4 ms·

Use zenrows. Got it. It's clickbait but it does provide a good summary of how cloudflare's anti bot stuff works.

by dizhn 4y ago

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
I'd call it an ad, not clickbait. An ad with some useful content, but still. Edit: I think the modern term is content native advertising, although I'm perfectly happy to keep using the word infomercial.
- dizhn 4y ago
  I called it clickbait because the article does not contain the thing promised in the title.
- throwaway81523 4y ago
  I'd call it clickbait since its actual nature is not revealed til the very end.
  - tzs 4y ago
    The article is ~32 pages long if printed using the default settings in my browser. The first 31 pages pretty extensively provide information on bypassing Cloudflare, which would be very useful to and save a lot of time for someone who is tasked with implementing Cloudflare bypass software. This is followed by 1 page that talks about their product for doing this. In other words it delivers pretty much what the title said it would, and then follows that with a small mention of their product. That's not clickbait by any even remotely reasonable definition.
    - dizhn 4y ago
      The bulk of the article is about the protections in place and there is no direct answer to how to bypass them.
      - throwaway81523 4y ago
        The bulk of the article is "look how hard this is, it is beatable in principle but you really don't want to deal with it yourself". And sure enough, at the end, there is a solution for sale.
- Sebb767 4y ago
  > An ad with some useful content, but still. There's a term for that, infomercial :-)
fishtoaster 4y ago
Yeah, it's content marketing. It's got all the stylistic tells: - Giving more background than is appropriate to the subject (explaining what cloudflare is in an article about bypassing it) - Lots of fluff about "what we're going to cover" like it's a poorly-written highschool essay - Asking and answering questions rather than stating things: "Can Cloudflare be bypassed? Thankfully, the answer is yes!" I'm not entirely sure what drives these things, but they seem to be very common in this sort of content marketing article. I'm guessing a lot of it is SEO-driven. This particular article has more actual content than most, but still ultimately devolves into an ad, of course.
- return_to_monke 4y ago
  > - Asking and answering questions rather than stating things: "Can Cloudflare be bypassed? Thankfully, the answer is yes!" > I'm not entirely sure what drives these things, but they seem to be very common in this sort of content marketing article. I'm guessing a lot of it is SEO-driven. I suspect that this is them trying to get into Google's "frequent question"/"people also ask" [0] box, because that seems like a common search term ("can you bypass cloudflare") [0]: https://www.brightedge.com/glossary/people-also-ask https://www.brightedge.com/glossary/people-also-ask
- throwaway81523 4y ago
  Another tell: emphasizing various phrases by boldfacing, as if the rest of the article is not intended to actually be read. I find the mention of a series A fundraising round at the top interesting too. Do the funders really expect something other than an escalating technical arms race that eventually outpaces them?
cloudyporpoise 4y ago
This is modern marketing. Provide information "for free" to make it seem as if it's in the best interest of those reading, but the reality is you're building a case for your product or service. All of this content is useful but the goal of the post was to show that it's much easier to just pay ZenRows to do this for you. Not bad.
- krackers 4y ago
  >This is modern marketing I certainly wouldn't mind if all advertising was done this way. Unless the information here has been copy-pasted from somewhere else, there's enough value there to stand on its own.

Use zenrows. Got it. It's clickbait but it does provide a good summary of how cloudflare's anti bot stuff works.

by dizhn 4y ago

Use zenrows. Got it. It's clickbait but it does provide a good summary of how cloudflare's anti bot stuff works.

I'd call it an ad, not clickbait. An ad with some useful content, but still. Edit: I think the modern term is content native advertising, although I'm perfectly happy to keep using the word infomercial.

dizhn 4y ago
I called it clickbait because the article does not contain the thing promised in the title.
throwaway81523 4y ago
I'd call it clickbait since its actual nature is not revealed til the very end.
- tzs 4y ago
  The article is ~32 pages long if printed using the default settings in my browser. The first 31 pages pretty extensively provide information on bypassing Cloudflare, which would be very useful to and save a lot of time for someone who is tasked with implementing Cloudflare bypass software. This is followed by 1 page that talks about their product for doing this. In other words it delivers pretty much what the title said it would, and then follows that with a small mention of their product. That's not clickbait by any even remotely reasonable definition.
  - dizhn 4y ago
    The bulk of the article is about the protections in place and there is no direct answer to how to bypass them.
    - throwaway81523 4y ago
      The bulk of the article is "look how hard this is, it is beatable in principle but you really don't want to deal with it yourself". And sure enough, at the end, there is a solution for sale.
Sebb767 4y ago
> An ad with some useful content, but still. There's a term for that, infomercial :-)

fishtoaster 4y ago

Yeah, it's content marketing. It's got all the stylistic tells: - Giving more background than is appropriate to the subject (explaining what cloudflare is in an article about bypassing it) - Lots of fluff about "what we're going to cover" like it's a poorly-written highschool essay - Asking and answering questions rather than stating things: "Can Cloudflare be bypassed? Thankfully, the answer is yes!" I'm not entirely sure what drives these things, but they seem to be very common in this sort of content marketing article. I'm guessing a lot of it is SEO-driven. This particular article has more actual content than most, but still ultimately devolves into an ad, of course.

return_to_monke 4y ago
> - Asking and answering questions rather than stating things: "Can Cloudflare be bypassed? Thankfully, the answer is yes!" > I'm not entirely sure what drives these things, but they seem to be very common in this sort of content marketing article. I'm guessing a lot of it is SEO-driven. I suspect that this is them trying to get into Google's "frequent question"/"people also ask" [0] box, because that seems like a common search term ("can you bypass cloudflare") [0]: https://www.brightedge.com/glossary/people-also-ask https://www.brightedge.com/glossary/people-also-ask
throwaway81523 4y ago
Another tell: emphasizing various phrases by boldfacing, as if the rest of the article is not intended to actually be read. I find the mention of a series A fundraising round at the top interesting too. Do the funders really expect something other than an escalating technical arms race that eventually outpaces them?

cloudyporpoise 4y ago

This is modern marketing. Provide information "for free" to make it seem as if it's in the best interest of those reading, but the reality is you're building a case for your product or service. All of this content is useful but the goal of the post was to show that it's much easier to just pay ZenRows to do this for you. Not bad.

krackers 4y ago
>This is modern marketing I certainly wouldn't mind if all advertising was done this way. Unless the information here has been copy-pasted from somewhere else, there's enough value there to stand on its own.