Twitter launches Dark Web Tor service for its easier access in Russia

New Delhi: A cybersecurity expert on Tuesday announced that they had helped implement an official Tor onion service version of Twitter, meaning that Russian users should be able to use the Tor anonymity network to reach the site.

The site stands to be one of the most significant Tor onion services ever launched, given that it comes during Russia's aggressive clamping down on access to social networks and independent media.

"This is possibly the most important and long-awaited tweet that I've ever composed," Alec Muffett, the cybersecurity expert and designer of the Enterprise Onion Toolkit which makes deploying Tor onion services easier, tweeted. "On behalf of Twitter, I am delighted to announce their new Tor Project onion service," he posted late on Tuesday. Tor's anonymity network routes a user's Internet connection through a selection of different servers, run mostly by volunteers, around the world.

"Making our service more accessible is an ongoing priority for us," a Twitter spokesperson told Motherboard, pointing to Twitter's "supported browsers" page, which now includes a link to the Tor onion service. In March, 12.77 per cent of Tor relay users were originally connecting from Russia, according to data by the Tor Project.

Facebook launched its own Tor version in 2014. Twitter has launched the Tor onion service, optimizing it for the privacy-protecting and censorship-evading network.