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> I'd be upset about Cloudflare getting involved in anything good and pure Why? At least by FAANG standards, Cloudflare stands out to me as one of the good gu

by cj 6y ago

> I'd be upset about Cloudflare getting involved in anything good and pure Why? At least by FAANG standards, Cloudflare stands out to me as one of the good guys.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
NikolaeVarius 6y ago
You fool, you have opened up a can of worms, no good will come out of this resulting flame war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudflare#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudflare#Controversies
- Dirlewanger 6y ago
  Wow, zero coverage about their attempts to centralize key parts of the Internet under their control and how many people got outraged about that, but plenty on the trivial outrage of CF supplying services to customers they found offensive. I'm kind of tempted to update this section.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - deleted 6y ago
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  - deleted 6y ago
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  - core-questions 6y ago
    Why establish a false dichotomy? One can be just as mad about them abusing their position to attack free speech in a censorious way, as one is about their other efforts to create a monopoly over a large swathe of internet traffic. I get it, nobody wants to defend badthink, but it's a hell of a lot easier philosophically to defend all political speech regardless of content than it is to try to pick and choose and make some moral case.
    - johnklos 6y ago
      Set aside the free speech stuff which involves groups inciting violence - while we can agree that it's bad, deciding what to do will inevitably lead to wildly divergent ideas. Cloudflare says that it's "free speech" for their customers to claim to be Adobe offering a "Flash Updater", or for their customers to claim to be Bank of America. That is how evil Cloudflare is - they allow clear and unambiguous crime for pennies.
      - meowface 6y ago
        They do? I'm pretty sure they've always banned phishing pages. Do you have a source on that?
slipheen 6y ago
Any sufficiently large and centralized infrastructure (like Cloudflare is becoming) has an incentive to engage in user-hostile behaviors. So far, I personally think most people would say they've been mostly benevolent. But they are a public company, and a new CEO can have different priorities. For example, (fairly or not) the public perception of Google has slowly been diminishing over time.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  >So far, I personally think most people would say they've been mostly benevolent. They're denying access to no-JS users to many sites.
  - aeyes 6y ago
    The owner of the site is denying access, Cloudflare just provides a service. The owner can turn the feature off.
    - forgotmypw17 6y ago
      No, I can't even get through to the site itself past Cloudflare's gate...
      - yandie 6y ago
        The gate is configured by the website owner. Not to defend the frustrating experience - but I personally prefer my website to not be attacked by bot. I'm just a happy Cloudflare customer.
        kortilla 6y ago
        Cloudflare being the enabler of a user-hostile technology doesn’t make them benevolent, no matter how happy the customers.
        6y ago
therealmarv 6y ago
Just a reminder: Cloudflare with its standard settings is breaking the second and third world countries internet with their captchas on websites. This is discrimination in my opinion. As long as you are only in a first world country you will never notice.
- freedomben 6y ago
  Minor correction: As long as you are only in a first world country [and you don't use a VPN service or Tor] you will never notice. I point this out because I think it's an anti-privacy "feature" and I wish CF would stop.
  - meowface 6y ago
    They could just block these IPs outright. A massive percentage of attack traffic runs over these networks. Before, site owners would often have to block Tor completely after dealing with enough spam/attacks from exit nodes, and now they can allow actual humans without any sort of complex setup. I think it's a net win for everyone involved, personally.
- judge2020 6y ago
  Isn't this because of ISP-grade NAT where one bad actor (either maliciously or via running something like hola vpn) can kill a few hundred users' IP reputation?
- peteretep 6y ago
  I do almost all of my internet access from a 2nd/3rd world country and hadn’t noticed?
  - andreareina 6y ago
    Depends on the country/ISP probably. From the Philippines, Firefox with uBlockOrigin and PrivacyBadger hit captcha walls all the time; all that stopped as soon as I moved to Singapore.
- ffpip 6y ago
surround 6y ago
While Cloudflare actions have been mostly positive, the sheer size of their network is a concern for decentralization. We can’t trust that they’ll always make good decisions. I’m glad that the Internet Archive is independent and hope it always remains that way.
johnklos 6y ago
They allow and support known spammers and scammers. They make reporting of spammers and scammers arduous. They play dumb when asked about their barriers and repeat inane responses rather than answering questions. In other words, they have a history of clearly, unambiguously showing themselves to be unapologetic assholes.

by cj 6y ago

> I'd be upset about Cloudflare getting involved in anything good and pure Why? At least by FAANG standards, Cloudflare stands out to me as one of the good guys.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

NikolaeVarius 6y ago

You fool, you have opened up a can of worms, no good will come out of this resulting flame war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudflare#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudflare#Controversies

Dirlewanger 6y ago
Wow, zero coverage about their attempts to centralize key parts of the Internet under their control and how many people got outraged about that, but plenty on the trivial outrage of CF supplying services to customers they found offensive. I'm kind of tempted to update this section.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- core-questions 6y ago
  Why establish a false dichotomy? One can be just as mad about them abusing their position to attack free speech in a censorious way, as one is about their other efforts to create a monopoly over a large swathe of internet traffic. I get it, nobody wants to defend badthink, but it's a hell of a lot easier philosophically to defend all political speech regardless of content than it is to try to pick and choose and make some moral case.
  - johnklos 6y ago
    Set aside the free speech stuff which involves groups inciting violence - while we can agree that it's bad, deciding what to do will inevitably lead to wildly divergent ideas. Cloudflare says that it's "free speech" for their customers to claim to be Adobe offering a "Flash Updater", or for their customers to claim to be Bank of America. That is how evil Cloudflare is - they allow clear and unambiguous crime for pennies.
    - meowface 6y ago
      They do? I'm pretty sure they've always banned phishing pages. Do you have a source on that?

slipheen 6y ago

Any sufficiently large and centralized infrastructure (like Cloudflare is becoming) has an incentive to engage in user-hostile behaviors. So far, I personally think most people would say they've been mostly benevolent. But they are a public company, and a new CEO can have different priorities. For example, (fairly or not) the public perception of Google has slowly been diminishing over time.

forgotmypw17 6y ago
>So far, I personally think most people would say they've been mostly benevolent. They're denying access to no-JS users to many sites.
- aeyes 6y ago
  The owner of the site is denying access, Cloudflare just provides a service. The owner can turn the feature off.
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    No, I can't even get through to the site itself past Cloudflare's gate...
    - yandie 6y ago
      The gate is configured by the website owner. Not to defend the frustrating experience - but I personally prefer my website to not be attacked by bot. I'm just a happy Cloudflare customer.
      - kortilla 6y ago
        Cloudflare being the enabler of a user-hostile technology doesn’t make them benevolent, no matter how happy the customers.
        6y ago

therealmarv 6y ago

Just a reminder: Cloudflare with its standard settings is breaking the second and third world countries internet with their captchas on websites. This is discrimination in my opinion. As long as you are only in a first world country you will never notice.

freedomben 6y ago
Minor correction: As long as you are only in a first world country [and you don't use a VPN service or Tor] you will never notice. I point this out because I think it's an anti-privacy "feature" and I wish CF would stop.
- meowface 6y ago
  They could just block these IPs outright. A massive percentage of attack traffic runs over these networks. Before, site owners would often have to block Tor completely after dealing with enough spam/attacks from exit nodes, and now they can allow actual humans without any sort of complex setup. I think it's a net win for everyone involved, personally.
judge2020 6y ago
Isn't this because of ISP-grade NAT where one bad actor (either maliciously or via running something like hola vpn) can kill a few hundred users' IP reputation?
peteretep 6y ago
I do almost all of my internet access from a 2nd/3rd world country and hadn’t noticed?
- andreareina 6y ago
  Depends on the country/ISP probably. From the Philippines, Firefox with uBlockOrigin and PrivacyBadger hit captcha walls all the time; all that stopped as soon as I moved to Singapore.
ffpip 6y ago

surround 6y ago

While Cloudflare actions have been mostly positive, the sheer size of their network is a concern for decentralization. We can’t trust that they’ll always make good decisions. I’m glad that the Internet Archive is independent and hope it always remains that way.

johnklos 6y ago

They allow and support known spammers and scammers. They make reporting of spammers and scammers arduous. They play dumb when asked about their barriers and repeat inane responses rather than answering questions. In other words, they have a history of clearly, unambiguously showing themselves to be unapologetic assholes.