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This doesn’t sound like bullshit to me. Serving a static text file that is primarily used by applications is not in line with their terms of service. Cloudfla

This doesn’t sound like bullshit to me. Serving a static text file that is primarily used by applications is not in line with their terms of service. Cloudflare provides a significant service to the free and open web by subsidizing the hosting costs of static content for websites. They give that away for free under what appears to be reasonable terms.

yellowapple 4y ago
I can think of few things more static than a .txt file.
- r3trohack3r 4y ago
  You're missing the point. The service cloudflare donates isn't free. That is the whole point of EasyList’s post. There are plenty of comments on this submission doing back of napkin math to find a reasonable monthly cost for hosting that text file. If you want to donate that bandwidth - go for it. But the comments here about Cloudflare’s ToS read a lot like folks feeling entitled to getting bandwidth for for free. Cloudflare is providing a very specific service for free, and it does a lot of good. It would be great if Cloudflare decided to donate. But I’d re-evaluate your stance if you’re feeling entitled to their resources.
  - mindslight 4y ago
    Actually you're missing the point. It doesn't seem like many people are condemning Cloudflare for not serving a bandwidth-heavy file for free (FTA: "CloudFlare does not allow non-enterprise users use that much traffic"). Rather what's being condemned is this nonsense customer service characterization of a text file as somehow not "web content". Easylist.txt is a data file that could just as easily be in JSON (and be larger). Furthermore, as it stands easylist.txt actually looks like it's a valid text/html file, as browsers generally don't insist on <html>/<body> tags. So from both directions it seems like the customer service drone has thrown out this nonsense just to short circuit having to do their job.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - manigandham 4y ago
      But it's not JSON or HTML. And it's not meant for browsers. It's clearly a dataset as a text file and not meant as "web(page) content". What's nonsense about that when it's completely accurate?
      - thayne 4y ago
        How is it any different from a json file used by a web app (or mobile app, or desktop app)? And there is no reason a web app couldn't read data from a txt file instead of a json file.
        manigandham 4y ago
        It's not for displaying a webpage but to power a separate application. Just because you can serve any kind of file over HTTP doesn't mean it's for serving a website. There's a reason Cloudflare doesn't allow large video files either - even though that probably counts even more as "web content". This is a very straightforward interpretation of the terms and it's strange to see such pushback based on a pedantic technicality when it's clear what the file is being used for. In fact, if this was the opposite situation and some automated rule was involved in isolating this file, I expect the same people would then want human intervention to clear up the difference based on the context.
        thayne 4y ago
        But the support email didn't say it was a violation of the ToS because it is primarily used by non webpage applications (the ToS does say APIs may be allowed, but doesn't have specific details on when afaict), it says it is a violation because it is a txt file, and there is a txt couldn't be a part of a website. And in fact robots.txt and security.txt are standard and common txt files serves as part of websites. In the case if robots.txt it also is primarily consumed by web crawlers, not for actually rendering web pages. Does that mean robots.txt violates the ToS too?
  - martimarkov 4y ago
    A text file is a website file and that is what annoyed me in that support reply. The web is not just html, css and JS. But in order to make the support eng do his job I need to add a .html extension to it?? Would that be considered a website file?
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    > You're missing the point. You're missing the point. If Cloudflare's issue is with bandwidth, then they should say so and leave it at that, not conjure up this pathetic excuse about .txt files somehow not being "web content". Does wrapping that data in <html><body><pre> </pre></body></html> magically fix the bandwidth issues?
    - megous 4y ago
      Even just plain text file without any tags is a valid HTML 5 file. You don't need any tags. <html> and <body> are implied. All you'd need is a <pre> tags or <style> somewhere if you'd want it rendered not just as one large paragraph. I guess you may need a <!DOCTYPE html>
    - kevincox 4y ago
      Just making a file valid HTML doesn't make it "web content". This file is being fetched by an application, not being viewed by a user. I'm not sure this is the most reasonable rule but there are definitely some benificial aspects to it. For example the load on human-viewed content is limited by how often people want to view it. Not how often their browser wants to redownload it.
      - yellowapple 4y ago
        > Just making a file valid HTML doesn't make it "web content". By Cloudflare's rationale it does. > For example the load on human-viewed content is limited by how often people want to view it. Not how often their browser wants to redownload it. Bandwidth is bandwidth. If 100,000,000 humans want to download a 10KB text/html page v. 100,000,000 programs wanting to download a 10KB text/plain file, both within the same time period, then that's going to be the same degree of load on Cloudflare's end.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Fnoord 4y ago
  Interestingly, one could host this on a WWW frontend for Git. Then you'd only need to download (say a daily) diff. Why download the entire list when you can match checksum?
GekkePrutser 4y ago
But it is web content, really. A txt file renders fine in every browser. Many websites also push text through HTML as part of AJAXy stuff. If they actually enforced this for all sites, their service would no longer be usable.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Sadly, despite my arguments in the same direction, Cloudflare refuses to host a base64 encoding of the new Flubber.
- prvit 4y ago
  Movies will render in browsers just fine too, doesn’t mean that cloudflare will allow you to cache them.
  - vifon 4y ago
    Their documentation seems to disagree. https://developers.cloudflare.com/cache/about/default-cache-behavior https://developers.cloudflare.com/cache/about/default-cache-...
m-p-3 4y ago
So if the text was embedded in a static webpage that the client had to parse locally, that'd be okay?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Terretta 4y ago
Welcome to robots.txt: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/robots/intro https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/...

yellowapple 4y ago

I can think of few things more static than a .txt file.

r3trohack3r 4y ago
You're missing the point. The service cloudflare donates isn't free. That is the whole point of EasyList’s post. There are plenty of comments on this submission doing back of napkin math to find a reasonable monthly cost for hosting that text file. If you want to donate that bandwidth - go for it. But the comments here about Cloudflare’s ToS read a lot like folks feeling entitled to getting bandwidth for for free. Cloudflare is providing a very specific service for free, and it does a lot of good. It would be great if Cloudflare decided to donate. But I’d re-evaluate your stance if you’re feeling entitled to their resources.
- mindslight 4y ago
  Actually you're missing the point. It doesn't seem like many people are condemning Cloudflare for not serving a bandwidth-heavy file for free (FTA: "CloudFlare does not allow non-enterprise users use that much traffic"). Rather what's being condemned is this nonsense customer service characterization of a text file as somehow not "web content". Easylist.txt is a data file that could just as easily be in JSON (and be larger). Furthermore, as it stands easylist.txt actually looks like it's a valid text/html file, as browsers generally don't insist on <html>/<body> tags. So from both directions it seems like the customer service drone has thrown out this nonsense just to short circuit having to do their job.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - manigandham 4y ago
    But it's not JSON or HTML. And it's not meant for browsers. It's clearly a dataset as a text file and not meant as "web(page) content". What's nonsense about that when it's completely accurate?
    - thayne 4y ago
      How is it any different from a json file used by a web app (or mobile app, or desktop app)? And there is no reason a web app couldn't read data from a txt file instead of a json file.
      - manigandham 4y ago
        It's not for displaying a webpage but to power a separate application. Just because you can serve any kind of file over HTTP doesn't mean it's for serving a website. There's a reason Cloudflare doesn't allow large video files either - even though that probably counts even more as "web content". This is a very straightforward interpretation of the terms and it's strange to see such pushback based on a pedantic technicality when it's clear what the file is being used for. In fact, if this was the opposite situation and some automated rule was involved in isolating this file, I expect the same people would then want human intervention to clear up the difference based on the context.
        thayne 4y ago
        But the support email didn't say it was a violation of the ToS because it is primarily used by non webpage applications (the ToS does say APIs may be allowed, but doesn't have specific details on when afaict), it says it is a violation because it is a txt file, and there is a txt couldn't be a part of a website. And in fact robots.txt and security.txt are standard and common txt files serves as part of websites. In the case if robots.txt it also is primarily consumed by web crawlers, not for actually rendering web pages. Does that mean robots.txt violates the ToS too?
- martimarkov 4y ago
  A text file is a website file and that is what annoyed me in that support reply. The web is not just html, css and JS. But in order to make the support eng do his job I need to add a .html extension to it?? Would that be considered a website file?
- yellowapple 4y ago
  > You're missing the point. You're missing the point. If Cloudflare's issue is with bandwidth, then they should say so and leave it at that, not conjure up this pathetic excuse about .txt files somehow not being "web content". Does wrapping that data in <html><body><pre> </pre></body></html> magically fix the bandwidth issues?
  - megous 4y ago
    Even just plain text file without any tags is a valid HTML 5 file. You don't need any tags. <html> and <body> are implied. All you'd need is a <pre> tags or <style> somewhere if you'd want it rendered not just as one large paragraph. I guess you may need a <!DOCTYPE html>
  - kevincox 4y ago
    Just making a file valid HTML doesn't make it "web content". This file is being fetched by an application, not being viewed by a user. I'm not sure this is the most reasonable rule but there are definitely some benificial aspects to it. For example the load on human-viewed content is limited by how often people want to view it. Not how often their browser wants to redownload it.
    - yellowapple 4y ago
      > Just making a file valid HTML doesn't make it "web content". By Cloudflare's rationale it does. > For example the load on human-viewed content is limited by how often people want to view it. Not how often their browser wants to redownload it. Bandwidth is bandwidth. If 100,000,000 humans want to download a 10KB text/html page v. 100,000,000 programs wanting to download a 10KB text/plain file, both within the same time period, then that's going to be the same degree of load on Cloudflare's end.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Fnoord 4y ago
Interestingly, one could host this on a WWW frontend for Git. Then you'd only need to download (say a daily) diff. Why download the entire list when you can match checksum?

GekkePrutser 4y ago

But it is web content, really. A txt file renders fine in every browser. Many websites also push text through HTML as part of AJAXy stuff. If they actually enforced this for all sites, their service would no longer be usable.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
renewiltord 4y ago
Sadly, despite my arguments in the same direction, Cloudflare refuses to host a base64 encoding of the new Flubber.
prvit 4y ago
Movies will render in browsers just fine too, doesn’t mean that cloudflare will allow you to cache them.
- vifon 4y ago
  Their documentation seems to disagree. https://developers.cloudflare.com/cache/about/default-cache-behavior https://developers.cloudflare.com/cache/about/default-cache-...

m-p-3 4y ago

So if the text was embedded in a static webpage that the client had to parse locally, that'd be okay?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Terretta 4y ago

Welcome to robots.txt: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/robots/intro https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/...