On 8/21/16, Marcel Krzystek m.krzystek@gmail.com wrote:
​What are the thoughts of relay operators on this? I can be persuaded otherwise, and perhaps i'm being naive
As unpaid and non contractually obligated volunteers, it's really up to each operator to follow their own conscience. No one is going to "die" if comms are a little slower than usual for a day. And it's not as if a 10%-30% aggregate dip for a while is going to dig into real capacity rather than unused headroom. Or that your statistics aren't going to recover. Or that Tor Project, or the community will not be able to mobilize any needed replacements, after all, the concept of anonymous networks is within us now, we've lived them... so they're not going anywhere. (And Tor has an advertising machine and budget, huge compared to other projects).
But it would send a message, not just to Tor, or its community, but to the entire space, about what some values are, or need to be, or their level of importance, and so on... or it could just silently signal the need for others to talk more to discover them. Because we've got far bigger battles with adversaries to fight than to carry some suboptimal bullshit and come weak to the game as a result.
There are now at least the idea of tor forks with different ethos. And there are plenty of other already existing, interesting, and upcoming anonymous overlay networks for transporting IP, messaging, storage and so on. Morphing market utilization and resources among them all is a normal and expected process. For that matter, for diversity reasons, there needs to be more than one good anonymous overlay network... different in areas of technology, code, operational base, geo politik/jurisdiction, development, funding, leadership, activism, and participation models... that is well known to the public, supported, reviewed, and used, par for par. Competition is fun and healthy. So this might be an oppurtunity for you to explore and participate in some of them as well, even exclusively as you might be doing today with Tor (if that's the way you do things).
So maybe it's not really an issue of persuading anyone one way or the other, or being initially naive, or following any particular groupthink or call to action, or fear of making or even being labeled for choices... but a real chance to independantly take a week or more, researching and thinking about the issues, really the whole scope of the space and what's out there... beyond just the particulars of Tor and #torstrike alone... and then make any actions or longer term adjustments, changes, and talk, in your own way, based on that.
Operators would have my support, whichever network[s] they choose to contribute to.