>In light of the Freedom Hosting kerfluffle, as well as the Snowden revelations, I don't see much incentive to run an exit node.
I don't see how this has anything at all to do with snowden, and as achille points out this story is about a host of the some of the most infamous Tor Hidden Services, it has nothing to do with exit nodes.
Running an Exit Node is a somewhat risky activity since your ip address will be seen when a Tor user hacks/views CP/Torrents.
Running a hidden service allows one to anonymously host a website, so it will require significant effort to unmask you, and is usually alot safer than running an exit node.
>The problems inherent to running any sort of anonymizing service are just too many, and too serious, as we have recently seen.
There are actually two completely safe ways to contribute to the Tor network:
Running a (non-exit) relay routes traffic internally through the Tor Network and is therefore a risk-free activity that can be bandwidth intensive.
Running a bridge allows is a risk-free activity that requires much less bandwidth.
Even exit nodes aren't as dangerous to run as you may think, according to https://metrics.torproject.org/network.html there are about 2000 exit nodes and you have only brought up one case of a prosecution resulting from the operation of one.
I don't see how this has anything at all to do with snowden, and as achille points out this story is about a host of the some of the most infamous Tor Hidden Services, it has nothing to do with exit nodes.
Running an Exit Node is a somewhat risky activity since your ip address will be seen when a Tor user hacks/views CP/Torrents.
Running a hidden service allows one to anonymously host a website, so it will require significant effort to unmask you, and is usually alot safer than running an exit node.
>The problems inherent to running any sort of anonymizing service are just too many, and too serious, as we have recently seen.
There are actually two completely safe ways to contribute to the Tor network:
Running a (non-exit) relay routes traffic internally through the Tor Network and is therefore a risk-free activity that can be bandwidth intensive.
Running a bridge allows is a risk-free activity that requires much less bandwidth.
Even exit nodes aren't as dangerous to run as you may think, according to https://metrics.torproject.org/network.html there are about 2000 exit nodes and you have only brought up one case of a prosecution resulting from the operation of one.