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Cloudflare is not "an extortionist firm". It is a large tech company, where occasionally teams employ shitty sales tactics to meet their numbers, but generally

Cloudflare is not "an extortionist firm". It is a large tech company, where occasionally teams employ shitty sales tactics to meet their numbers, but generally provides a valuable service and acts reasonably ethically. There are open source tools to mitigate DDoS, but all of them will have some marginal cost to run, and they will all be significantly worse than Cloudflare as they benefit from neither Cloudflare's data moat or scale.

OutOfHere 2y ago
No, thanks. Cloudflare acts ethically only until it suits them. It is the pre-exploitation phase to lure a customer. We are not fools here. The report at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40481808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40481808 says it all. Secondly, considering Cloudflare would MITM all traffic, it would make a data good source for the NSA, thereby violating all user privacy.
- bdlowery 2y ago
  Nah. Just don’t do anything illegal and you’re good
- Capricorn2481 2y ago
  > Secondly, considering Cloudflare would MITM all traffic, it would make a data good source for the NSA, thereby violating all user privacy. This seems like a weak argument. Should we just take down anything widely accessed because it might be used by the NSA? What about AWS?
  - cess11 2y ago
    Yes, that's pretty much the view in Schrems II from the European Court of Justice. The CLOUD Act does not respect data protection rights.
  - OutOfHere 2y ago
    Is AWS providing DDoS mitigation services now, coupled with MITM access to user traffic?
    - bozey07 2y ago
      They're the man at the end, actually. No extortion necessary.
- theshrike79 2y ago
  That argument doesn't really fly. The "poor little customer" was an online casino who was using Cloudflare to avoid getting taken down in countries where online gambling isn't allowed. This had a high risk of getting Cloudflare's limited ipv4 addresses to a blacklist - affecting ALL of their customers. All CF did was ask them to switch to an Enterprise plan and bring their own IP-addresses. They refused to do either and rather cried on the internet claiming CF to be bullies. It's not like the price they asked was even a fraction of the profits an online casino brings in every DAY.
  - OutOfHere 2y ago
    Spoken like a true Cloudflare employee! But no, we see through your false reframing of the facts. If a customer's action is truly illegal, the customer's account should be terminated, either immediately or after a reasonable warning to fix things. Under no circumstances should money be sought to support the illegal activity. CF is engaged in a pig-butchering scam whereby they lure customers, then when the customer is all fat and happy, they get asked to pay up or lose their business. In this case, CF destroyed the customer's business as soon as CF got word that the customer was going to move to Fastly, considering that the protection money was not paid. It's an open and shut case of racketeering.
ornornor 2y ago
> Cloudflare is not "an extortionist firm". It is a large tech company, where occasionally teams employ shitty sales tactics to meet their numbers, but generally provides a valuable service and acts reasonably ethically. Nice.

OutOfHere 2y ago

No, thanks. Cloudflare acts ethically only until it suits them. It is the pre-exploitation phase to lure a customer. We are not fools here. The report at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40481808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40481808 says it all. Secondly, considering Cloudflare would MITM all traffic, it would make a data good source for the NSA, thereby violating all user privacy.

bdlowery 2y ago
Nah. Just don’t do anything illegal and you’re good
Capricorn2481 2y ago
> Secondly, considering Cloudflare would MITM all traffic, it would make a data good source for the NSA, thereby violating all user privacy. This seems like a weak argument. Should we just take down anything widely accessed because it might be used by the NSA? What about AWS?
- cess11 2y ago
  Yes, that's pretty much the view in Schrems II from the European Court of Justice. The CLOUD Act does not respect data protection rights.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  Is AWS providing DDoS mitigation services now, coupled with MITM access to user traffic?
  - bozey07 2y ago
    They're the man at the end, actually. No extortion necessary.
theshrike79 2y ago
That argument doesn't really fly. The "poor little customer" was an online casino who was using Cloudflare to avoid getting taken down in countries where online gambling isn't allowed. This had a high risk of getting Cloudflare's limited ipv4 addresses to a blacklist - affecting ALL of their customers. All CF did was ask them to switch to an Enterprise plan and bring their own IP-addresses. They refused to do either and rather cried on the internet claiming CF to be bullies. It's not like the price they asked was even a fraction of the profits an online casino brings in every DAY.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  Spoken like a true Cloudflare employee! But no, we see through your false reframing of the facts. If a customer's action is truly illegal, the customer's account should be terminated, either immediately or after a reasonable warning to fix things. Under no circumstances should money be sought to support the illegal activity. CF is engaged in a pig-butchering scam whereby they lure customers, then when the customer is all fat and happy, they get asked to pay up or lose their business. In this case, CF destroyed the customer's business as soon as CF got word that the customer was going to move to Fastly, considering that the protection money was not paid. It's an open and shut case of racketeering.

ornornor 2y ago

> Cloudflare is not "an extortionist firm". It is a large tech company, where occasionally teams employ shitty sales tactics to meet their numbers, but generally provides a valuable service and acts reasonably ethically. Nice.