[matjet]

The correct analogy here would be implementing spam filtering by blocking large segments of email addresses. Eg, dropping mail from all non microsoft/gmail domains (as a nuisance reduction measure!), with predictable impact on smaller providers and self hosted email.

[thaumaturgy]

You're reframing this to make Tor look a lot better than it is. The signal:noise ratio for Tor is epsilon. It's almost entirely garbage. If a network generated spam at rates analogous to network traffic from Tor, yes, I guarantee that network would be on every single email service's block list.

Tor's advocates in this thread keep trying to argue it from ideology, as though anybody's obligated to deal with Tor traffic on principle alone, and not one of them so far has tried to argue that Tor is not 90+% bots and garbage. Funny, that.

[swores]

With all the blocks in place, is it ever possible to know whether the 90% is still an innate effect of Tor, or actually an effect of sites blocking Tor?

I have Tor installed, figured it would be worth adding my boring browsing to the mix sometimes, but since most sites I try to load block Tor exits, Tor browser now sits unused.

On the other hand, if I woke up tomorrow deciding to start a bot farm or whatever other malicious thing, or course I'd be interested in hiding through Tor and might try it again (don't worry, I won't wake up that way).

So even if a hypothetical 100% of global internet users really wanted to do all their browsing through Tor, they might all reach the same conclusion as me that too many sites are blocked and therefore leave Tor to mostly bad traffic. Of course it's nowhere near 100%, but hopefully you see my point that the sites blocking Tor IPs (and I absolutely appreciate why) can become a self-fulfilling prophecy - and I'm not sure how you'd get out of that loop?

[account42]

And if everyone blocks all non-gmail addresses then soon enough the snr of non-gmail addresses will also be garbage because you are actively preventing any legitimate user from using them.

[plumeria]

I think it would be sensible to block new account registrations with addresses from email address aliasing services (e.g. duck.com) or disposable email address services (e.g. mailinator.com).