New York Times shut down Tor Onion service

Tor shutdown, censorship, and NYT’s replacement channels

• Many see ending the onion service as symbolic retreat from serving readers under censorship.
• Suggesting WhatsApp/Telegram as alternatives is widely criticized:
  • Governments can and do block those apps.
  • Using them discloses to private companies that you read NYT and which stories, risky where NYT access is itself suspicious or banned.
• Some hope NYT will at least keep SecureDrop over Tor; others assume Tor support declined after key security staff left.

Technical value of an onion service

• Onion services avoid Tor exit nodes and the web PKI, reducing risk of exit-node MITM and deanonymization.
• They also reduce load on scarce exit nodes, modestly strengthening the Tor network.
• One commenter shows how trivial it is to stand up a hidden service; vanity-address mining is highlighted as the only “hard” part.

Paywalls, access paths, and workarounds

• Paywall weakens the onion site’s value for at-risk readers; questions arise about how to subscribe anonymously.
• Some note the Tor version was at one point un-paywalled.
• archive.is and similar tools are described as the “de facto” way to read NYT, though:
  • They depend on prior archiving, may be blocked, and include telemetry.
  • Extensions like Bypass Paywalls Clean work locally but raise trust/auditability concerns.

Trust in Tor and practical reachability

• One commenter says they wouldn’t trust Tor for life-or-death anonymity; another argues that, when the alternative is inaction, Tor is still the rational risk.
• Separate discussion notes that NYT’s regular site remains reachable over Tor if exit nodes aren’t blocked; the onion’s advantage is security and resilience, not basic reach.

Broader critique of NYT’s role and bias

• Large subthread uses the Tor shutdown as another data point that NYT aligns with state and corporate power:
  • Allegations include ad-driven incentives, government influence, overuse of anonymous official sources, and long history of amplifying US foreign-policy narratives.
  • Specific examples cited: delayed NSA warrantless-surveillance story, Iraq-war coverage, Venezuela/Bolivia reporting, Holocaust undercoverage, and recent Gaza/Israel stories.
• Others push back, describing NYT as comparatively strong on truth-seeking, noting internal debate on controversial stories, and disputing claims that they acted to re-elect Bush or are “pro-Trump.”

Authoritarianism and self-censorship

• One thread frames dropping the onion site as “obeying in advance” of future speech restrictions, arguing that such preemptive compliance normalizes and eases authoritarian control.