See "[tor-talk] Facebook brute forcing hidden services" at https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/ for discussion.
The beliefs and goals of Facebook and Tor are in complete opposition. It's more likely they're trying to identify Tor users. At best, such an access point is completely redundant. It's a safe bet that any access point that they create is designed with surveillance and tracking in mind. If they start blocking the regular Tor exit nodes, that will confirm it. Do not for a minute believe that Facebook did this to protect users anonymity. Do not use it.
I'm not so cynical about Facebook. They may actually be sincere about providing secure access through Tor to users under repressive regimes. But a key aspect of that should be an exception to their true names policy, requiring no telephone authentication, and accepting throwaway email addresses. Indeed, they should educate those using the onion address. They should warn them to use pseudonyms, to only interact with friends who are also using pseudonyms, and to be very careful about revealing personally identifiable information.
I don't get it. Is it a "Hey, see, we do care about your privacy- we're offering Tor connections! Tor is what those cool Snowden kids use right guys? See we care!" move?
No, it's a move to gain more users. Those under repressive regimes where Facebook may be blocked. It is purely for the benefit of Facebook, but it's a good thing overall.
But couldn't you just access their site (among others) over Tor anyway? What's the difference to the end user going to facebook.com or facebook.onion? edit "Your connection is also end-to-end encrypted, that is to say there is no exit relay in the picture here that can see that you are browsing Facebook over Tor.” But they're already using HTTPS that, while not perfect, does the job well enough. I don't know, something doesn't make sense to me. It just feels like when "mainstream" sites take bitcoins but require your shipping address.
As far as I know, Facebook has been accessible via Tor and standard exit nodes. Assuming this doesn't change, the difference is whether you connect via a hidden service that they control, monitor, log, etc or an exit node that they have no control over. If they start blocking access via exit nodes, it will prove their intentions aren't for the users benefit.
I have mixed feelings about this. I can visualize where this could be a great tool in a FB members toolbelt. I admit it runs contrary to how I think about FB to date. My "family" members hang out on FB for hours every week if not most days. TOR would definitely tighten up security for the data in transit both ways. The revolving IP's from TOR wouldn't provide "evil" opportunities for mis-use by FB staff. I don't see a great deal of value for FB, except of course it might bring on more users from censorship domains. I personally don't have censorship concerns, just general privacy concerns where I live. So, as a privacy "addict" my take would be this: If I hide my TOR use (I do) from my ISP via VPN bridges, then throwing that away by flagging a FB account with my real name and TOR IP's would be destructive. You can't have it both ways.
I wonder how much traffic the Tor network as it is can handle, it is already slow without millions of FaceBook users on it.
There's too many groups, applications, etc using Tor while not contributing to Tor. At this moment, there's only 6658 running Tor nodes of which 1145 are exit nodes. Without more relays and exits, Tor will only get slower. Traffic load is only one factor in Tors speed. Distance and multiple path changes slow Tor. The traffic can only be as fast as the service of the slowest relay in the chain. That slowest link is divided between multiple users traffic. Leaving Facebooks own .onion sites out of the equation for a moment, adding Facebook traffic to Tor will have 2 different effects. 1, It will increase the traffic load, causing more slowdowns. 2, Tor will carry more traffic that has no need of anonymity. For those who try to monitor Tor traffic, this will give them more useless material to sort through, like noise masking the signals they want to monitor. In that respect, it's a good thing, if Tors capacity increases enough to handle the extra load.
Facebook's Tor Site Down for Over a Week Due to Expired TLS Cert December 17, 2019 https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...down-for-over-a-week-due-to-expired-tls-cert/
