This article was taken from the December 2014 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Perhaps the most shocking site on the net is Assassination Market, on the Tor network. You add names to a list, or donate bitcoins to a "prize pool" next to the name of someone already on it. The thinking is that if enough people -- each anonymously contributing just a few pounds -- are sufficiently angry with a particular individual, the pool would become so large that someone would be incentivised to make a prediction and fulfil it themselves to take the pot.
A crowdsourced murder would unfold as follows. The would-be assassin sends their prediction in an encrypted message that can be opened only by a digital code known to the person who sent it. He or she then makes the kill and sends the site administrator that code, which would unlock the (correct) prediction. Once verified,the bitcoin prize would be posted online as an encrypted file. Again, that file can be unlocked only by a "key" generated by whoever made the prediction. Without anyone knowing anyone's identity, the site would verify the prediction and award the prize to the person who made it. The prospect of crowdfunded murder, believes the site's libertarian owner, will result in better-behaved public servants, perhaps even the collapse of governments. It's terrifying and loathsome. And very creative.
Forget the purpose for a moment: this is an ingenious and intelligent system of anonymously measuring citizen attitude and incentivising collective action.
Those who live on the internet's fringes -- the pariahs, radicals and criminals -- are often its most innovative. They have to be -- take, for example, the infamous Silk Road. It launched in 2011 and, according to the FBI, by July 2013 had processed more than £740 million in sales. When the Feds knocked it offline in October 2013, the hydra just grew more heads. In November 2013 there were a small handful of these marketplaces. There are now around 30. Between January and April 2014, Silk Road 2.0 -- set up within a month of the original getting closed down -- processed well over 100,000 sales. Under constant scrutiny and threat from scammers, "Roadies" developed a sophisticated customer-review system, clever tumbling schemes to obscure who's sending bitcoins to whom, and advanced multi-signature escrow-payment mechanisms. These dark-net markets are among the most resilient, dynamic and consumer-friendly marketplaces out there, transforming the dirty and dangerous business of buying drugs in dark alleyways into a simple transaction between empowered consumers and responsive vendors.
It extends into politics, too. The British National Party (BNP) and the English Defence League were early to spot the potential of Facebook. Last year, the BNP launched an app on its Facebook page.
In it, a budding nationalist earns points each time they share a BNP story on Facebook or Twitter, "likes" its content, or mentions keywords in posts. Each month, whoever tops the leaderboard wins a voucher. The party had gamified its app, applying the popular business technique long before the rest.
Their focus might be immoral, unlawful or misguided, but people on the fringes use the internet in extraordinary ways -- and we could learn something from them. The mainstream political parties could dump their vanishing paid-up political membership model, and instead use social media to build local networks and raise much-needed funds. The NHS should run moderated chat rooms where people can anonymously -- but openly -- talk about suicidal thoughts to experts, without fear of judgement or referral. Online markets such as eBay could pick up a few tips from dark-net markets on how to get an edge. If you can't beat them, join them. Or, in this case, imitate them. It's out in margins that tomorrow's challenges, and solutions, are usually found.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
