Many such things can be done on the clear/surface/open web, the basic, conventional part of the internet that people can reach using widespread search engines like Google or Bing, all from a typical device like their smartphone. Beyond this layer, there is the deep web. Although it might sound more complex than this, the deep web includes sites as simple as someone's academic or streaming service user menu--it is password protected and cannot be visited directly from a casual internet search. An article behind a paywall would also be in the deep web, as it is not indexed for a search engine. The dark web is a portion of the deep web. Rather than ending in .com, .net, or .org, its sites end in .onion, and it is only accessible through a special browser such as Tor (also called The Onion Router).
A predominant quality of the dark web is its anonymity, provided by encryption that drastically complicates identifying the location of the "darknet" user. This section of the internet can, like its "clear" sibling, be used to engage in human trafficking, orchestrate assassinations, distribute illicit erotic media, launder money, practice corporate or political espionage, sell or advertise highly destructive drugs, and so on. However, anonymity could also help whistleblowers expose cruelty in business, or this status could be enjoyed by people who have no interest in things like kidnapping, sexual slavery, or drug abuse. They just want the mere anonymity. It is not the additional layers of digital secrecy that make something on the dark web evil; they are neutral and can be misused by those whose real nature comes out when they can hide behind anonymity beyond that of the clear web or typical face-to-face interactions.
Because of the wording in its title, the dark web can sound foreboding. In truth, additional privacy in web browsing does not have to be used in any sort of irrational, malevolent, or exploitative way. The internet as a whole, including the surface sites familiar to many users who might have never heard of the deep web or its subcategory of the dark web, does not make anyone use it for immoral ends. Just because one buys a weapon online does not mean one will or intends to use it for malicious means, and the weapon, though legality is not morality, is legal or illegal regardless of its dark web availability. Weapon ownership can be a hobby (someone might like collecting firearms or knives or display, or use them on a practice range only) or for self-defense, not something pursued for the purpose of something like robbery, murder, or assault. However, with guns, one has to still obtain the firearm in person from an FFL (Federal Firearms License) dealer to legally complete the process under American law.
The dark web just offers a broader range of options for purchasing weapons and not all of them will be legally permitted. What of something like sexual material? With erotic media, there are many sexual acts that, at least by Biblical standards, are not evil (Deuteronomy 4:2), and neither is viewing or appreciating them. If one was using the internet to view these specific kinds of acts, including for self-pleasuring, it would not make a moral difference. Viewing sexual activity to be intentionally aroused by something immoral is immoral regardless of whether one is anonymous and vice versa. For other things such a as a more unfiltered ideological communication between individuals without as high a risk of being identified, openness about one's philosophical stances on the dark web is also rational if one is a rational person and morally good if one is righteous, though proud openness by irrationalists is invalid either way.
It is never anonymity itself that makes a moral difference in these or other such issues. That which is good or permissible would not lose its status simply because someone's digital information access has more encryption. That which is evil would not have its depravity erased or lessened because someone could more easily get away with it. The intentions and activity of one person on the dark web also does not have to be the same as those of someone else. All of them share a vastly amplified privacy, but not everyone would as much as have the desire to use a blanket of secrecy to say, buy, promote, or otherwise participate in anything with immorality involved. The name dark web does not mean everyone using it is scheming to do something nefarious.
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