They probably were the biggest pedos in the world. That's the only sane reason to host a platform like this, if you have any sense of self-preservation.
Moreover, its predecessors, Freedom Hosting and Freedom Hosting II, were both the biggest purveyors of CP when they were taken down. If it walks like a duck...
You and the other commenter are missing the point. I'm not stating either of those.
The motivation for hosting something like this is to hide what you're hosting in a bunch of noise. Legal or illegal. Your goal is to make it hard to gather metadata about the service. There are perfectly legitimate reasons to want that...
That said, it's a foregone conclusion that if you host a service like this, people who want to distribute child pornography are going to flock to it. If you don't police the content, that's even more true.
In fact, in the case of Freedom Hosting II, the host was allowing the pedos to circumvent the normal limitations of the platform, in theory because they were paying cold hard cash, as well as allowing scammers to operate on the platform, also for cold hard cash. It's been suggested that as much as 50% of the content hosted on Freedom Hosting II was child porn.
If you knowingly allow people to use your service to distribute child pornography or commit other crimes, you're every bit as culpable as your customers. This type of platform costs not-insignificant money to run -- it's a business. Nobody is hosting this many services out of a sense of altruism.
And honestly, in the case of CP, if you're hosting it, including running a service that facilitates the hosting of it, you deserve to serve consecutive life sentences in prison and whatever harm befalls those in prison who get found out as pedos.
They were not hosting any CP. That is not proven. As it stands, this is a simple service takedown. Actually, this is speculation added by the sensationalist https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com website, the original source doesn't even mention it.
I mean, they even believe this is a zero day attack, I can't simply trust the quality of any information there.
Freedom Hosting was the biggest service and it served CP.
Freedom Hosting II was the biggest service and it served CP.
Daniel's Hosting was the biggest service -- what do you think it served?
CP is the reason Operation DarkNet et al target these platforms for destruction.
Sorry, no matter how much you want to defend such behavior, having preconceptions about people who host platforms that are welcoming to pedophiles isn't the same thing as having preconceptions about people based on their race. The former is a prejudice against someone based on their chosen behavior and the latter based on inherent qualities they are born with.
Also, I wasn't aware that "people who engage in or support child exploitation" were a protected class.
You're still trying to put words in my mouth, but by all means keep defending the despicable.
hosting that very sort of platform welcomes child pornography as is demonstrated by every such sort of platform or service that's come before it and I'm not talking about just the history of Tor hosting here. We used to find the same thing with free hosting, chatrooms and shell accounts in the 90s.
It's already a matter of law (in most western countries) that hosts have some amount of responsibility for what users of their platforms distribute and that's why other hosting services aren't structured this way.
The fact that you have to make a throwaway account to voice such an opinion makes it clear that you know that it is indefensible.
What are your real motives?
See, I don't have to make a throwaway account, and I'll tell you right here that in my youth I had two different pedos in my life attempting to groom me into being victimized. I guess the nature of predation made me a target because of my vulnerability at the time. Luckily I got through that part of my life unhurt, but when I think about it -- just barely.
All those people whose pictures are being looked at did _not_ get away unhurt and those that consume such material deserve to rot.
"Passive consumption" enables the industry that creates this content to exist in the first place. It is not victimless. This is not a difficult concept to understand.
That said, I agree with your point that these people need help and support and that blindly locking them away for looking at pictures on the internet is generally not a good use of resources.
Moreover, its predecessors, Freedom Hosting and Freedom Hosting II, were both the biggest purveyors of CP when they were taken down. If it walks like a duck...