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The internet is dying. All hail the new islandnet powered by AI. In all seriousness, the open web is under siege too. Hosting choices dwindled. Cloud providers

The internet is dying. All hail the new islandnet powered by AI. In all seriousness, the open web is under siege too. Hosting choices dwindled. Cloud providers few. Dark web isn’t the answer. Decentralized isn’t either (the web is already decentralized). We need legislation that protects humans and not corporations. Common carrier. Fair privacy law. Following privacy laws. And ending the piracy of content for the sake of “greater good”. If I go to jail for pirating movies. So too should authors of bots that scrape content for training their $29.99/mo Alpaca. Or the click farmers driving up engagement for $9.99/mo. The Pirate Bay is illegal yet OpenAI can pirate the world and get $1b investment.

Dalewyn 3y ago
>Decentralized isn’t either (the web is already decentralized). Cloudflare. EDIT: To those downvoting, you do realize how much of the internet relies on Cloudflare to connect server and client, right? Cloudflare is a bigger gatekeeper than Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook combined.
- scubbo 3y ago
  To provide an opposing opinion which might help you understand why you're getting downvoted (though I didn't) - the reason this doesn't ring true to me is that none of your source-of-truth is actually hosted _on_ Cloudflared (they're just a proxy - you still control your own content), and the switching costs are minimal (especially if you're brave enough to raw-dog it on the public Internet without a CDN). That distinguishes it from all the other cases you listed, where either a) they could just disable your account one day, and you lose access to all the content that you stored on "their" servers, and/or b) anything that you built using their proprietary language/tool (Azure, CDK, etc.) doesn't translate easily to another provider.
  - dbttdft 3y ago
    You're both wrong. Cloudflare is breaking the internet by doing interactive verification of users, meaning the web is no longer an open protocol. I'm referring to that "enable javascript" page and "one more step" page. They require you to have Firefox or Chrome, neither of which are acceptable, which they verify with scripts and deep packet inspection. Contrast this to old school communication protocols which I could implement in an hour. I can't implement a Firefox in 100 years. Firefox can't even run on 95% of my machines, it just lags to hell once you open two tabs. And I need as many instances of Firefox as possible across many boxes to prevent being data mined. Cloudflare is the nail in the coffin for the web, they just not have advanced that far yet. Just wait until "something happens" and Cloudflare ups their policing.
    - reactordev 3y ago
      Only for sites that use Cloudflare. There’s a huge portion of the web that doesn’t.
    - scubbo 3y ago
      > I'm referring to that "enable javascript" page and "one more step" page. Sorry, I have no idea to what you're referring. But even if that is the case _for sites that are behind Cloudflare CDN_ - that still doesn't invalidate my point that Cloudflare _itself_ does not make the web decentralized. A lot of traffic _happens_ to go through it right now - but if it does "up its policing" in a way which is unacceptable, it is trivial for hosts to migrate away from behind it, in a way which is _not_ the case when 1. your content is irretrievable from the provider, 2. your social network is unmigratable, or 3. your product is built in provider-specific language/tooling. EDIT: a sibling comment[0] helped me realize that what I'm describing is more like "lock-in-iness" than "centralization". Fair. Though - a "gatekeeper" from whom migration costs are very cheap worries me far less. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39687477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39687477
      - dbttdft 3y ago
        You're wrong because you're just saying Cloudflare is making the web more centralized. The web is centralized by design and a defective technology. It costs money to host text files (and for no reason, see Bit Torrent for a counter example (and don't talk to me about unseeded content because you could literally just seed your website if you care about it so it would be no different than current web)).
        scubbo 3y ago
        > The web is centralized by design and a defective technology Astonishing claims require astonishing proof :)
        dbttdft 3y ago
        The more viewers your website gets the more money it needs for hosting (unlike proper ways of serving documents, like Torrent), this naturally leads to centralization. The more americunts browse your site the more likely it needs lawyers and since you are now a business (which you shouldn't be because websites for profit are garbage), you have to act "responsibly", like a business. The more you publish stuff that goes against the grain the more your site will be DDoSed. Today even just not being polite is enough to get DDoSed by some kind of blue haired "anarchist". I mean this literally, not in some nazi way - merely writing the Spanish word for black regardless of context is enough for DDoS. You need professional publishers to imagine every single problematic thing you could write if you want your blog today to have a mere 1 million viewers. The more you do anything what so ever the more your website is pushed around and eventually has no choice but to go with some big enterprise data centers who has their own stupid rules like Cloudflare who blocks every second user for their broken firewall and constantly insists they are right.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    I counter with the fact that hosting something means nothing unless connections can be made. Well, unless hosting in itself is your end goal. Even here on HN, there are plenty of comments about how someone can't connect to a website because it uses Cloudflare and Cloudflare decided to block them due to a dirty IP address, shady (read: hyper privacy focused) user agent, CAPTCHAs that don't work (see prior factor), or other factors. Some form of DDOS protection is desired in this day and age, and Cloudflare provides a very convenient service to answer it. Unfortunately, this means the vast majority of the internet is routed through Cloudflare making it a singular point of failure/denial. Aka centralization.
    - reactordev 3y ago
      Yes but it was the hosters choice to leverage cloudflare as a cache/cdn instead of other methods (that probably would have succumbed to the HN hug of death).
    - scubbo 3y ago
      Eh, fair - I think we have differing definitions of centralization, though I can see that yours is actually more accurate. I was using it not to mean "a lot of traffic goes through this thing", but rather "it would be difficult for users of this service to migrate away from it if they wanted to", which I guess is more like "lock-in-iness". The SPOF property you describe is indeed undesirable and important to be aware of!
linkjuice4all 3y ago
Humans were made second class netizens when ISPs made self hosting very difficult for individuals. While self-hosting doesn’t solve everything (and introduces its own problems) it does place control of content in the hands of people hosting it. Facebook, reddit, and the rest should be protocols that your server can speak. You can allow/deny access on your terms. But instead we ended up putting our stuff on other people’s computers and they went and blabbed it all over the internet.
- packetlost 3y ago
  idk, every ISP I've ever had hasn't made it particularly difficult to host anything besides an email server on my residential service.
OhioMan2943 3y ago
I'm thinking of creating a site where user signup is limited to specific top level domains, like edu, gov mil, to stop bots and low quality content
BriggyDwiggs42 3y ago
Eh what if we just make piracy legal for individuals given its unenforceable already, but illegal for businesses
dbttdft 3y ago
What law do we need? More ignorant idiocy like banning incandescent bulbs? How do we get good law if nobody understand what they're doing in tech?
- reactordev 3y ago
  By electing more engineers to help lawyers instead of more lawyers. But really we need to make it a requirement for congressional folks (parliamentary too) to divest from corporate sponsorship in order to be in office and that they understand that their seat can be revoked should they not follow the “will of the people” or whatever your constitution says. In the US, more and more Congress people are on the boards or funded by Big Tech to the point where all it takes is a little one-on-one meeting and your entire stance flip flops. Is the US banning TikTok? Not? Yes? No? Now we aren’t? Oh it’s back on? Nope, nevermind. I lost hope that Congress would ever understand science after Bush vs Gore.

Dalewyn 3y ago

>Decentralized isn’t either (the web is already decentralized). Cloudflare. EDIT: To those downvoting, you do realize how much of the internet relies on Cloudflare to connect server and client, right? Cloudflare is a bigger gatekeeper than Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook combined.

scubbo 3y ago
To provide an opposing opinion which might help you understand why you're getting downvoted (though I didn't) - the reason this doesn't ring true to me is that none of your source-of-truth is actually hosted _on_ Cloudflared (they're just a proxy - you still control your own content), and the switching costs are minimal (especially if you're brave enough to raw-dog it on the public Internet without a CDN). That distinguishes it from all the other cases you listed, where either a) they could just disable your account one day, and you lose access to all the content that you stored on "their" servers, and/or b) anything that you built using their proprietary language/tool (Azure, CDK, etc.) doesn't translate easily to another provider.
- dbttdft 3y ago
  You're both wrong. Cloudflare is breaking the internet by doing interactive verification of users, meaning the web is no longer an open protocol. I'm referring to that "enable javascript" page and "one more step" page. They require you to have Firefox or Chrome, neither of which are acceptable, which they verify with scripts and deep packet inspection. Contrast this to old school communication protocols which I could implement in an hour. I can't implement a Firefox in 100 years. Firefox can't even run on 95% of my machines, it just lags to hell once you open two tabs. And I need as many instances of Firefox as possible across many boxes to prevent being data mined. Cloudflare is the nail in the coffin for the web, they just not have advanced that far yet. Just wait until "something happens" and Cloudflare ups their policing.
  - reactordev 3y ago
    Only for sites that use Cloudflare. There’s a huge portion of the web that doesn’t.
  - scubbo 3y ago
    > I'm referring to that "enable javascript" page and "one more step" page. Sorry, I have no idea to what you're referring. But even if that is the case _for sites that are behind Cloudflare CDN_ - that still doesn't invalidate my point that Cloudflare _itself_ does not make the web decentralized. A lot of traffic _happens_ to go through it right now - but if it does "up its policing" in a way which is unacceptable, it is trivial for hosts to migrate away from behind it, in a way which is _not_ the case when 1. your content is irretrievable from the provider, 2. your social network is unmigratable, or 3. your product is built in provider-specific language/tooling. EDIT: a sibling comment[0] helped me realize that what I'm describing is more like "lock-in-iness" than "centralization". Fair. Though - a "gatekeeper" from whom migration costs are very cheap worries me far less. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39687477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39687477
    - dbttdft 3y ago
      You're wrong because you're just saying Cloudflare is making the web more centralized. The web is centralized by design and a defective technology. It costs money to host text files (and for no reason, see Bit Torrent for a counter example (and don't talk to me about unseeded content because you could literally just seed your website if you care about it so it would be no different than current web)).
      - scubbo 3y ago
        > The web is centralized by design and a defective technology Astonishing claims require astonishing proof :)
        dbttdft 3y ago
        The more viewers your website gets the more money it needs for hosting (unlike proper ways of serving documents, like Torrent), this naturally leads to centralization. The more americunts browse your site the more likely it needs lawyers and since you are now a business (which you shouldn't be because websites for profit are garbage), you have to act "responsibly", like a business. The more you publish stuff that goes against the grain the more your site will be DDoSed. Today even just not being polite is enough to get DDoSed by some kind of blue haired "anarchist". I mean this literally, not in some nazi way - merely writing the Spanish word for black regardless of context is enough for DDoS. You need professional publishers to imagine every single problematic thing you could write if you want your blog today to have a mere 1 million viewers. The more you do anything what so ever the more your website is pushed around and eventually has no choice but to go with some big enterprise data centers who has their own stupid rules like Cloudflare who blocks every second user for their broken firewall and constantly insists they are right.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  I counter with the fact that hosting something means nothing unless connections can be made. Well, unless hosting in itself is your end goal. Even here on HN, there are plenty of comments about how someone can't connect to a website because it uses Cloudflare and Cloudflare decided to block them due to a dirty IP address, shady (read: hyper privacy focused) user agent, CAPTCHAs that don't work (see prior factor), or other factors. Some form of DDOS protection is desired in this day and age, and Cloudflare provides a very convenient service to answer it. Unfortunately, this means the vast majority of the internet is routed through Cloudflare making it a singular point of failure/denial. Aka centralization.
  - reactordev 3y ago
    Yes but it was the hosters choice to leverage cloudflare as a cache/cdn instead of other methods (that probably would have succumbed to the HN hug of death).
  - scubbo 3y ago
    Eh, fair - I think we have differing definitions of centralization, though I can see that yours is actually more accurate. I was using it not to mean "a lot of traffic goes through this thing", but rather "it would be difficult for users of this service to migrate away from it if they wanted to", which I guess is more like "lock-in-iness". The SPOF property you describe is indeed undesirable and important to be aware of!

linkjuice4all 3y ago

Humans were made second class netizens when ISPs made self hosting very difficult for individuals. While self-hosting doesn’t solve everything (and introduces its own problems) it does place control of content in the hands of people hosting it. Facebook, reddit, and the rest should be protocols that your server can speak. You can allow/deny access on your terms. But instead we ended up putting our stuff on other people’s computers and they went and blabbed it all over the internet.

packetlost 3y ago
idk, every ISP I've ever had hasn't made it particularly difficult to host anything besides an email server on my residential service.

OhioMan2943 3y ago

I'm thinking of creating a site where user signup is limited to specific top level domains, like edu, gov mil, to stop bots and low quality content

BriggyDwiggs42 3y ago

Eh what if we just make piracy legal for individuals given its unenforceable already, but illegal for businesses

dbttdft 3y ago

What law do we need? More ignorant idiocy like banning incandescent bulbs? How do we get good law if nobody understand what they're doing in tech?

reactordev 3y ago
By electing more engineers to help lawyers instead of more lawyers. But really we need to make it a requirement for congressional folks (parliamentary too) to divest from corporate sponsorship in order to be in office and that they understand that their seat can be revoked should they not follow the “will of the people” or whatever your constitution says. In the US, more and more Congress people are on the boards or funded by Big Tech to the point where all it takes is a little one-on-one meeting and your entire stance flip flops. Is the US banning TikTok? Not? Yes? No? Now we aren’t? Oh it’s back on? Nope, nevermind. I lost hope that Congress would ever understand science after Bush vs Gore.