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Because it's a bad solution. The core problem is that the internet is vulnerable to DDoS attacks and the web has no native sybil resistance mechanism. Cloudfla

Because it's a bad solution. The core problem is that the internet is vulnerable to DDoS attacks and the web has no native sybil resistance mechanism. Cloudflare's solution to every problem is to allow them to control more of the internet. What happens when they have enough control to do whatever they want? They could charge any price they want.

add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
I'm more afraid of the orgs that are gaining enough control of knowledge, cognition, and creativity that they'll be able to charge any price for them once they've trained us out of practicing them ourselves.
- fruitworks 1y ago
  There Is No Moat
  - wongarsu 1y ago
    Until crawling without being on people's whitelist becomes sufficiently difficult
marginalia_nu 1y ago
The idea itself has merit, even if the implementation is questionable. Giving bots a cryptographic identity would allow good bots to meaningfully have skin in the game and crawl with their reputation at stake. It's not a complete solution, but could be part of one. Though you can likely get the good parts from HTTP request signing alone, Cloudflare's additions to that seem fairly extraneous. I honestly don't know what is a good solution. The status quo is certainly completely untenable. If we keep going like we are now, there won't be a web left to protect in a few years. It's worth keeping in mind that there's an opportunity cost, and even a bad solution may be preferrable to no solution at all. ... I say operating an independent web crawler.
- fruitworks 1y ago
  I think the solution is some sort of PoW gateway like people are setting up now. Or a micropayments system where each page request costs a fraction of a penny. You could combine that with some sort of IPFS/Bittorrent like system where you allow others to rehost your static content, indexed by the merkle hash of the content. That would allow users to donate bandwidth. I really don't like the idea that you can get out of this by surveiling user agents more or distinguishing between "good" and "bad" bots which is a massive social problem.
  - verdverm 1y ago
    Nobody wants proof of work, leave the block chain inspired nonsense to the crypto children
    - marginalia_nu 1y ago
      This is the original use-case for proof of work though. The idea of using proof of work to hinder spam dates back to 1997[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash

add-sub-mul-div 1y ago

I'm more afraid of the orgs that are gaining enough control of knowledge, cognition, and creativity that they'll be able to charge any price for them once they've trained us out of practicing them ourselves.

fruitworks 1y ago
There Is No Moat
- wongarsu 1y ago
  Until crawling without being on people's whitelist becomes sufficiently difficult

marginalia_nu 1y ago

The idea itself has merit, even if the implementation is questionable. Giving bots a cryptographic identity would allow good bots to meaningfully have skin in the game and crawl with their reputation at stake. It's not a complete solution, but could be part of one. Though you can likely get the good parts from HTTP request signing alone, Cloudflare's additions to that seem fairly extraneous. I honestly don't know what is a good solution. The status quo is certainly completely untenable. If we keep going like we are now, there won't be a web left to protect in a few years. It's worth keeping in mind that there's an opportunity cost, and even a bad solution may be preferrable to no solution at all. ... I say operating an independent web crawler.

fruitworks 1y ago
I think the solution is some sort of PoW gateway like people are setting up now. Or a micropayments system where each page request costs a fraction of a penny. You could combine that with some sort of IPFS/Bittorrent like system where you allow others to rehost your static content, indexed by the merkle hash of the content. That would allow users to donate bandwidth. I really don't like the idea that you can get out of this by surveiling user agents more or distinguishing between "good" and "bad" bots which is a massive social problem.
- verdverm 1y ago
  Nobody wants proof of work, leave the block chain inspired nonsense to the crypto children
  - marginalia_nu 1y ago
    This is the original use-case for proof of work though. The idea of using proof of work to hinder spam dates back to 1997[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash