Darknet Marketplaces Research Articles

Entrepreneurs on the Darknet: Reaction to Negative Feedback

Reputation is one of the key assets of a digital entrepreneur in markets for experience goods, especially in settings like Darknet and anonymous marketplaces. But what happens if this asset is diminished by a shock, i.e. negative feedback? We study how entrepreneurs on anonymous marketplaces respond to negative feedback by adjusting their product portfolio, or even exiting the market altogether. We find that the entrepreneurs are more likely to exit following negative feedback, but that a entrepreneur’s accumulated transactions experience on the market platform negatively moderates this. Interestingly, the entrepreneurs that do remain tend to expand their product portfolio. This effect, however, is again driven by entrepreneurs with relative high transactions experience, i.e. those with a high prior transactions volume. These results suggest that the reputation and the transactions experience of an entrepreneur interact in intricate ways to drive an entrepreneur’s choice of remaining in the market or adjusting her portfolio. We derive managerial and policy implications of these results.

Offline ‘stranger’ and online lurker: methods for an ethnography of illicit transactions on the darknet

In 2011, the illicit online marketplace ‘Silk Road’ opened for business. Located on the darknet, accessed via the Tor browser, Silk Road was the first of a new breed of darknet marketplaces (DNMs) and smartphone app-based drug markets. Participants on these transact under closely guarded aliases using sophisticated encryption. This article examines how ethnographers might study DNMs and the app-based drug trade. I spent over four years observing and interacting on these marketplaces and associated chat forums, following offline participant observation in a variety of criminal markets which provide useful methodological comparison to the DNM and smartphone app fieldwork sites. This article discusses my methods, highlights differences in online versus offline ethical concerns and risks, and I make suggestions to further the development of a formal methodology for digital ethnography of criminal and hidden online populations.

Characterising dark net marketplace purchasers in a sample of regular psychostimulant users

BackgroundThe past five years has seen a proliferation in marketplaces operating on the ‘dark net’ selling licit and illicit substances. While monitoring systems have investigated the specific substances for sale on these marketplaces, less is known about consumer motivations for accessing these marketplaces and factors associated with their use. MethodsAn Australian national sample (n=800) recruited on the basis of regular psychostimulant use was recruited and asked about purchasing substances from dark net marketplaces and the reasons for doing so. Respondents who had purchased any drug from a dark net marketplace in the preceding year were compared to those who had not in terms of demographic information and factors including drug use, criminal activity, and sexual and mental health. ResultsNine percent (n=68) of the sample had purchased from dark net markets in the past year. MDMA, LSD and cannabis were the three most commonly purchased substances, and the main benefits cited for purchasing online were the better quality and lower cost of drugs available. Controlling for other factors, participants who purchased from dark net marketplaces in the past year tended to be younger, more likely to be involved in recent property crime and to have used more classes of drugs in the preceding six months, specifically psychedelics and ‘new psychoactive drugs’. ConclusionsThough a small minority of participants reported having purchased drugs online in the preceding six months, these appeared to be a more ‘entrenched’ group of consumers, with more diverse substance use and rates of criminal activity. For consumers in the current sample reporting recent dark net usage, country borders are now less of a significant barrier to purchase and there is a wider range of substances available than ever before.