On the clearweb, busy social media sites like Hacker News or X or Reddit attract more activity in a self-reinforcing virtuous cycle.

On the Tor hidden service darkweb, the same thing has happened with a service named "Dread". It is, by far, the single most important site:

http://dreadytofatroptsdj6io7l3xptbet6onoyno2yv7jicoxknyazubrad.onion

Most activity on Dread pertains to the drug trade. But sometimes it's people trying to avoid government persecution, sometimes it's Tesla vandalism, and so on. For example:

http://dreadytofatroptsdj6io7l3xptbet6onoyno2yv7jicoxknyazubrad.onion/d/Activism

The best way to find small hidden services appears to be scraping Dread to find onion links in posts and replies.

The alternative is the clearweb onion lists that are almost never updated: https://dark.fail, https://tor.taxi, https://tor.link, etc. A shoddy mess.

So, darkweb experts, what have I missed?