Onion sites tells us that a big announcement leads to a spike in crowds. Since @TwitterSafety has 3.6 million followers, that would not be wise at a time of global crisis.” After all, a spike could lead to the website crashing immediately.
Onion Mirror for Russia
The launch of Twitter’s Onion website follows the increasingly strict restrictions of the internet in Russia. On Friday, the Kremlin blocked Facebook altogether and imposed restrictions on Twitter. News sites, such as BBC, Voice of America, and Deutsche Welle, have also been blocked in the country. These sites also have a Tor mirror, so that they remain available to everyone. However, the Twitter mirror is available around the world, even where Twitter is blocked, such as China, Iran, and North Korea. In these authoritarian countries high on internet censorship, citizens will still be able to use the social platform via the Tor browser. This means if Russia creates a kind of protected .ru zone — thus separating itself from the world wide web — Twitter will remain available to Russian citizens who use the Tor browser.
What is the Tor Browser?
The Onion Router (TOR) is a special internet browser that allows anonymity. It is a worldwide network of servers that allow you to communicate anonymously online. When you use Tor, your internet traffic is routed through these different servers that encrypt and decrypt your data. Because of this redirection and encryption, your online traffic cannot be traced back to you. The Tor browser also lets users access the dark web. Though the dark web is often associated with illegal and illicit activity, these kinds of hidden, un-indexed mirror sites also exist on this part of the internet. Twitter’s new mirror site joins the ranks of our list of websites on the dark web worth visiting. If you’re interested in venturing down the dark web, don’t just leap in headfirst. We’ve compiled a step-by-step guide for accessing dark web sites safely and securely.
