Have you ever visited the so called Dark Web? If you haven't, do you know how you can go there? I remember years ago when the internet was full of these infographics and ridiculous articles written by people who had no idea what they were talking about. Most of them admitted openly that they had never been there.
Most of these articles had the same source. Another ...article. And every author was trying to outmatch the others adding fake stories and data in order to satisfy the readers fascination with newly discovered mysterious place. And one of the things they would repeat was that the open, every day normal internet was tiny compared to the deep and dark web, hosting only 4% of online content. And that everyone else, except from you the average user, was storing their content into these deep corners. And the iceberg became the absolute symbol for all this. Of course it's just bullshit.
First of all a handful of websites like Facebook and YouTube, generate huge amounts of data and content every minute that make the dark web look microscopic. And just because something is hidden behind a password, doesn't mean it's on the dark web. For those of you who have visited it, you have probably seen how hard it is to stream a video or download any large file from there. The slow speed drives you crazy.
Also, most of the people working on institutions mentioned in these posts, hospitals, banks, government agencies, schools etc have no idea what Tor is, let alone use it. And those videos you see on YouTube from these experts describing what they have seen? It's just BS again, the more crazy stuff you talk about, the more likes and subscribers you get. Sure it's a crazy corner of the internet but I can show you dozens of websites hosted on the open internet, who have much more extreme content. I am talking about the real thing, stuff you will never forget.
Those Red Rooms on the dark web are just a myth. Remember a case some time ago where these guys set up a website, promising that on a given date they would torture a person live and you could not only watch but also give orders about the kind of torture that should be used at that moment. In the end, they just disappeared with the Crypto some idiots paid.
Most of the illegal stuff is marketplaces for drugs, some hacking and guns and a couple of child pornography websites that to my knowledge do not exist anymore. And it's not like you found a website you like, you bookmark it (the domain names there are different, longer and more difficult to remember) and go back another day. They keep shutting down, usually by the police, and if the webmaster has not been arrested will try to start another one. The web hosting companies there also don't last long if they host illegal content. And finally, Tor is not 100% safe, unless you really know what you are doing.