ResponseA rejoinder to authors: Data collection on Tor
Section snippets
Can SR1 and SR2 data be compared?
Aldridge and Decary-Hetu were concerned that drawing comparisons between the original SR site and SR2 was potentially misleading and “arbitrary,” because other marketplaces existed post SR1 takedown, and SR2 was hacked seven months prior to my data collection. The volatility of Tor marketplaces is indeed noted; for instance, Evolution customers were robbed during an alleged exit scam in March 2015 (Fox-Brewster, 2015), Agora continues to be plagued by apparent denial of service (DDoS) attacks (
Methodology and unexpected findings: validity checks in question
Aldridge and Decary-Hetu also describe the “radical discontinuity” found between the data from SR1 and SR2 reported in my study, a concern shared by van Buskirk and colleagues. My research team conducted validity checks and manually inspected the data (i.e., clicking link-by-link to ensure no pages were missing). My study's main focus was not methods-centric, nor did the anonymous reviewers request such a detailed methodological discussion. However, given the scrutiny and concern over the
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