Comment by shevy-java

16 hours ago

I like the idea of TOR, but whenever I used it, I hit a speed penalty.

This, in turn, handicaps me searching for information. If they could fix this problem then I would be more likely to make use of TOR. We really need to think long-term about a future web that isn't ruined by Google etc... while also not being locked down such as via age-gating.

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shevy-java

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jeroenhd  13 hours ago

I think it must depend on how far away you are from a gateway into the Tor network. There's a slight delay for getting the network ready when I start Tor on my devices, but after that it's not so bad.

Tor amplifies the problems caused by badly written websites that do a billion HTTP calls (unless you have HTTPS enabled on Tor) which does make it noticeably slower in a few edge cases, but I don't think it's as bad as its reputation suggests. For this particular blog, the Tor version loads maybe a couple hundred milliseconds slower, mostly because of images coming in slower (content is ready almost immediately).

Lots of hidden services seem to be under constant DDoS attack, though.

There are still plenty of issues with TOR (my main gripe is the "domain names" being practically impossible to recognize/trust or tell anyone about in the real world), but I don't think speed is the biggest factor anymore.