Within a half hour, he said he'd deliver a gram of 2c-i - a drug said to be wonderful but which I've never seen in real life - to my house that afternoon, for $100 - a decent price.

His bio listed my city, Denver, and his name on Wickr, a private messaging app. On my Twitter feed, for example, there was a guy whose name was something like PlugForYou, with emojis of mushrooms and pills. The algorithms know where you live, and will connect you to plugs nearby. Follow a drug dealer, and the algorithms suggest more drug dealers to follow.

The mainstream media is fixated on drug dealing on the Dark Net - a secret-ish back alley of the Internet.īut the Dark Net requires a tricky program called TOR, and cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or Litecoin - a headache.įacebook and Twitter deals are more dangerous than the Dark Net, but so much easier.