Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Agora Replaces Silk Road as the Web's Top Darknet Site

From Wired via Reason's Hit & Run blog:
Looking for illicit drugs and other black market goods? For years the place to go was Silk Road. Now, it's Agora.

Late in August, the Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA), an Internet safety nonprofit, released a report detailing various darknet marketplaces.
Sesame Street
Wired, which picked up the report earlier today, notes that "the analysis counts 16,137 products for sale on [Agora]. … That's about 200 more listings than Silk Road 2.0." And it's growing quickly. "The latest numbers for Agora … represent a dramatic shift from just four months ago, when it had only 7,400 product listings."

What has pushed Agora to the top? "Just as on the rest of the internet, users on the dark net are very quick to move on to new things and move away from those products and websites that seem stale and old," Adam Benson, a representative from the DCA tells Wired....MORE
In case you want to try the darknet's equivalent to Google for easier product searches on Agora, check out Grams. 
Those Libertarians are so helpful.