5 ms·
How is Cloudflare a parasite? I can use Cloudflare, and get their AI protection, for free. I have dozens of domains I have used with Cloudflare at one point and
by slenk 1y ago
How is Cloudflare a parasite? I can use Cloudflare, and get their AI protection, for free. I have dozens of domains I have used with Cloudflare at one point and I haven't paid them a dime.
- fsflover 1y agoThey put themselves as a middle man for almost the whole Internet, collect huge usage data about everyone and block anybody who doesn't use mainstream tools: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42953508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42953508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13718752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13718752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23897705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23897705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41864632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41864632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42577076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42577076
- baq 1y agovalid. ...but OTOH it's their customers who want all of that and pay to get that, because the alternative is worse. rock and a hard place.
- slenk 1y agoRight - do I want them getting some info from me, or do I want my IP address exposed? Besides CloudFront, which still costs money, what other option is there for semi-privacy and caching for free?
- mattl 1y agobunny.net has some options
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- slenk 1y agoI will have to check them out I guess
- aorth 1y agoAs the old addage goes: If you're not paying for it, you're the product. Lots of nuance, but generally: pay for things you use. Servers, engineers, and research and development are not free, so someone has to pay.
- qualeed 1y agoLots of services don't even let me pay if I wanted to, so I am forced to be the product. (Donating typically does not un-productify myself). Or I pay and am still the product. Just with less in-my-face ads.
- aorth 1y ago> Or I pay and am still the product. Just with less in-my-face ads. Yes, this is enshittification. You pay for Amazon something or other, and they STILL show you ads. Horrible.
- slenk 1y agofwiw, I have been convinced to look at other options
- matt-p 1y agoCloud front is pretty much free for your first TB. Fastly has a free plan. Though why should it be for free?
- slenk 1y agoMultiple people have brought that up. I pay for everything else, why not one more. Although bunny.net won't take ANY of my credit or debit cards
- MisterTea 1y agoI want to know if there is a way to design an alternative that isn't controlled by a single entity which allows gatekeeping.
- AnthonyMouse 1y agoYou can add another one as a result of this article: The data you need to train AI and the data you need to build a search engine are the same data. So now they're inhibiting every new search engine that wants to compete with Google.
- 1oooqooq 1y agothey always had. this post is about turning the false positives "up to 11" with impunity
- 1oooqooq 1y agohttps://infosec.exchange/@k3ym0/114762301792775770 https://infosec.exchange/@k3ym0/114762301792775770
- fsflover 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudflare#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudflare#Controversies
- lxgr 1y ago> I have dozens of domains I have used with Cloudflare at one point and I haven't paid them a dime. Maybe you haven't, but your users (primarily those using "suspicious" operating systems and browsers) certainly have – with their time spent solving captchas.
- sealeck 1y agoBut Cloudflare have removed CAPTCHAs
- lxgr 1y agoNot sure if you're joking, but if you're not: Congratulations on using a very "normal/safe" OS/browser/IP. I get captchas daily, without using any VPN and on several different IPs (work, home, mobile). The only crime I can think of is that I'm using Firefox instead of Chrome.
- Symbiote 1y agoSince a few days ago, I've been getting Captchas hourly or more. It's probably because I use Firefox on Linux with an ad blocker. For my part, I've ensured we don't use Cloudflare at work.
- kelvinjps10 1y agoI use firefox on linux with an ad blocker and cloudfare works fine
- DanOpcode 1y agoIt must depend on something else. Firefox & Linux have always worked fine for me, I cannot remember when I last got restricted by a Cloudflare captcha.
- dotnet00 1y agoUsing Linux is rare among the general public, but very normal among the kind of person who may find themselves working at Cloudflare or at a potential cloudflare partner/customer. I don't really buy the argument that they're pushing more captchas to you just because of using Firefox on Linux with an ad blocker.
- bombcar 1y agoDownload Brave. Turn on Tor and browse for a week. Now you know what “undesirables” feel like, where “undesirables” can be from a poor country, a bad IP block, outdated browsers, etc. It sucks.
- slenk 1y agoI already said in another post I am looking at Bunny, but they also don't seem to want to take my money. I've tried 3 cards. I am willing to pay for a good service, but I will be honest, I don't know many of cloudflare's competitors
- SchemaLoad 1y agoIt's kind of an impossible problem though. They either save some tracking cookie to link your sessions between websites, or they have to re captcha check you on every website.
- v5v3 1y agoWhy download brave and the use Tor. Just use the Tor browser
- chaoskitty 1y agoSerious question: You put Cloudflare between all your domains and all your visitors without looking in to how this would affect your site's reachability? If so, that's interesting, considering that many people in this community are negatively affected by Cloudflare because they're using Linux and/or some less than mainstream browser. You might want to read some threads on here about Cloudflare.
- slenk 1y agoWhere did I say all. Most of the time I don't use them for their network, usually just DNS records for mail because their interface is nicer than namecheap and gives me basic stats. To my understanding, they aren't blocking MX records behind captchas
- djfivyvusn 1y agoSo you're not using the parasite and that's your claim why it's not a parasite?
- slenk 1y agoDude, stop putting words in my mouth. I never said they weren't bad. Some nicer people here tried the educative approach and it worked much better. I learned about Bunny. And I keep forgetting I have a few in deSec but that has a limit. I do not understand the hostility
- lurking_swe 1y ago> I do not understand the hostility Unfortunately I don’t think they were participating in the conversation in good faith. People can have an extreme view on _anything_…even internet / tech. They buy into a dream of 100% open source, or “open internet”, or 100% decentralized, whatever. When this happens they may be convinced that “others” are crazy for not sharing their utopian vision. And once this point is reached, they struggle to communicate with their peers or normal people effectively. They share their strong opinions without sharing important context (how they reached those opinions), they think the topic is black and white (because they feel so strongly about the topic), or they become hostile to others that are not sharing that vision. You are their latest victim lol. Ignore them, and carry on.
- shlomo_z 1y agoDid you read his comment? He explained the issue he has with Cloudflare...
- hnanon12341 1y agoYeah but they are a dictator, OpenAI et al are the parasites.
- brendyn 1y agoA parasite leaches off it's host to the hosts harm. Maybe it's not a good analogy, but Im in china, and it's painful after paying money for a VPN to bypass censorship to find myself routinely blocked by CDNs because they decided I'm not human. I'm honestly feeling more opressed by these middlemen than the government sometimes. For example, maybe I can't log in to a game due to being blocked by the login API, and the game company just responds by telling me to run an antivirus scanner and try again since they are not personally developing that system that lack awareness. Such people with genuine need for VPNs and privacy tools are the sacrifice for this system.