Tor is a valuable tool for browsing the web anonymously, but since it's powered by volunteers willing to share some bandwidth and a computer, it's always in need of additional help. Which is why EFF is announcing the Tor University Challenge, a project asking universities to start running Tor...
No, by running a relay or exit node you are opting in to routing traffic that could contain CSAM. This is a problem with all anonymous unmoderated distributed systems like Tor. With Freenet, for example, you’re even opting in to storing it (pieces of it in encrypted form that can’t be accessed without the content hash key).
Privacy is good but so is censorship (moderation). The censorship just needs to be implemented by an accountable group of people that share the same interests of the users. Tor is trying to solve a problem that can only be solved through social struggle with institutions of power.
There always needs to be an uncensored option, but it doesn’t have to be the same option most people use day to day. One region’s “accountable group of people” is another region’s authoritarian police state.
Tor isn’t just used by CSAM creators and distributors, but also journalists, resistance fighters, and refugees. The only way it works is if regular traffic is mixed with sensitive traffic, otherwise there are methods to uncover the source of sensitive traffic.
If you run a relay, you will be transmitting encrypted CSAM, but you’ll also be transmitting journalist correspondence with sensitive sources, coordination with refugees from brutal regimes, etc. You can’t really pick and choose, and that’s the whole point and why it can be so useful to people in danger.
I don’t think lemmy or ActivityPub should tolerate CSAM, so I’m not implying that censorship is always bad, only that there needs to be an uncensored channel available.