Constructive activism in the dark web: cryptomarkets and illicit drugs in the digital ‘demimonde’

ABSTRACT

This paper explores activism enacted through Silk Road, a now defunct cryptomarket where illicit drugs were sold in the dark web. Drawing on a digital ethnography of Silk Road, we develop the notion of constructive activism to extend the lexicon of concepts available to discuss forms of online activism. Monitoring of the cryptomarket took place between June 2011 and its closure in October 2013. Just before and after the closure of the marketplace we conducted anonymous online interviews with 17 people who reported buying drugs on Silk Road (1.0). These interviews were conducted synchronously and interactively through encrypted instant messaging. Participants discussed harnessing and developing the technological tools needed to access Silk Road and engage within the Silk Road community. For participants Silk Road was not just a market for trading drugs: it facilitated a shared experience of personal freedom within a libertarian philosophical framework, where open discussions about stigmatized behaviours were encouraged and supported. Tensions between public activism against drug prohibition and the need to hide one's identity as a drug user from public scrutiny were partially resolved through community actions that internalized these politics, rather than engaging in forms of online activism that are intended to have real-world political effects. Most aptly described through van de Sande's (2015) concept of prefigurative politics, they sought to transform their values into built environments that were designed to socially engineer a more permissive digital reality, which we refer to as constructive activism.

KEYWORDS:

• Dark web
• online social activism
• online community
• digital ethnography
• e-Commerce
• illicit drugs

Acknowledgements

We express heartfelt gratitude to the 17 Silk Road participants who shared their stories with us, and to the various community members who engaged with us and supported our work. We thank The Hub forums and the Dark Net Market Sub-Reddit for facilitating our work. We welcome your continued feedback on our ongoing work in this space.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr Alexia Maddox was a research officer at the National Drug Research Institute, through which the research was conducted. She also works as a research officer at Deakin University. [email: [email protected]]

Dr Monica J. Barratt is an NHMRC Postdoctoral Fellow conducting research into the social and public health implications of Internet technologies for people who use illicit and emerging psychoactive drugs. [email: [email protected]]

Prof. Matthew Allen is Head of School and Professor of Internet Studies in the School of Communication & Creative Arts at Deakin University. [email: [email protected]]

Prof. Simon Lenton is a Deputy Director at the National Drug Research Institute and a clinical psychologist in private practice. [email: [email protected]]

ORCID

Alexia Maddox http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5618-5476

Monica J. Barratt http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1015-9379

Matthew Allen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8882-8763

Simon Lenton http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7013-9812

Notes

1. Edward Snowden famously disclosed extensive information about the practices of the US National Security Agency (NSA) with regard to PRISM and other US surveillance programmes and confirmed the large-scale mass surveillance of the telecommunication and electronic messages of governments, companies, citizens. For further discussion of the implications his disclosure see Bauman et al. (2014).

2. Open online discussion technologies.

Additional information

Funding

The project was supported by internal funding from the National Drug Research Institute. The National Drug Research Institute in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Curtin University and the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at UNSW Australia are supported by funding from the Australian Government under the Substance Misuse Prevention and Service Improvement Grants Fund. M.B. is supported through a National Health & Medical Research Council Early Career Researcher Fellowship (APP1070140), administered through UNSW Australia. The funders played no further part in the research process, and the views expressed in this paper should not be seen as representative of the views of the funders.