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Another HN hot take about the Cloudflare bogeyman. The CDN can't give you content you're asking for without knowing which content you're asking for. This impr

Another HN hot take about the Cloudflare bogeyman. The CDN can't give you content you're asking for without knowing which content you're asking for. This improvement prevents your ISP and the government from reading your packets to get that same information.

cebert 2y ago
What makes you believe CloudFlare wouldn’t do this? They may have state actor employees or be compelled by a government to surveil users.
- Shakahs 2y ago
  So now the government needs to compel a corporation to hand over some data, because they are no longer able to read it straight off the wire like they could before. That sounds like a significant improvement to privacy.
  - naivety 2y ago
    People trafficking drugs into Australia were using a secure, encrypted messaging service developed by a private third party provider. They eventually found out that the third party provider was in fact the Australian Federal Police, reading all their messages in clear and in real time. The government only needs to compel a corporation if that corporation has an adversarial relationship with them. We have tried the centralized model pushed by Cloudflare before, it was called the Minitel.
    - apitman 2y ago
      Sounds like an interesting story. Do you have a link to a summary?
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
Especially since, as another top comment put it, ECH only gives privacy benefits if the serving IP is serving multiple domains. I'm all for being wary of large-scale consolidation, but I feel like these lazy gripes aren't assessing the pros and cons dispassionately.
schoen 2y ago
> The CDN can't give you content you're asking for without knowing which content you're asking for. Maybe some PIR protocol can also eventually change this (if the users and Cloudflare don't mind the computational and network overhead!).
apitman 2y ago
The internet is moving towards a place where it might not be possible to self-host anything important without getting DDoS'd. Companies like Cloudflare provide a solution to this problem, but that also creates a crutch that means no effort is expended to solve the problem at the root, which means the day may come when you don't have any option left other than Cloudflare. I think these are important issues and worth talking about.
- Shakahs 2y ago
  Those issues are absolutely worth discussing, in a reasonable way. Cloudflare isn't the bad actor perpetuating these DDoS attacks, and they aren't forcing website operators to use their services either.
  - apitman 2y ago
    They don't need to be a bad actor. They just need to be big enough and follow their incentives. Companies aren't binary good or bad. They go through a lifecycle. Today's young and scrappy startup fighting for the people and the CEO making house calls is tomorrow's big tech with AI chat support. It's worth noting where a company is in its lifecycle, and what the world is likely to look like if it continues to grow.
  - Animats 2y ago
    > Cloudflare isn't the bad actor perpetuating these DDoS attacks How do we know that? Who else benefits from most of them?

cebert 2y ago

What makes you believe CloudFlare wouldn’t do this? They may have state actor employees or be compelled by a government to surveil users.

Shakahs 2y ago
So now the government needs to compel a corporation to hand over some data, because they are no longer able to read it straight off the wire like they could before. That sounds like a significant improvement to privacy.
- naivety 2y ago
  People trafficking drugs into Australia were using a secure, encrypted messaging service developed by a private third party provider. They eventually found out that the third party provider was in fact the Australian Federal Police, reading all their messages in clear and in real time. The government only needs to compel a corporation if that corporation has an adversarial relationship with them. We have tried the centralized model pushed by Cloudflare before, it was called the Minitel.
  - apitman 2y ago
    Sounds like an interesting story. Do you have a link to a summary?

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

Especially since, as another top comment put it, ECH only gives privacy benefits if the serving IP is serving multiple domains. I'm all for being wary of large-scale consolidation, but I feel like these lazy gripes aren't assessing the pros and cons dispassionately.

schoen 2y ago

> The CDN can't give you content you're asking for without knowing which content you're asking for. Maybe some PIR protocol can also eventually change this (if the users and Cloudflare don't mind the computational and network overhead!).

apitman 2y ago

The internet is moving towards a place where it might not be possible to self-host anything important without getting DDoS'd. Companies like Cloudflare provide a solution to this problem, but that also creates a crutch that means no effort is expended to solve the problem at the root, which means the day may come when you don't have any option left other than Cloudflare. I think these are important issues and worth talking about.

Shakahs 2y ago
Those issues are absolutely worth discussing, in a reasonable way. Cloudflare isn't the bad actor perpetuating these DDoS attacks, and they aren't forcing website operators to use their services either.
- apitman 2y ago
  They don't need to be a bad actor. They just need to be big enough and follow their incentives. Companies aren't binary good or bad. They go through a lifecycle. Today's young and scrappy startup fighting for the people and the CEO making house calls is tomorrow's big tech with AI chat support. It's worth noting where a company is in its lifecycle, and what the world is likely to look like if it continues to grow.
- Animats 2y ago
  > Cloudflare isn't the bad actor perpetuating these DDoS attacks How do we know that? Who else benefits from most of them?