Recently there was a documentary in the UK about DNMs, and allot of people over at r/DNMUK have been worrying that this kind of media attention is a bad thing and going to increase police awareness, even though major stories have like this been running for years. It seems every time a media outlet like Vice etc. post an article/ documentary people worry that our little secret is going to be let out, and attracting more people to the darknets is a bad thing. Its time we come to terms with the fact the cat is well and truly out of the bag and embrace more users on the dnms.
So with that in mind I'd like to know how people heard of the DNMs in the first place, as I'd bet many of us are here because we heard about it in mainstream media.
Found out about it on here I think. When I was like 14-15 years old... Now as a young kid just starting highschool I never used the DNMs back then as I didn't think I would be able to understand everything necessary to use it safely and I didn't really get into pushing drugs in general until I was 17. They aren't that hard to find out about. I was just a kid really interested in tech who also was interested in cannabis and learning about most drugs in general.
All articles and publicity are going to do (IMO) is create more low hanging fruit from people who see the article and just rush into using the DNMs thinking it's something very easy to do and not taking the time to research and develope proper OPSEC. Which then gives more of those easier targets for LE which may actually make us slightly safer.