Twitter is launching a Tor service for more secure and private tweeting

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A version of the site will be called a "tor onion service" and will be used for privacy-protecting and censorship-evading networks. It is possibly the most important and long-awaited message I have ever written, according to Alec Muffett, a software engineer.

While using a similar tool, the onion service can be accessed at http://twitter3e4tixl4xyajtrzo62zg5vztmjuricljdp2c5kshju4avyoid.onion. The new version adds more layers of protection to the already anonymized browsing experience and is designed specifically for the network.

It is a commitment from the platform to dealing with people who use the internet.

The dark web is sometimes referred to as onion services or hidden services, and it refers to sites like the Silk Road drug market. The New York Times, the BBC, and ProPublica are just a few of the websites that offer specific versions of the internet anonymity service. The Verge and other sites use the SecureDrop tool to receive secure documents.

Muffett, who works with companies to implement onion sites, has been discussing the possibility of a Tor-friendly Twitter for years. When Facebook launched its own hidden service, it was designed to fix serious issues for users who were wrongly flagged as botnets. A million users per month were using the onion service through Facebook.

To hide information about users, web traffic is routed through a series of servers. It's a popular way to access sites that are subject to internet censorship, and that's made it relevant since Russia's February invasion of Ukraine, which led to a Russian purge of independent news services. The actual level of blocking has varied, and Russian users can still connect via a Tor bridge, despite some internet service providers censoring the internet.

The onion service has been in the works for a long time and has benefits beyond simply accessing a blocked platform. Since it doesn't work with ordinary browsers, it protects against some security risks introduced by standard web addresses.

Having a distinct access path helps platforms like Facebook and Twitter more easily monitor malicious activity that takes advantage of Tor without blocking or degrading service for good-faith users. Even if most people don't use the internet, it's an improvement for those who do and a move toward greater mainstream acceptance for the system.