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> As we think about our role at Cloudflare in this developing market, it's not about protecting the status quo but instead helping catalyze a better business mo
by lapcat 1y ago
> As we think about our role at Cloudflare in this developing market, it's not about protecting the status quo but instead helping catalyze a better business model for the future of Internet content creation. That means creating a level playing field. Ideally there should be lots of AI companies, large and small, and lots of content creators, large and small.
Not mentioned: there would be a single gatekeeper for the internet, Cloudflare.
The "level playing field" rhetoric reminds me so much of Apple talking about the App Store. This new internet business model is just the App Store, substituting websites for apps and Cloudflare for Apple. The system only works with some middleman between the AI companies and the content creators.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- zenmac 1y agoIs there currently a more open alternative to Cloudflare? I would assume that people don't really use it until they have significant traffic from all different parts of the world? In which case for the self-host people we can just pick a decent CDN?
- tracker1 1y agoI've done a few tests with CF hosted webapps... overall it's pretty good experience, and for my usage has been free, despite opting into a paid account level, I haven't exceeded the free usage. For mostly-static or static-site content it's pretty nice all around. I've not gotten into the SQLite service so much though, which I might and seems interesting.. there's also Turso to consider as an alternative option... Not to mention Deno, Fastly and other similar options. Kind of hoping to see something similar start to gain traction to support wasm backend systems similarly. This is beyond their DDoS/Proxy protection, but worth considering as part of what they offer. There's a lot there to like.
- motorest 1y agoI see what you mean, and I am divided on the issue. On one hand, I don't think it's fair to have AI companies to freely scrape the world without fairly compensating content producers. On the other hand, adding more gatekeepers to the web ends up killing it. This feels like a lose-lose situation.
- Joel_Mckay 1y agoThat is a lot of hands... Are you AI generated? lol =3
- FungalRaincloud 1y agoTwo _is_ more than the average, but not by that much...
- CrulesAll 1y agoThat feels like a bog basic false choice fallacy.
- motorest 1y ago> That feels like a bog basic false choice fallacy. Only if you somehow believe you have a choice, or even a say.
- swed420 1y agoIn some positive news today, Cloudflare is sponsoring the Ladybird browser effort: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45332860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45332860 That's not nothing.
- nicce 1y agoLikely related on getting influece in order to enforce the gatekeeping standards, unfortunately.
- 1y ago
- nickysielicki 1y ago> Not mentioned: there would be a single gatekeeper for the internet, Cloudflare. Nothing in their idea challenges the underlying tech behind the internet. Anyone is free to compete in constructing a reverse proxy service with LLM-centric content controls similar to cloudflare, whether that’s AWS WAF or akamai or some new startup.
- lapcat 1y agoNothing in Google's search monopoly challenges the underlying tech behind the internet. Anyone is free to complete... From the stats I've seen, Cloudflare has an 80% market share for reverse proxy services. 20% of all websites use Cloudflare, 50% of the most popular websites globally. That's a dangerous amount of concentration, and it's the only reason Cloudflare can propose this new business model for the internet and be taken seriously.
- nickysielicki 1y agoSo what? I should hate them for that? Cloudflare is really good at what it does. Nobody has to use cloudflare, but people who know what they’re doing choose cloudflare because the service they provide is worth the minuscule price they charge and it solves the massive abuse and performance problems that otherwise plague the internet. Bing/msn.com failed to displace Google because Google was simply better, not because Google played dirty.
- lapcat 1y ago> So what? I should hate them for that? Where did I mention hate? I don't care what emotions you feel or don't feel. The problem is the concentration of power in one company. That has nothing to do with emotion. > Bing/msn.com failed to displace Google because Google was simply better, not because Google played dirty. I don't think the courts agree with you about Google playing dirty. In any case, monopolies are inherently dangerous.
- nickysielicki 1y ago
- CrulesAll 1y agoAnd of all companies Cloudflare. People, research their business practices...
- CharlesW 1y ago> Not mentioned: there would be a single gatekeeper for the internet, Cloudflare. I don't get it. Can you point out where Cloudflare gains the power to prevent Google or any other company from doing the same?
- ceejayoz 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly It's not impossible. But it's hard.
- acdha 1y agoHow would that work short of them buying most of the fiber in the world? A natural monopoly is a big problem for ISPs but they don’t do last-mile and they don’t appear to be anywhere close to being able to manipulate thr transit market.
- ceejayoz 1y ago> How would that work short of them buying most of the fiber in the world? Did Google need that to dominate search?
- vogu66 1y ago> Not mentioned: there would be a single gatekeeper for the internet, Cloudflare. Cloudflare is already a monopoly though. From what I can tell, what they are saying here, besides proclaiming their continued existence, is that they and AI companies and content creators need the internet to exist. And what they are building is on top of the 402 response, which anyone can use? So you could use that without using any CDN at all, without too much development cost?
- acdha 1y agoHow is Cloudflare a monopoly as opposed to just being popular? The CDN, security, edge compute, etc. markets all have multiple popular competitors.
- vogu66 1y agoSorry, not exactly monopoly. Probably too big to fail, from what I gather, though. I don't know enough to know whether there is anyone else that could realistically compete with their scale. My point was simply that their size is unrelated to this proposition, outside the fact they are big enough to be taken seriously.
- visarga 1y agoThey are all platforms: news companies, publishing houses, ISPs, recording labels, YouTube, Google, Meta, TikTok, Windows, App Store, Play Store, Amazon.. and as platforms they squeeze both the layer above and the one below, their customers and their providers. You know what that looks like? rent. It looks like home owners setting rent as high as the market can bear, until it becomes almost no advantage at all to participate. It sure looks like Cloudflare wants to be the platform for AI royalty collections. But creators, customers, sellers - they are all hostage to the platforms they can't avoid. That is where the money sink is.
- brainzap 1y agoan American company controlling the internet
- game_the0ry 1y ago> The "level playing field" rhetoric reminds me so much of Apple talking about the App Store. To be fair to apple, many billion dollar businesses have been built for and distributed by the app store. Think about all people employed to work on mobile apps, all those people going to local taco truck for lunch owned by an immigrant, that immigrant buying a nice christmas present for their kid, etc.
- lapcat 1y ago> To be fair to apple, many billion dollar businesses have been built for and distributed by the app store. This sentence is missing something essential: Many billion dollar businesses have been built for iPhone and distributed by the app store. iPhone is the platform, whereas App Store is merely the exclusive method of software distribution as dictated by Apple. Contrast with the Apple Mac, where the App Store is not the exclusive method of software distribution.
- WickyNilliams 1y agoAlso weird for their shining example to be Reddit. Where the actual creators there would not get a dime, presumably
- 9cb14c1ec0 1y agoAlso weird that they think reddit is something other than ragebait. I avoid reddit as much as I can, because everytime I go there the reddit feed is full of some of the worst ragebait on the internet.
- WickyNilliams 1y agoI think that's true of any algorithmic feed. The individual niche communities are still pretty good I find. YMMV of course