Parallel Communities Across the Surface Web and the Dark Web (2025)

Abstract: Humans have an inherent need for community belongingness. This paper investigates this fundamental social motivation by compiling a large collection of parallel datasets comprising over 7 million posts and comments from Reddit and 200,000 posts and comments from Dread, a dark web discussion forum, covering similar topics. Grounded in five theoretical aspects of the Sense of Community framework, our analysis indicates that users on Dread exhibit a stronger sense of community membership. Our data analysis reveals striking similarities in post content across both platforms, despite the dark web’s restricted accessibility. However, these communities differ significantly in community-level closeness, including member interactions and greeting patterns that influence user retention and dynamics. We publicly release the parallel community datasets for other researchers to examine key differences and explore potential directions for further study.

## introduction people often view themselves as part of a larger community @xcite , and this group classification is not limited to the physical world but also extends to the digital space. online platforms serve as communication mediums where users construct identities, engage in discourse, influence one another, and establish connections @xcite . although previous studies have offered critical insights into online communities, their analyses have been largely limited to the surface-level internet. the dark web is the part of the internet where conventional search engines do not index content and requires special tools to access. the invisibility and anonymity of platforms on the dark web enable more private communication @xcite . in this study, we examine user engagement behavior and discourse patterns through the lens of both individualistic and social motivations for using the dark web. we focus on a dark web platform called dread, which features a discussion forum similar to reddit. we compiled a community-matched dataset, consisting of over 7 million posts and comments from reddit and 200,000 posts and comments from dread. figure 1 presents posts from these platforms alongside our research design. analyzing user interactions reveals a notable contrast: reddit fosters a sense of liberty but also emotional detachment, whereas dread users exhibit a deeper, more intimate connection to their community. for example, it was common to see a comment celebrating the platform's anniversary with sentiments indicating belongingness on dread, but not the same for reddit. through this study, we examine how the two platforms shape group boundaries and foster a sense of community, exploring potential differences and similarities. drawing on @xcite 's sense of community theory, we define five aspects that quantitatively and qualitatively measure levels of community belongingness. our results suggest that users on dread have a stronger sense of community membership compared to reddit. from an individualistic perspective, the dark web community has fewer regulations and moderation, as evidenced by the more frequent use of toxic language. from a motivational perspective, its users tend to express more positive emotions, engage in emotional support, incorporate praising rhetoric, and communicate with relatively more specificity and detail. our research provides a broader perspective on the information ecosystem, extending beyond the commonly analyzed surface web. it highlights that the dark web, while often associated with certain risks and harms, also functions as a community-oriented space. the less explored side of the internet. the internet contains multiple layers with distinct levels of visibility and governance. the surface web, which is publicly accessible, often has a higher level of regulation to maintain social norms @xcite . in contrast, the dark web is not indexed by conventional search engines and requires specialized tools like the tor browser for access @xcite . designed for anonymity, this web enables private, censorship-resistant communication @xcite , but also facilitates illegal activities such as cybercrime and black market trading @xcite . recent studies have examined its web content in terms of linguistic patterns @xcite , authorship @xcite , and user engagement @xcite . although there are efforts like darkbert @xcite , a roberta-based model that uses dark web text to perform downstream tasks, limited research has directly compared the surface and dark web through matched communities to investigate the sense of belongingness and offer insight into why people choose to enter such online space. our work contributes by curating a parallel dread and reddit dataset. online communities and membership. online behaviors are guided by the sense of belongingness and how users view the digital community, which is defined by @xcite as the experience of personal involvement in a system that makes them feel they are an integral part of it. building upon the sense of community theory by @xcite , belonging in online communities can be mainly understood through membership, which includes feelings of inclusion that require personal investment to foster a sense of belonging to the community @xcite @xcite . socially connected users are more likely to contribute content, participate in discussions, and demonstrate loyalty to a particular community @xcite . conversely, alienation can drive users to seek alternative platforms that better align with their values and social needs. although the sense of belonging has been extensively researched in the social sciences, how this theory can explain digital communities, particularly when individuals voluntarily move to other communities, remains underexplored. this research builds upon these theories and examines the sense of community on the surface and the dark web. ## dataset we systematically selected dread communities and mapped the content to the surface web reddit to ensure a comparable analysis. we prioritized content from the dark web, as this data is less accessible and more scarce. since dread is a text-only platform, accordingly, we removed all images and videos from the reddit dataset to ensure content alignment. in this section, we detail the process of identifying communities, finding related reddit subgroups, data extraction procedures, and the overall selection criteria. ## sense of community measurement we provide a simple yet effective theory-based approach to quantify the level of community belongingness for the two platforms. drawing from mcmillan and chavis (1986)'s sense of community theory, we identify the following five aspects to measure community ties: it should be emphasize that these five aspects are not mutually exclusive, and hence influence one another. for instance, emotional safety comes in part from established boundaries that provide structural security, which further fosters group intimacy and a sense of belongingness. ## concluding remarks this research compiled a parallel dataset that features content from the surface web and the dark web, spanning a total of ten subcommunities and six distinct topics. we examined the sense of community across both platforms, identifying a notable trend, i.e., the dark web community users consistently exhibited a stronger sense of group belonging based on five key metrics compared to reddit. looking ahead, we propose further exploration of the role of the dark web to gain deeper insights into the unmet needs of internet users, particularly those seeking privacy, uncensored discourse, or alternative community structures that may not be sufficiently supported on the surface web. a better understanding of these dynamics could inform discussions about digital inclusion while addressing ethical and safety considerations.