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> I would take issue with assuming that it was net positive with ratings.

I know this is probably as minority view, but I think if adults consent to buying and using any drug, that should be both fully legal, and their right and responsibility- any negative consequences are 100% their own fault, not the person who sold them. It's probably true that making drugs easier to buy made more people buy them, but I was only considering the ill effects of fraudulently adulterated products. Do the math differently if you don't see it this way.

I don't know how Silk Road was designed, and have never actually used it or anything like it- but I imagine it would be possible to eliminate fraudulent reviews with proper design, and they may have done so. eBay, for example, is almost free of fraudulent reviews because posting a single review is very expensive- you'd need to sell an item to yourself for full price, and then pay eBay their full (rather large) cut to post a single fraudulent review.

As a buyer, you should be able to take a single high effort review that contains something like mass spec chemical analysis results, and further confirm that the reviewer themselves has a credible history of making purchases and reviews broadly across a lot of different sellers. An impossibly expensive to fake signal. This could also be done automatically by the platform- by making the more credible reviews display first.

> I do not understand why he pardoned this guy when he’s supposedly anti-drug and anti-cartel.

I explained this in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787217

Trump is not an idealist- he will promise anything to anyone if it gets power and attention. Previously, he had attempted a political career as a leftist, and switched to the right because it was getting more traction.

> I know this is probably as minority view, but I think if adults consent to buying and using any drug, that should be both fully legal, and their right and responsibility- any negative consequences are 100% their own fault, not the person who sold them. It's probably true that making drugs easier to buy made more people buy them, but I was only considering the ill effects of fraudulently adulterated products. Do the math differently if you don't see it this way.

I'd agree with you if the people that used these drugs did so rationally. That's not the case mostly though from what I've heard. Trauma is often the root cause and that's out of many people's control. From then on it's ub to society to help them.

If a high performing exec wants to buy drugs to function better, sure maybe that's ok but I doubt that's the majority of people.

I proclaimed nearly this exact opinion in the jury box after being summoned between 15 and 20 years ago. They didn't pick me for trial, which was the intended effect. I really did believe it at the time. Nowadays, I just think it's way more complicated and there are no simple or blanket answers.
Re-consenting: this is a different argument than saying more lives were saved because the reviews would remove adulterated products. Again, just look at opioid addiction for very clear evidence of the opposite effect.

It is very clear from what you’ve said that you haven’t used it :) I have browsed it when it was active and I was very pro tor. You’re making a lot of assumptions that simply don’t hold for silk road.

> Again, just look at opioid addiction for very clear evidence of the opposite effect.

I was playing devil's advocate, but agree there is more culpability to a seller if the drug overwhelms your ability to make the choice in the first place- however a lot of very illegal drugs do not do this. More so if you're using emotionally manipulative ads and selling methods as the alcohol and pharma industry do.

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silk road was on the dark web, a place that is oriented 100% around anonymity. This precludes any sort of "elimination of fraudulent reviews" since there's no reasonable way to build any sort of chain of trust.
I explained several ideas to eliminate fraudulent reviews in my comment, that you didn't address. The main thing is to make a review coupled with a purchase that involves a large cut to the platform, so each review is very expensive. Secondly, don't take reviewers themselves seriously unless they've also made a large overall number of purchases to a diversity of sellers- making becoming a credible reviewer also expensive.
The dark web is based around network anonymity.

You can find, and log into, your facebook account, should you have one, here, where I'm sure you would be quite identifiable.

facebookwkhpilnemxj7asaniu7vnjjbiltxjqhye3mhbshg7kx5tfyd dot onion

anonymity doesn't preclude chain-of-trust (really "reputation"). after all, anonymity only means "can't be linked to real-life identity".
> Trump is not an idealist- he will promise anything to anyone if it gets power and attention. Previously, he had attempted a political career as a leftist, and switched to the right because it was getting more traction.

This is a critical point. His explicitly goal is to be an autocrat, there is no other ideology other than what works.

That's why I think the only real bit of him is the one that admires Putin. That is who he wants to be.

It's why his moves seem so random.