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I don't think you understand why that captcha is there in the first place then. Cloudflare prevents a bunch of crap that site operators just don't want to deal

I don't think you understand why that captcha is there in the first place then. Cloudflare prevents a bunch of crap that site operators just don't want to deal with. Especially for smaller sites that are run by one person. Dealing with a wordpress site getting hacked because you missed an update by a day, or a bulletin bored getting swarmed with bots, or some asshat ddos'ing your site because you banned them. Suddenly that site just isn't worth running. Complaining that about a thing that prevents that headache because it's a minor inconvenience to you is so self centered it boggles the mind.

grishka 5y ago
Yeah, so centralizing the entire internet around a black box that sees all your traffic in cleartext is clearly the right solution. /s > Dealing with a wordpress site getting hacked because you missed an update by a day Maybe don't use something this vulnerable then and rely on a third party to protect you from exploits. > or a bulletin bored getting swarmed with bots Maybe require email verification and/or a captcha when signing up or posting. Don't punish people for passive actions. Somehow, there are many forums that aren't behind cloudflare, yet there are no spam bots. > or some asshat ddos'ing your site because you banned them Sure ddos is such an everyday occurrence? I just don't understand. I run a personal website. There's literally nothing to "deal" with. I set it all up once and it works. I only have to pay for the server and for the domains on time.
- ehutch79 5y ago
  Monocultures are always bad, but I don't see any alternative services with this level of ease of use. You're definitely overestimating the technical expertise/available time of a lot small time admins out there. You don't see bots and spam on those forums either because they are actually using cloudflare, and you're just not seeing the captcha, or because in the backend they're feeding all their posts through akismet (in plain text). I don't think you're considering how many services see your posts, even when you don't trip a captcha. email accounts are trivial to sign up for, especially for bots. I always recommend charging $1 (or local equivalent) for an account, that's a lot harder to fake. My point in all this is that bitching that site is using cloudflare to not have to deal with crap, is a self centered view. Saying "well it never happened to me, so it must never happen" is similarly self absorbed. Maybe consider that your experience is not everyones experience
  - jjav 5y ago
    > My point in all this is that bitching that site is using cloudflare to not have to deal with crap, is a self centered view. Who is serving whom here? If a business thinks it's ok to impose cloudflare inconvenience on me, the customer, for the priviledge of giving them my money, who is self centered here? The simple answer is I'll close the tab and go buy it from a competitor. I'm not playing captcha games to buy something.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - ehutch79 5y ago
      Why do I feel like you ask to speak to managers a lot?
  - NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
    >prevents a bunch of crap that site operators just don't want to deal with >I don't see any alternative services with this level of ease of use. Both of these boil down to laziness, IMHO. And for how awful they are for half the internet, that's not okay to me. Not as a user or as a developer. When a user requests a site they expect to get the site. When you utterly disregard their utterly reasonable expectation and force them to train someone's ML algorithm for free for a minute or two you utterly destroy the user experience. If that's my experience as a user, your entire site gets an instant 1/10 rating from me. I'll likely leave instantly and never return.

grishka 5y ago

Yeah, so centralizing the entire internet around a black box that sees all your traffic in cleartext is clearly the right solution. /s > Dealing with a wordpress site getting hacked because you missed an update by a day Maybe don't use something this vulnerable then and rely on a third party to protect you from exploits. > or a bulletin bored getting swarmed with bots Maybe require email verification and/or a captcha when signing up or posting. Don't punish people for passive actions. Somehow, there are many forums that aren't behind cloudflare, yet there are no spam bots. > or some asshat ddos'ing your site because you banned them Sure ddos is such an everyday occurrence? I just don't understand. I run a personal website. There's literally nothing to "deal" with. I set it all up once and it works. I only have to pay for the server and for the domains on time.

ehutch79 5y ago
Monocultures are always bad, but I don't see any alternative services with this level of ease of use. You're definitely overestimating the technical expertise/available time of a lot small time admins out there. You don't see bots and spam on those forums either because they are actually using cloudflare, and you're just not seeing the captcha, or because in the backend they're feeding all their posts through akismet (in plain text). I don't think you're considering how many services see your posts, even when you don't trip a captcha. email accounts are trivial to sign up for, especially for bots. I always recommend charging $1 (or local equivalent) for an account, that's a lot harder to fake. My point in all this is that bitching that site is using cloudflare to not have to deal with crap, is a self centered view. Saying "well it never happened to me, so it must never happen" is similarly self absorbed. Maybe consider that your experience is not everyones experience
- jjav 5y ago
  > My point in all this is that bitching that site is using cloudflare to not have to deal with crap, is a self centered view. Who is serving whom here? If a business thinks it's ok to impose cloudflare inconvenience on me, the customer, for the priviledge of giving them my money, who is self centered here? The simple answer is I'll close the tab and go buy it from a competitor. I'm not playing captcha games to buy something.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ehutch79 5y ago
    Why do I feel like you ask to speak to managers a lot?
- NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
  >prevents a bunch of crap that site operators just don't want to deal with >I don't see any alternative services with this level of ease of use. Both of these boil down to laziness, IMHO. And for how awful they are for half the internet, that's not okay to me. Not as a user or as a developer. When a user requests a site they expect to get the site. When you utterly disregard their utterly reasonable expectation and force them to train someone's ML algorithm for free for a minute or two you utterly destroy the user experience. If that's my experience as a user, your entire site gets an instant 1/10 rating from me. I'll likely leave instantly and never return.