New York Times shut down Tor Onion service

https://open.nytimes.com/https-open-nytimes-com-the-new-york-times-as-a-tor-onion-service-e0d0b67b7482

by vaygr • 1 year ago

251 148 1 year ago

open.nytimes.com

tonymet• 1 year ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43246274

derbOac• 1 year ago

Is there a site that tracks the overall state of the Tor network?

basedrum3• 1 year ago

Tor has one?

noident• 1 year ago

WhatsApp and Telegram are hardly replacements for Tor access. A government can block them easily.

The onion service's days were numbered after they fired Runa Sandvik. I'm surprised it lasted this long. Looking at the pay and current labor disputes, it seems like the New York Times isn't a good place for a skilled software engineer to work these days.

They'll keep running SecureDrop over an onion service, right...?

spyspy5• 1 year ago

Runa was a gem. Her firing was a huge blow to the company. Nobody of any note lasts very long at NYT.

drweevil2• 1 year ago

Amen to that. I should have known she was behind the Tor link, which I used often. I'm disappointed in the Times. Nothing new there.

mmooss9• 1 year ago

WhatsApp and Telegram are hardly replacements for Tor access. A government can block them easily.

Also, you tell a private company information that you are reading the NYT and which articles you read. If the NYT is banned or a signal of suspicion where you live, that doesn't help.

keepamovin2• 1 year ago

Lol it is not hard to create a hidden service:

Prerequisites:

- Linux: You may need `sudo` privileges to install Tor and modify system files.

- macOS: Homebrew must be installed (`brew`) to manage Tor.

- A web server must already be running on the specified local port (e.g., 8080).

- Firewall: This function does not configure the firewall. Ensure that:

  - Tor’s default port (9050) is allowed.
  - Your web server’s port (e.g., 8080) is accessible locally.


  #!/usr/bin/env bash

  # Function to add a Tor hidden service for a local web server
  add_tor_hidden_service() {
    local local_port="${1:-8080}"  # Default to 8080 if no port is provided
    local torrc=""
    local tordir=""
    local sudo_cmd=""
    local os_type=""

    # Detect OS and set paths
    if [[ "$OSTYPE" == "linux-gnu"* ]]; then
      os_type="linux"
      torrc="/etc/tor/torrc"
      tordir="/var/lib/tor"
      sudo_cmd="sudo -n"
    elif [[ "$OSTYPE" == "darwin"* ]]; then
      os_type="macos"
      torrc="$(brew --prefix)/etc/tor/torrc"
      tordir="$(brew --prefix)/var/lib/tor"
    else
      echo "Error: Unsupported OS (Linux or macOS required)" >&2
      return 1
    fi

    # Install Tor if not already installed
    if ! command -v tor &>/dev/null; then
      echo "Installing Tor..." >&2
      if [[ "$os_type" == "linux" ]]; then
        if [ -f /etc/debian_version ]; then
          $sudo_cmd apt update && $sudo_cmd apt install -y tor
        elif [ -f /etc/redhat-release ]; then
          $sudo_cmd yum install -y tor || $sudo_cmd dnf install -y tor
        else
          echo "Error: Only Debian or RedHat-based Linux supported" >&2
          return 1
        fi
      elif [[ "$os_type" == "macos" ]]; then
        brew install tor
      fi
    fi

    # Ensure Tor is running
    if [[ "$os_type" == "linux" ]]; then
      $sudo_cmd systemctl start tor
    elif [[ "$os_type" == "macos" ]]; then
      brew services start tor
    fi

    # Configure hidden service
    local hidden_service_dir="$tordir/hidden_service_$local_port"
    local dir_line="HiddenServiceDir $hidden_service_dir"
    local port_line="HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:$local_port"

    if ! grep -qF -- "$dir_line" "$torrc"; then
      echo "Configuring Tor hidden service..." >&2
      echo "$dir_line" | $sudo_cmd tee -a "$torrc" >/dev/null
      echo "$port_line" | $sudo_cmd tee -a "$torrc" >/dev/null
    fi

    # Restart Tor to apply changes
    echo "Restarting Tor..." >&2
    if [[ "$os_type" == "linux" ]]; then
      $sudo_cmd systemctl restart tor
    elif [[ "$os_type" == "macos" ]]; then
      brew services restart tor
    fi

    # Wait for onion address to be generated
    local onion_address=""
    for attempt in {1..30}; do
      if [[ -f "$hidden_service_dir/hostname" ]]; then
        onion_address=$($sudo_cmd cat "$hidden_service_dir/hostname")
        break
      fi
      sleep 1
    done

    if [[ -z "$onion_address" ]]; then
      echo "Error: Failed to generate onion address" >&2
      return 1
    fi

    echo "Success! Your web server is now available on the Tor network." >&2
    echo "Onion address: $onion_address" >&2
    echo "$onion_address"
  }

  # Example usage
  # serve -p 8080
  # add_tor_hidden_service 8080
  add_tor_hidden_service "$@"

Tested on macOS, probably good in other OS listed above. So run a server on a port. Then run this function. Boom, you have a hidden service.

Mining for a nice vanity hostname might be more difficult tho! How would that be done?

aspenmayer• 1 year ago

Mining for a nice vanity hostname might be more difficult tho! How would that be done?

https://community.torproject.org/onion-services/advanced/van...

wkat4242• 1 year ago

Yeah only last year a court in Spain ruled to block telegram for everyone after some minor civil law disagreement. I had to scramble to set up an MTProxy for me and my friends (which was pretty easy with docker). Fortunately it never happened because the government called them back.

luma3• 1 year ago

Journalists speak truth to power, meanwhile the NYT aligns itself with power at every opportunity. For example, they knew the NSA was spying on us but never ran the story to protect GW's chances at reelection. Presumably they didn't want to be seen as anti-establishment with the new powers and are reverting to their time-proven behavior. NYT will lick the boot when presented, same as ever.

andreygrehov• 1 year ago

The answer is ad revenue. If you go against what your subscribers believe in, you lose money. If you lose money, you might lose your job. If you lose your job, you can't pay your mortgage.

londons_explore• 1 year ago

I suspect plenty of government money directly flows to newspapers as part of various campaigns to sway public opinion on certain politically important topics.

Perhaps moreso outside the USA where just a handful of paid articles can sway some topic important for US foreign policy.

spyspy5• 1 year ago

But then you introduce a subscription model and people decry how the good news is paywalled…

spyspy5• 1 year ago

Disclaimer I worked at NYT but this is just unsubstantiated garbage. Say what you will about the company and journalism as a whole but you’d be hard pressed to find a better group of truth-seekers out there. waves hands at every other “news” outlet

dataf3l• 1 year ago

ok put your money where your mouth is, call your coworker and lets see they revert the onion service then...

croes• 1 year ago

to find a better group of truth-seekers

Pretty useless if those who need it the most can’t read it.

4509Hg• 1 year ago

No it isn't garbage. During the Biden regime they ran every culture war story that was expected from them. During COVID they ran a hardliner policy for two years. Then, when they were told about an imminent policy reversal around December 2021, they suddenly started manufacturing the new consent with questioning if lockdowns hurt school children etc.

They had been Iraq hawks, they are Ukraine hawks now.

The NYT most closely matches Chomsky's media analysis of all outlets, and unlike other outlets the NYT hides it well.

davidw5• 1 year ago

I found this story pretty enlightening

https://css.seas.upenn.edu/new-york-times-a-case-study-in-in...

It's certainly not that they come up with outright lies. They have a ton of good people who work there. But there's something rotten higher up in the way they put their finger on the scales.

MrMcCall• 1 year ago

Seeking the truth and reporting it ALL are two different things.

Telling 90% of the truth means telling the least important 90%.

The love of money corrupts all but the noblest of people's hearts.

nouripenny• 1 year ago

Consider Bob McChesney's 3 biases of professional journalism: reliance on official sources, fear of context, and "dig here, not there".

https://inthesetimes.com/article/the-rise-of-professional-jo...

ants_everywhere2• 1 year ago

The propaganda outlets have really been pushing hard the line that you can't trust professional journalists, and people who get their news from influencers just seem to accept it uncritically.

sonotathrowaway• 1 year ago

Their comment is vastly more substantiated than your feelings are. We all know that NYT suppressed a story about unlawful mass surveillance, then published it to avoid being scooped.

This is besides the mountains of bullshit they pushed to promote the Iraq war - propaganda they have never, and will never fully admit to.

drweevil2• 1 year ago

I don't see it that way. Not after years and years of noticing the pro-establishment bias. One example that still sticks with me is the coverage of the of the so called aid convoy at Cucuta, Venezuela. (As an aside, almost all coverage of Venezuela by the mainstream media is grossly deficient.)

The short of that story is this: Something happens. The mainstream media (including the Times) write about it in a way that is unflattering to the Venezuelan government (or whatever enemy du-jour is targetted). Weeks later, when it no longer matters, the Times prints a more accurate version, but still manages to be as uncomplimentary as possible. As the time itself said--two weeks later:

"CÚCUTA, Colombia — The narrative seemed to fit Venezuela’s authoritarian rule: Security forces, on the order of President Nicolás Maduro, had torched a convoy of humanitarian aid as millions in his country were suffering from illness and hunger." (from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/world/americas/venezuela-...)

Independent South American journalists got it right. The UN tried to set the record straight about this aid convoy, the day after the event. But from the NYT, we got 'the narrative'. And that article that finally said Mr. Maduro didn't do it, came out two weeks later. By then the damage was done.

I've observed that same dynamic with other events as well, such as during the Bolivian coup attempt of 2019. The OAS manufactured a non-existent electoral crisis. No major US paper pushed back on that narrative, which was later shown to be an artifact of how the votes counting process--as the Bolivian government claimed all along, rather than any real crisis.

The Times simply can not be counted upon to give unbiased coverage in other situations either: Syria, Iran, Israel, Palestine, Russia, Ukraine, China, are all strongly biased with the official US narrative.

This is why I cannot subscribe to this paper. It is too often useless as a place where I can go to to get truth.

g8oz• 1 year ago

The Times is especially pernicious because of the hallowed reputation it has. It lets it spin the narrative at crucial moments. Look back at Judith Miller and the Iraq war. Or in the recent case of the Gaza conflict - their false reporting on mass rapes in the debunked "Screams Without Words" article helped give Israel political cover during a critical juncture of the carpet bombing of the Palestinians.

dangus• 1 year ago

I don't really disagree with you but at the same time I wouldn't expect any run of the mill employee to know about this sort of conspiracy if it were real.

Lammy• 1 year ago

https://www.carlbernstein.com/the-cia-and-the-media-rolling-...

“The Agency’s relationship with the Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials. From 1950 to 1966, about ten CIA employees were provided Times cover under arrangements approved by the newspaper’s late publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger. The cover arrangements were part of a general Times policy—set by Sulzberger—to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible.”

dmix2• 1 year ago

You don't need employees anymore just anonymous sources from "government insiders" by journalists who gain social/work credit from being friends with intelligence officials. The quid pro quo is implied and unquestioned because it sells papers. NYT/WSJ/WaPo are the main vectors for that stuff (big journalist outfits get big juicy sources) and they do it proudly.

reaperducer• 1 year ago

From 1950 to 1966

That was 75 years ago. If you're going to grind an axe, at least pick one from this century.

fsckboy2• 1 year ago

From 1950 to 1966

going back in time like that says nothing about the NY Times of today. In that same time period, the Democrats were the party defending racial segregation, it was your great+ grandparents

owenversteeg• 1 year ago

Indeed. The Times is the mouthpiece of power. The event referenced in the GP comment [1] was a classic example of the NYT playbook when they get some information that goes against their narrative: 1) delay publication until they are absolutely forced to publish, 2) edit to play down the story, and 3) bury it as well as they can. They famously did this with the Holocaust [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_New_York_Times_con...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_New_York_Times_con...

starik36• 1 year ago

Your post is nonsense. NYT has endorsed a democrat for every election in recent history. Why would they "protect" GW's chances at reelection???

Endorsements

    2024: Kamala Harris (Democrat)
    2020: Joe Biden (Democrat)   
    2016: Hillary Clinton (Democrat)   
    2012: Barack Obama (Democrat)   
    2008: Barack Obama (Democrat)   
    2004: John Kerry (Democrat)   
    2000: Al Gore (Democrat)   
    1996: Bill Clinton (Democrat)   
    1992: Bill Clinton (Democrat)

luma3• 1 year ago

I take them at their actions, not their empty words. Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_New_York_Times_con...

In an interview in 2013, [NYT Executive Editor] Keller said that the newspaper had decided not to report the piece after being pressured by the Bush administration

Bush told them not to run the story while he was running for president. As always, the boot was presented and they licked it clean.

setgree• 1 year ago

[The NY Times] knew the NSA was spying on us but never ran the story to protect GW's chances at reelection

This is a really strong claim -- the part about the 'why'. Strong claims generally require strong evidence. I'm perfectly willing to believe they spiked the story for other, more plausible reasons, but come on, their editorial endorsing John Kerry is right there for everyone to read:

There is no denying that this race is mainly about Mr. Bush's disastrous tenure...When the nation fell into recession, the president remained fixated not on generating jobs but rather on fighting the right wing's war against taxing the wealthy. As a result, money that could have been used to strengthen Social Security evaporated, as did the chance to provide adequate funding for programs the president himself had backed...The Bush White House has always given us the worst aspects of the American right without any of the advantages. We get the radical goals but not the efficient management.

So what exactly is the theory here that they spiked an NSA story to help this guy win re-election?? [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/opinion/john-kerry-for-pr...

throwaway484764• 1 year ago

I know PBS frontline did a documentary on this.

rediguanayum• 1 year ago

Consider that technology may have moved on, and there are other better ways to communicate with journalists: https://www.nytimes.com/tips e.g. Signal and to read NYTimes e.g. high quality VPN.

mmooss9• 1 year ago

to read NYTimes e.g. high quality VPN

I don't see how an ordinary non-technical user could obtain access to a "high quality VPN". I'm not sure a technically skilled user could without a lot of work to setup some sort of chain of anonymous proxies.

basedrum3• 1 year ago

Lol, that tips page uses tor?

skwirl• 1 year ago

If you went back to 2004 and told people the NYT was trying to help re-elect George W Bush they would nervously back away slowly from you.

mmooss9• 1 year ago

they knew the NSA was spying on us but never ran the story

They did run the story; they withheld it for awhile.

to protect GW's chances at reelection

Is there evidence of that? I've never heard it and I promise that no Republican thinks the NY Times actively helping them.

user3939382• 1 year ago

I definitely see it as a mouthpiece for the establishment and three letter agencies, my interest and trust in it is pretty much 0.

sharkjacobs• 1 year ago

Users who wish to continue reading Times journalism where their access to the main website may be blocked can do so through WhatsApp or Telegram.

elsewhere,

Apple Says It Was Ordered to Pull WhatsApp From China App Store

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/18/technology/apple-whatsapp...

lxgr3• 1 year ago

The service itself isn’t available in China either anyway, I think.

rsync2• 1 year ago

… or just walk right into the central Shanghai library and read the paper copy.

This is possible and I have done it many times.

uni_baconcat2• 1 year ago

You know they tear off all pages of negative CPC reports, right?

yawnxyz• 1 year ago

deepened our understanding of reaching audiences that might otherwise be blocked from accessing our journalism Users who wish to continue reading Times journalism where their access to the main website may be blocked can do so through WhatsApp or Telegram.

https://archive.is/ is still the de-facto way to read NYT articles...

duskwuff• 1 year ago

The fact that reading the NYT requires a paid subscription takes away a lot of the value of a Tor service. (Can you even buy a subscription over Tor? I doubt it; it'd be a fraud risk.)

Scoundreller2• 1 year ago

For a while, there was no paywall on NYT over Tor

basedrum3• 1 year ago

Of course you can

pogue• 1 year ago

Is there an Onion archive.today?

Scoundreller2• 1 year ago

Yes, the tor browser will auto-advise you that a .onion link is available.

bolognafairy• 1 year ago

I would at the very least be hesitant to provide such a service, and I’ve gotta imagine that I’m far from alone :)

1vuio0pswjnm7• 1 year ago

"https://archive.is is still the de-facto way to read NYT articles..."

It's popular on HN for sure, but archive.is only works where the NYT article is archived

Lighter weight, open source, local solutions like Bypass Paywalls Clean work on any NYT article regardless of whether archived

archive.is may be blocked for some internet subscribers in some countries

archive.is webpages are quite large and contain telemetry

For example,

   </script></div></div><img style="position:absolute" width="1" height="1" src="https://[USER-IP-ADDRESS].us.TBT3.379913754.pixel.archive.is/x.gif"><script type="text/javascript">

agubelu• 1 year ago

The fact that Bypass Paywalls Clean works for so many websites is kinda baffling to me. Are there any reasons why they choose to implement paywalls in front-end only, or is it just technical incompetence?

dmantis• 1 year ago

I've never understood why their free bypass extension doesn't release it's sources on public platform.

Their git pages just refer to bundled extensions.

You can get the sources from the extension, but I doubt that anybody audits them and kind of afraid to install it in my browser with access to all tabs.

Could work for a dedicated browser only for paywalls bypass though.

freen• 1 year ago

Chilling effects and all that.

Complying in advance with the expectation of attacks on first amendment rights only emboldens autocrats and smooths their path to total control.

https://lithub.com/resist-authoritarianism-by-refusing-to-ob...

lordofgibbons2• 1 year ago

NYTimes lost any and all credibility when they hired a literal Israeli Military Intelligence propagandist to write the their headline shock inducing piece on 40 beheaded babies, infants in ovens, and mass rape.

These have all been widely been debunked, including by Israeli media. But NYT never retracted their propaganda piece. This gave a free hand for the IDF, with U.S backing, to commit mass murder on an industrial scale in Gaza.

How are they even relevant anymore, and why do people pay to consume literal foreign propaganda? The purpose of the news media is to inform, but these guys are doing the complete opposite.

https://x.com/zei_squirrel/status/1761740292015767736 https://theintercept.com/2024/02/28/new-york-times-anat-schw...

yieldcrv• 1 year ago

To continue on this

Israeli Jewish citizens criticize the war

People abroad criticize the war

But outside the country, many Jewish people abroad defend it and have this wildly incendiary defense mechanism against the people abroad, as if every critique from anyone is part of a thinly veiled movement to disrupt their right to existence

Why cant the rest of us be assumed to be at parity with Israeli citizen’s critique?

so unproductive

realusername2• 1 year ago

It's always been a very bad newspaper internationally, we could mention the Irak war cover or the constant attacks of EU countries.

throwaway484764• 1 year ago

Or covering for Stalin and denying the famine in ukraine.

funcantor• 1 year ago

Why would you link to one of the most extreme mentally unwell twitter accounts immediately after a sentence on criticizing people willingness to consume propaganda?

subjectsigma• 1 year ago

Hmm, that account they posted is full of memes portraying China and communism in a good light, I wonder what their motivation could possibly be

lordofgibbons2• 1 year ago

Your unfounded ad hominem attacks aside, everything posted both there and on The Intercept are provably true. Interesting that you conveniently ignore the main issue here, which is the lack of integrity.

cantrecallmypwd• 1 year ago

Another act of bending the knee, just like when they axed Chris Hedges in the patriotic military invasions.

lxgr3• 1 year ago

Despite the symbolism, does this change anything about their reachability from Tor?

Is there any practical advantage to a website in being explicitly reachable as a hidden service on Tor, as opposed to simply not blocking exit node IPs?

heavyset_go• 1 year ago

Assuming your adversary is a state with access to certificates, a malicious or compromised exit node could lead to your de-anonymization and access to information you may want to keep confidential or hidden.

Your connection to an onion service is end-to-end encrypted and authenticated, as well, which means no MitM can trick you or sniff your traffic.

lxgr3• 1 year ago

Ah, no reliance on the web PKI is a very good point (especially if their site also accepts document drops etc) I didn't consider, thank you!

marc_abonce2• 1 year ago

I don't know if there's any benefit for the end user, but I think it helps with the reliability of the Tor network because onion sites are accessed by normal Tor nodes, not exit nodes[1]. This means that if you access the onion version of a site you're "relieving" the exit nodes from the extra traffic, which is good because exit nodes already have to handle a massive amount of traffic from all the requests to the surface web.

[1] https://community.torproject.org/onion-services/overview/

[1.5] http://xmrhfasfg5suueegrnc4gsgyi2tyclcy5oz7f5drnrodmdtob6t2i...

notepad0x902• 1 year ago

Isn't it a paywalled service? How do people use it? they access it anonymously and then pay with a card?

thinkingemote• 1 year ago

First pay for the service (on non-tor system if the payments provider doesnt like Tor), then on Tor you can input your username and password like you would as normal.

Tor doesn't stop people users voluntarily de-anonymising themselves for specific sites. It does stop curious entities on the network from seeing what people do.

notepad0x902• 1 year ago

that makes sense I guess, if you don't consider NYT themselves a potential threat actor that might nullify your anonymity.

entriesfull• 1 year ago

Good riddance. We The People will continue to build open and decentralized/anonymous platforms that don't spread government propaganda.

mmooss9• 1 year ago

Where do you get good information?

beardog• 1 year ago

Reddit still has an onion service but is defacto unusable

marc_abonce2• 1 year ago

Kind of, it depends. In my experience so far, Reddit blocks Tor nodes about 20% of the times or so. More specifically, it seems to return a 429, probably because someone tried to abuse Reddit from the same node and Reddit banned the IP. In my experience, this is just as likely to happen with the onion site or the www address.

That being said, I only lurk so I don't know if there are any additional restrictions when trying to log in.

Is that the same issue you have or is it something else?

DeathArrow• 1 year ago

If my life or my freedom would be at stake, I wouldn't rely on TOR for anonymity.

ilikehurdles• 1 year ago

Why is that?

halJordan• 1 year ago

In fact it's quite the opposite. If you need to do something to save your life and youre weighing the decision of take no action vs take action via tor; you and anyone else would take the risk with tor.

t0bia_s• 1 year ago

Would be interesting to see statistics of how many unique visits per day through onion on NYT was made.

mlinksva• 1 year ago

we are now taking these learnings and applying them to building out our main page and signature products

I'd love (genuinely, this is not a snarky comment) to read more about either (learnings, application) or of course both.

aendruk• 1 year ago

They started serving an expired TLS certificate on 2024-12-08. I inquired about it a few days after but never heard back.

New York Times shut down Tor Onion service

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