While we completely understand why some people were annoyed that we did not post the interview, we would like to address some claims with a detailed explanation of why this interview was not posted, we will add more answers here if we will feel its needed. these are the common claims and question that people raised about not posting the interview and what we have to say about them:
Original post was here
*** We have zero interest with going into discussion about the morals of this topic in general – just about posting / not posting the interview.
Claim: But the poll results were in favor of posting, and you ignored them.
1. It was clearly stated on the poll that it is tool to help us decide – not the verdict.
2. True that more people wanted it to be posted – but those who didn’t want it, had much better arguments that we agree with.
3. We feel the poll was a mistake, but we have no practical way to go back in time to fix this now. so we will just have to live with the results.
Claim: You are promoting Censorship / Preventing Free Speech
How about we just post the site admin details here and let anyone post anything he wants so? this will be true freedom of speech! well this not how freedom of speech works.
Freedom of speech means not censoring others when they say something, it DOES NOT mean that you have to provide anyone who wishes with a stage to say what he wants on your own private property without any terms – and especially when you have to deal with some consequences that will not be in your favo. He is 100% free to go and interview elsewhere. it also does not mean that you have no right shutting your own mouth, what we did.
And:
1. There is also Freedom of choice – we choose not to publish this.
2. Freedom of speech is also the freedom to not saying whatever you do not want to say – and we choose not to say.
3. Not posting whatever you do not want to post is not censorship, its called editorial decision, he have strict process for that, and after a long review of this interview by many people, and getting many comments trough various channels we decided that its not wanted here.
4. The ONLY topic we will post freely about is Darknetmarkets related information – and even than, only when we decide it has practical or informational value, not general gossip or yellow information. anything else is relevant for us only we decide that its relevant.
Claim: All information should be freely accessible
It is freely accessible, just log on to their sites and you can read similar stories as much as you want, you could even do your own interview and than post it on your site, we wont condone that. however, we wont host it on our site.
Claim: This was all just Publicity Stunt
This claim is outright dumb, if we wanted more publicity than posting the poll, waiting a couple of days and than posting the interview was the right thing to do to get better publicity, it would have gotten us way more traffic than not posting the interview. we have media channels asking for a copy of this interview, which we did not provide them with. we might change our decision in the future.
Claim: It shows what makes them “tick”/ it contains valuable information that can help prevent abuse.
No its not. period. its just yellow information about his personal life and how fun they are. nothing that can help “harm reduction”.
Our Claim: This interview will be very offensive to MANY readers
Correct. Many of them contacted us asking to not post this. this is a huge consideration to us even if its just 25% of the people who voted, its more than enough loyal readers we do not want to upset. the vast majority of the others completely understands our decision, and a small minority is annoyed by it.
Our Claim: The Interview Contains at least some percent of false information
Correct. We know about at least couples of lies in there – while we cannot confirm some others, and the rest we can confirm to some degree. we don’t like posting false info. this was confirmed by some people contacting us and confirming themselves as members of his community. you can see a couple of them in the comments (although they mistaken him for another guy).
Our Claim: It Will serve mostly as advertising, no matter how bad we will make it look
Its stated clearly on the interview, we have no wish people learning trough our site about his “save haven” and how find it is. and thats even before it will attract many comments from his community and more traffic to our site from his friends, just from analyzing the traffic the poll sent us trough Google – we were shocked to see what kind of search queries such post is attracting, helping those who wish to find the stuff they are looking for, the interview will have much larger impact and will attract more unwanted traffic that will advertise unwanted activities. we want to avoid that. or at least not contribute to it.
Question: So why did you post poll to begin with?
We wanted to get some indication about how to deal with this sensitive matter, we believe now that it was a mistake, but we have no realistic way to fix it other than explaining. if you have any idea, why are open to suggestions.
Suggestion: You can publish this somewhere else
This interview is our property that we spent time and resources working on, if it will be posted anywhere it will be only when and if we decide it should, and under the terms we will find fit, we see no reason to do it at this time just for the sake of posting it.
Question: Would you publish an interview with Ross Ul or hold it back because he allegedly called for the murder of many people?
He was not charged with murder on his indictment, he did not admit murder, and he did not kill anyone, so yes, on the other hand the guy on the interview admitted doing some terrible stuff, and is proud of them. so its not exactly the same.
Claim: You post about drugs and drugs are also an offensive matter
We do not promote drugs and do not condone it – we promote safe use of Darknetmarkets and responsible drug use, if this interview could have helped reduce child abuse, we would post it without even thinking about it, but it wont (this is the main reason we conducted it, but it didn’t work).
?: This website seems much more like a blog than it does a news site
We never claimed otherwise, we just post about stuff we find interesting or useful , and apparently some people chooses to read them, we never defined our site as anything. it was external people who defined us, so call us what you will.
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Hope this clears up most questions, we will add more if we see any.
I’ll reply to what I see as the most important parts of this post.
>We never claimed otherwise, we just post about stuff we find interesting or useful , and apparently some people chooses to read them, we never defined our site as anything. it was external people who defined us, so call us what you will.
You do claim otherwise. Not only do you act like it’s news, but you explicitly call it news (http://www.deepdotweb.com/category/deepdot-news/). That’s just one example. Also, I just want to point out the subtle irony of using “we”, which when used by a single writer (even if the blog has multiple people contributing) is generally used by companies and news sites. Using it on a blog, even if there are multiple people, tries to give an impression of authority and officiality. I’m irritating that I can’t find a scientific article I found a while back that explained that part much better than I do (about blogs that have the personality and actions of news sites, but lack in any substantive new information).
>1. There is also Freedom of choice – we choose not to publish this.
Actually, there’s no such thing as freedom of choice. Sure, you’re allowed not to publish it, but then again you’re also technically allowed to delete this comment if you don’t like that I disagree with you, and we can all agree that /that/ would be censorship, right? And please don’t say anything about “well it’s not like I’m censoring /him/, just not posting it on /my/ blog. Feel free to do the interview elsewhere.”, because you could say the same about deleting my comment if you do/did (“it’s not like I’m censoring /you/, just not posting it on /my/ blog. Feel free to comment on my blog elsewhere.”
>2. Freedom of speech is also the freedom to not saying whatever you do not want to say – and we choose not to say.
Actually it’s not. While not saying something is not freedom of speech, you are right though in saying that it doesn’t technically violate the first amendment in America. But that doesn’t make it “wrong” even if it’s legal.
>No its not. period. its just yellow information about his personal life and how fun they are. nothing that can help “harm reduction”.
Do you have any reason to say that? It doesn’t have to directly help harm reduction to be useful. From the perspective of a psychologist, any information a person gives out about themselves that makes them differ from others is useful in finding out what “makes them tick”, even if it sounds sensationalist. And this especially so. You say it can’t do harm reduction but that’s really not true! The more information that is out there, the easier it will be for people to find out how to safely treat pedophilia (or at least pedophile rapists who put children at risk) so both parties are better off. This can’t happen when the only understanding is “pedophilia is an evil sin and there’s no way to cure it so let’s give up and just keep trying to arrest them without preventing the abuse in the first place”.
>Claim: All information should be freely accessible
It’s not like we’re forcing you to write a whole blog post, just to link to what you /already have/. You have information, you decided to leave us in the dark on purpose. That is censorship, plain and simple. Yeah, it may not be censorship if you refused the interview in the first place, but when you already have it and keep it to yourself, then that is censorship.
>Our Claim: This interview will be very offensive to MANY readers
Your site is offensive to MANY human beings around the world.
>This interview is our property that we spent time and resources working on, if it will be posted anywhere it will be only >when and if we decide it should, and under the terms we will find fit, we see no reason to do it at this time just for the sake of >posting it.
For such a supposedly freedom-oriented website, claiming intellectual property is pretty low.
>He was not charged with murder on his indictment, he did not admit murder, and he did not kill anyone, so yes, on the other >hand the guy on the interview admitted doing some terrible stuff, and is proud of them. so its not exactly the same.
The person in the interview didn’t necessarily rape children himself, but if he’s a bad person he would if he could (if I am incorrect and he did admit to such a thing, please don’t attack the substance of this specific argument because I was wrong on one assumption, because if he did rape anyone, in all likelihood you would still withhold the information in the interview had he raped no one). Ross didn’t actually kill anyone, but if it wasn’t a sting then he would have. And honestly, I think looking at pictures is not as bad as ending a person’s life (disclaimer: just because I say murder is worse than looking at pictures of abuse does not mean I condone or think those pictures are good or moral, just that utterly ending a life is worse than forcing someone to have sex, because when you end a life you have /no/ chance of recovery, whereas rape, you have a very good chance of mental recovery if you get the right kind of therapy, or depending on your personality, just time alone for the next few weeks). Also, just because someone is proud of doing something terrible is not in any way whatsoever an excuse to withhold an interview.
>We do not promote drugs and do not condone it – we promote safe use of Darknetmarkets and responsible drug use, if this >interview could have helped reduce chile abuse, we would post it without even thinking about it, but it wont (this is the main >reason we conducted it, but it didn’t work).
The very argument you’re using against posting the interview is often used directly against your own website. It could be argued, often quite convincingly, that giving access to “safe use” of such markets actually causes more harm than it does good. But you of course will not read this, look into it, then say “sorry guys but I have to shut my site down now, it’s drawing too many people into drug use”. This is a tremendous double standard.
Literally everything you have said so far was either utterly irrelevant, or downright incorrect. However, while I do understand your decision (although I disagree with the accuracy of your mostly unfounded reasoning), you should not defend it by putting up so many unrelated or minimally related excuses. You should say, plain and simple, “I believe for reason X that posting this interview would draw more traffic to child pornography websites, for this reason Y, posting information about the dark web will not.” Then it’s up to you to have sufficient evidence (or at least decent speculation) to back reasons X and Y. Right now, you are not doing that. You give a weak attempt at speculating on reason X (although it’s based on assumptions which you yourself use to argue against, such as giving people freedom or anonymity networks is bad because it may draw in bad people, whereas now that it suites you in a way to back up your decision, you suddenly about-face and use it as an argument). You give absolutely nothing about reason Y.
Even if you’re a blog, when you have so many visitors (don’t even get me started on the “we don’t want more traffic” thing), it’s a huge disservice to be so tremendously biased. Yes, just because a lot of the world is biased as well, swinging in the opposite direction is also bias. If you wanted to be unbiased, you would make no claims about the “evil” of pedophilia or even child porn, and the “awesomeness” of drug-dealing black market sites, and instead give the straight facts, no censorship, and no obvious personal agenda.
One more thing, and I don’t mean this to be a last snide remark or anything, but you very often have many spelling, typo, and grammar mistakes in your posts, like “chile” instead of “child” and never capitalizing sentences. It may just be me but on a large blog like this, you should put some effort into proofreading so it comes across a bit better.
I do appreciate your detailed comment, but you will just force me to repeat some stuff i have already explained or just make me be a bit more accurate with my choosing of words, but you seem smart enough to understand that.
And if to be quite honest, i am no going to be dedicating too much time to keep discussing this subject as i have made my stand pretty clear while we have moved on to more productive work, i have left this post to respect those who asked for an explanation.
So, i will address the only part from your comment i find important –
“The person in the interview didn’t necessarily rape children himself” – Yes he did, he was very eager to tell about it. enough said.
About freedom of speech – im not talking about American laws, but about my right as a human (who is not American) to say/not say whatever i want, especially when i have to bare consequences i do not wish to bare, as i said, its been already explained.
EDIT: Oh my god! i just read your last part. did you write all of this just to say at the end “while I do understand your decision”?
And than you said: “You should say, plain and simple” etc’…… Which is exactly what i said in one of my reasons.
About my spelling – yes, im not a native English speaker, and unfortunately i have no proofreader who is quick enough to respond, and that doesn’t work with my editorial needs, so yeah, its a problem.
I’ll volunteer to proof read for you.
Go For it :)
You can start with this post
Oh man.
>(if I am incorrect and he did admit to such a thing, please don’t attack the substance of this specific argument because I was wrong on one assumption, because if he did rape anyone, in all likelihood you would still withhold the information in the interview had he raped no one).
It’s odd that one of the only things you point out is one of thing things I specifically thought you’d point out as if it has any relevance whatsoever. It doesn’t matter if he’s so proud that he puts it on a tattoo, all that matters is that the interview contains new information which otherwise we would never come to understand on our own.
>And if to be quite honest, i am no going to be dedicating too much time to keep discussing this subject as i have made my stand pretty clear while we have moved on to more productive work
To me and many other people, you have not made yourself clear anymore than the person in the interview thought he made himself clear. By assuming that you have made yourself clear, you are just trying to halt or reduce any criticisms against you by making it look like you’re “so obviously right that you don’t even have to explain yourself more”.
>About freedom of speech – im not talking about American laws, but about my right as a human (who is not American) to >say/not say whatever i want, especially when i have to bare consequences i do not wish to bare, as i said, its been already >explained.
That’s not very good to say… You’re begging the question. It’s not a natural human right. If it was, and if speech is defined as information transmission with a value, then something bad like child porn could be considered free speech. Now, technically it is free speech, but it’s an exception to the “right” because it can be harmful to create (again, I say “can” because not all child porn is harmful, there’s nothing immoral or evil about photos at a nudist beach, the bad things come from rape and any forced sex). To say it’s a “right” as if that’s a self-evident fact is not a very wise thing to do. There is no such thing as a “right”, because everything is circumstantial. Unfortunately, I believe you are failing to realize that your censorship does not fit a circumstance where it’s warranted, and even though I am very against censorship, I do not believe you should be compelled to release it, instead I just think it’s in the best interest of us, and yes, even children.
>>EDIT: Oh my god! i just read your last part. did you write all of this just to say at the end “while I do understand your decision”?
Oh my god what? What I should have said is, while I understand why you made your decision, I don’t agree with the reasoning. For the same reason I might understand why a child molester molests children, or understand why they might convince themselves that it’s right for them to do it, that does not mean that I agree with their reasoning, only that I understand how they came to the conclusion.
>And than you said: “You should say, plain and simple” etc’…… Which is exactly what i said in one of my reasons.
Did you read the rest of it? I already said you only gave the reason for “X”, but nothing for “Y”. You gave no evidence for your reasons. You just said “this is true because it will bring more traffic to bad sites”. That’s begging the question. You have no reason to say it’ll cause harm aside from your assumption that it will. Can you provide any evidence? And if you can, can you provide evidence that what you are doing now by simply talking about the dark web is NOT? This “Y” is just as important as “X”. Without both, you don’t have a valid reason. Bad people do bad things, but if anything, you posting the interview would creep other pedophiles enough that they don’t want to be so creepy, and would try harder not to become a person like that. Or for other people, it would in all likelihood creep people out enough that it would make it more risky or difficult for child molesters to make porn. So you have to find a reason to censor something before censoring it, then making up reasons as you go along.
How’s this, and I’m not saying you have to, but if I managed to convince you that it would cause more harm to the /children themselves/ to withhold this, would you then admit you’re wrong and release the interview? Again, I’m not trying to change your decision by saying this (so don’t reply with an evasive and argumentative “well why would I change a decision that’s right?”), but I’m curious to know if your concern really comes from wanting to help children, or simply not wanting to let a child pornographer get anything he wants, regardless of the actual effect on children.
I guess all we can hope for is for the site owner to post the link in a comment, if only because removing the link would be censorship even more clearly than not posting it yourself (because it’d be an active removal and suppression of information rather than passive refusal to disclose what you already have). To anyone who has the interview, please post a link to it on https://pay.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/22nplh/contrary_to_what_the_community_wished_deepdotweb/ so that people may read it without having to violate this blog’s decision to suppress it on it’s own site.
This would have been fascinating. I wonder if you could post at least a summery explaining the gist of the interview. Like how he feels about romantic/sexual relationships with kids. Does he think he’s doing anything harmful or does he maintain he has healthy relationships that are good for everyone all around?
Like with heterosexual relationships between adults are highly varied the same is true between kids and adults. Just like the percentage of sex between adults that is forced or exploitative is extremely small, the percentage of sex that is exploitative or non-consensual between kids and adults is extremely low.
The majority of boy lovers in the community want a genuine friendship that is romantic and sexual, a lot like the ones you might have had as a kid with other kids when you were starting to reach puberty. Also most active boy lovers tend to be in their late teens or 20s contrary to the image of a dirty old man. It seems as guys get older and their libido goes down they have less in common with boys and less desire for those relationships.
Most of the friendships continue into adulthood and nothing but fun times and affection and a lasting feeling of well being come out of the relationships. These type of relationships are not unusual. In fact this modern civilization is very unusual for demonizing them, while they have been praised as one of the highlights of a boy’s and man’s lives in ancient Greece, Rome, Babylonia, Persia, Japan during the samurai, ancient Egypt, Italy during the renaissance, and parts of western Europe during the enlightenment.
Plato, Socrates, and Marcus Aurelius all had lovers as boys and were boy lovers as men and all praised the relationships as the best part of their youth, the foundation of their wisdom, and one of their greatest joys as an adult. I had a relationship starting when I was 10 with my babysitter in his late teens and it was amazing. We are still close friends to this day.
As far as the issue that ‘kids cannot give informed consent’, if you are going to use that rational kids cannot consent to do anything, go swimming, watch a horror movie, go dirt biking, do extreme sports, act in movies, become a musician, whatever. They aren’t barred from those activities because of their supposed lack of capacity to give consent although those activities can be fun and exciting and emotionally charged as well as carry some level of responsibility just like having a romantic and sexual relationship. If they want to do them they can, if they don’t want to and are forced to it could be harmful.
The only time their inability to consent comes into play is if they want to do something that is intrinsically harmful like smoking cigarettes. Sex and romance isn’t intrinsically harmful to mammals, we like sex and romantic affection at any stage of life, research shows in the context of a mutually desired experience its beneficial. However kids can still legally smoke cigarettes on their own property and doctors give amphetamines to kids to make them do their school work, which is intrinsically harmful. Having an orgasm and making out and snuggling should not be against the law. Its like going swimming, it feels good and is healthy, as long as someone doesn’t shove you in the water.
Not going to elaborate too much about it, but there is a strong possibility you could read what he has to say somewhere else.
I respect your choice not to publish, even though I would have found it fascinating to peer into the mind of someone so thoroughly sick as to go as far as publishing AND admitting to actually performing child abuse himself (not to say that disseminating the pedo materials of others ISN’T making yourself a participant in the abuse, as I believe that it very much re-victimizes the victim).
Also, raising the awareness among people might have lead to innovative methods to take them out.
It is one of the most, if not THE most, distasteful aspect of being a supporter of privacy and free speech rights on the web, that this particularly horrible class of criminal also benefits from the efforts of the noble people who develop the technology that helps to support the goals of freedom. This kind of crime is SO horrible and create such graphic and total revulsion that it is easy for people to use it as a platform for positions in support of mass surveillance.
I know that here in canada, the conservative party has latched onto this idea to a large degree, even going as far as mailing pamphlets featuring a little girl’s picture, and claiming that they are “protecting our children”. What they are actually referring to, are government mass surveillance bills and proposals.
If I may ask: What in particular were your biggest reasons for not publishing?
I see, should have read before posting.
Yeah, I respect your choice not to publish even more after reading, especially as it seems like it may have ended up being a nambla soapbox of some kind.
Be nice if we could all give up on this ridiculous drug war and use the resources to go after the people who are really harming people..
you just lost a loyal reader for not posting this interesting interview. i dont believe that it could not help in harm reduction. criminal profilers can figure out a lot from an interview. by not posting this interview you are protecting the scoundrel posting the cp instead of releasing valuable information to the public about this dudes personal life and what he likess that could be used eventually to aid in his capture and prosecution. i hope you rest easy at night knowing that you may have been able to stop thousands of molestations being posted to the deep web, but didnt. goodbye forever deepdotweb.
Thank you.
Let the sick bastards publish their interview somewhere else.
We don’t want it.
I hate how they try to hitch a ride on the drug-related markets like parasites.
We do not want to be associated with deranged cruel folks nor do we want to validate the illegal actions from LE or government authorities trying to take away our rights using those sick fucks as an alibi.
Those fucks try it EVERYTIME,let it be the last time.
Stick to your own community you sick pedo fucks and get help.
Thank you deepdotweb!!
Thanks for not publishing. As for some of the readers that claim not be CP but think the interviewed would have help criminal profilers and would like to know what makes them tick you are a sick fucked up unit you know that.