A review by panelparty
The Darkest Web: Drugs, Death and Destroyed Lives... The Inside Story of the Internet's Evil Twin by Eileen Ormsby
5.0
Read for the Problem Facing Society Today prompt of the 2018 Popsugar Challenge.
O M G I loved this book so much. Who isn't fascinated by crime and drugs and the seedy underbelly of the internet? (Seriously, is there anyone?) This book was as addictive as anything you could buy off the Silk Road - I could not put it down!
The author intersperses the facts with her own personal experiences on the dark web and anecdotes of her travels and interviews with major players in the dark web world. These side stories were so interesting and the author's way of writing is totally engaging - I absolutely had to know what happened next!
Section I, Dark, discusses the rise and fall of the Silk Road marketplace and other places to buy drugs online. It was very interesting and Ormsby was very well-integrated into that scene so she knew personally many of the major players involved in the operation. Her travels take her to Thailand and beyond to meet with some of these people (or attend their trials).
Section II, Darker, covered the murky territory or murder-for-hire sites on the dark web. The author maintains in the beginning of the chapter that she has never believed any of these sites to be legitimate. She writes about her and another journalist, Chris Monteiro's experience with the most prolific of these sites and all that that entails - this was really fascinating!
Section III, Darkest, was pretty brutal to get through. It describes the worst part of the dark web, the hidden havens for child predators and all that goes along with that. Ormsby walks the fine line between getting you to fully comprehend how sick and horrific these people are without being so graphic that its just a shock read. She talks about the trials of some big names in the 'hurtcore' part of the dark web. It was tough to get through, but it was still worth reading - monsters are real.
My only issue with this book is A: that it's hard to get. I had to order it from Australia and that was the only way to get it, no e-book or Amazon ordering, so I had to wait f o r e v e r for it to show up, and B: some of the kerning is way off on the text. On some pages it is so bad that it looks like the line is all one huge run-on word - surely there could be some other adjustment of text versus cramming it together like that. Pet peeve.
O M G I loved this book so much. Who isn't fascinated by crime and drugs and the seedy underbelly of the internet? (Seriously, is there anyone?) This book was as addictive as anything you could buy off the Silk Road - I could not put it down!
The author intersperses the facts with her own personal experiences on the dark web and anecdotes of her travels and interviews with major players in the dark web world. These side stories were so interesting and the author's way of writing is totally engaging - I absolutely had to know what happened next!
Section I, Dark, discusses the rise and fall of the Silk Road marketplace and other places to buy drugs online. It was very interesting and Ormsby was very well-integrated into that scene so she knew personally many of the major players involved in the operation. Her travels take her to Thailand and beyond to meet with some of these people (or attend their trials).
Section II, Darker, covered the murky territory or murder-for-hire sites on the dark web. The author maintains in the beginning of the chapter that she has never believed any of these sites to be legitimate. She writes about her and another journalist, Chris Monteiro's experience with the most prolific of these sites and all that that entails - this was really fascinating!
Section III, Darkest, was pretty brutal to get through. It describes the worst part of the dark web, the hidden havens for child predators and all that goes along with that. Ormsby walks the fine line between getting you to fully comprehend how sick and horrific these people are without being so graphic that its just a shock read. She talks about the trials of some big names in the 'hurtcore' part of the dark web. It was tough to get through, but it was still worth reading - monsters are real.
My only issue with this book is A: that it's hard to get. I had to order it from Australia and that was the only way to get it, no e-book or Amazon ordering, so I had to wait f o r e v e r for it to show up, and B: some of the kerning is way off on the text. On some pages it is so bad that it looks like the line is all one huge run-on word - surely there could be some other adjustment of text versus cramming it together like that. Pet peeve.