New Twitter Update: Use “Tor service” for more secure and private tweeting

Twitter just released a version of its site that works better on the Tor network. 

“Twitter has joined other major sites and publications offering .onion services to help users circumvent censorship and surveillance—including @Facebook, @BBC, @DeutscheWelle, @theintercept, @propublica, @RadioFreeAsia, and more.”

In the announcement, Software engineer Alec Muffett, who claims to have provided support for Twitter “in their adoption of #OnionServices & #OnionNetworking”, says the @TorProject will help the company provide greater privacy, integrity, trust, & “unblockability” for people all around the world who use the Social media network. 

According to Muffett, the Tor network has also been added to Twitter’s list of browsers that work well with the service. 

Twitter’s onion service can be found at https://twitter3e4tixl4xyajtrzo62zg5vztmjuricljdp2c5kshju4avyoid.onion if you’re using Tor Browser. Even though you could still access the normal version of Twitter’s site through Tor, the new version adds more layers of protection and is made just for the network.

Muffett suggested several reasons to build an onion site, as well as a lot of benefits, all of which he claimed have helped platforms like Facebook, the BBC, and the NYT Onions be more useful.

“The first benefits are authenticity and availability: if you are running Tor Browser and if you click/type in exactly the proper Onion address, you are guaranteed to be connected to what you expect — or not at all.” 

“Dark web” and “hidden services” are often used to describe onion services, while the latter is often used to describe openly illicit sites like Silk Road. The DuckDuckGo search engine and news outlets like the New York Times, the BBC, and ProPublica all have Tor-specific versions. There are other sites that employ Tor-encrypted tools like SecureDrop to send and receive secure content.

Muffett revealed in his tweet that he and other companies have been talking about a Tor-friendly Twitter since 2014. To address concerns with Tor users who were wrongly labeled as botnets, Facebook established its own hidden service. Using Tor, one million people per month accessed the main Facebook site or onion service, according to Facebook statistics from 2016.

Muffet is not a Twitter employee. He just helps large organisations which want to adopt #OnionServices.