American Scientist

The term dark net (often spelled darknet, as if discussing the concept requires a rushed whisper) implies back alleys and furtive transactions. It suggests the online equivalent of a dim table at the back of a seedy club, where guests come and go, and who knows what kind of shady deals are going down.

That’s the world Jamie Bartlett expected to encounter when he set out to write his book The Dark Net: Inside the Digital Underworld.

Instead, much of the dark net—which exists beyond the reach of popular search engines, such as Google and Bing—seemed utterly ordinary. The websites that facilitated illegal drug sales were similar to the most familiar surface Web marketplaces. Customers rated their drug dealers. Dealers differentiated their product lines with terms like “fair trade” and “organic.”

Yet for Bartlett, perhaps the biggest revelation was that the very existence of these markets was more morally nuanced than he’d fathomed.

In this edition of the Scientists’ Nightstand podcast, Jamie Bartlett discusses what happens when market mechanisms, technology, ethics, and human behavior mix.

Jamie Bartlett directs the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the think tank Demos, where he specializes in online social movements and the impact of technology on society.