Bits moving across the Internet are vulnerable to surveillance and censorship on an unprecedented scale. Today, both Internet providers and governments possess the ability to monitor the moves of their digital citizens from central infrastructure points — an ability that creates significant potential for abuse, and a threat that goes beyond the scope of mere monitoring or filtering.

Internet kill switches seem to exist, governments have demonstrated their ability to disable communications networks in times of crisis. During the 2011 Arab Spring, Egyptian authorities demanded that telecommunication companies sever their broadband connections and mobile networks—both local and European operators were forced to comply, and, as a result, digital Egypt vanished. Despite the country’s decentralized infrastructure, an Internet blackout was relatively easy to carry out. We aim to end such blackouts with fully self-organizing systems. By removing all servers (HTTP, DNS, Bittorrent trackers and video portals) we can create a unique rich media landscape. Today Tribler is robust: "the only way to take Tribler down is to take The Internet down".

By using smartphones we aim to even bypass Internet kill switches in the future. Today we have a fully operational app on Android market which is our proof-of-principle defense against Internet kill switches, note that it is stable but far away from being usable.

Our grand vision in a 1+ hour lecture given at Stanford University, via their Youtube channel. We want more then bypass Internet kill switches. Our grand vision is liberating both media and money. See the talk Abstract and slides (.pdf 78 pages). Keywords: transform money, “Bank-of-Bits”, global financial meltdown isolation. Use cooperation&stability, not volatility&greed. Alter the essence of capitalism (rich get richer) by abolishing compound interest rate and facilitation of safe zero-cost money transfers & lending. We aim for a direct assault on the essence of capitalism, aiming even further then the Bitcoin accomplishment (bypassing the central bank).

Scientific aim: Push the boundaries of self-organising systems, robust reputation systems and craft collaborative systems with millions of active participants under continuous attack from spammers and other adversarial entities.

Background Tribler started in 2005 and has been Internet deployed for 7 years now. Roughly 10 to 15 scientists and engineers continuously work on it. Our ambition is to make darknet technology, security and privacy the default.