8 ms·

The amount of forces seemingly actively trying to kill the internet of old is disconcerting. Chat control, DNS as arbiter of whats allowed, walled gardens etc.

by Havoc 1y ago

andy99 1y ago
Don’t forget cloudflare
- forgotoldacc 1y ago
  Cloudflare has always weirded me out. Back before everyone was using it, a lot of sites would be running just fine for years, then they'd suddenly be shut down for a few days due to DDoS attacks. Then they'd proudly announce they were on cloudflare when they came back. Funny thing was I noticed sites having more frequent downtime after using moving to cloudflare. I don't see those cloudflare pages much these days, but something about it in those early days always gave me protection money vibes. Cloudflare seemed to come out of nowhere during a wave of DDoS attacks across the internet in the late 2000s and found their way into every site. They had some incredible timing.
  - verisimi 1y ago
    Just one of many protection rackets
    - Buge 1y ago
      Are you saying that cloudflare conducts or promotes DDoS?
      - pigggg 1y ago
        Most of the ddos as a service booter/stresser websites and front doors are on cloudflare.
      - gruez 1y ago
        The accusation is that cloudflare also refuses to take down ddos for hire sites, which some interpret as them at least condoning such sites, and they benefit from those sites being up because it makes their services necessary. The counterargument to this is that cloudflare doesn't host any content and therefore shouldn't be subject to takedown requests, similar to how you wouldn't send takedown requests to Lumen Technologies (a tier 1 transit provider) because they provide transit to some VPS provider that ultimately hosts the ddos for hire site.
        pcthrowaway 1y ago
        > cloudflare doesn't host any content They do, they've been a CDN as long as they've been DDoS protection. But they definitely do DDoS protection for a much greater portion of the internet than they host.
    - sph 1y ago
      I’ve always said that if the NSA doesn’t have its hands on Cloudflare I wonder WTF they’re even doing. How do you track people on the internet? Make them go through a single gateway that ‘protects’ 90% of websites. Would explain why they’re always so reluctant to block unsavoury websites.
- Havoc 1y ago
  Yes. Alas my list was far from exhaustive :(
salawat 1y ago
I mean, DNS has always kinda been a layer of communication control in the sense that every website is a statement, and if you cut off the ability for a group of people to congregate around a nominative handle, you've basically societally black holed them in the great Interlocution.
matheusmoreira 1y ago
The internet will be destroyed as countries the world over seek to impose all of their silly and incompatible laws on it. The international network will fracture into multiple national networks with heavy filtering at the borders. I've been making this prediction for years now. Words can hardly capture the sadness I feel when I see evidence of its slow realization. I'm happy to have known the true internet. Truly one of the wonders of humanity.
- cluckindan 1y ago
  Not the entire internet, these developments are just about the WWW.
  - chongli 1y ago
    Any part of the internet which starts to become popular faces the same fate. It's been known at least since September 1993 [1]. The "true internet", as people (myself included) remember so fondly, can only live on in obscurity. This is the dark forest hypothesis [2] for the internet. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis
  - betaby 1y ago
    > these developments are just about the WWW. The article is literally about DNS.
    - cluckindan 1y ago
      And? It is literally a service for looking up Internet Protocol addresses.
  - numpad0 1y ago
    (The whole http://example.com/index.html http://example.com/index.html thing is considered a mere application on the Internet among many, called World Wide Web, and not the Internet itself, but this is also quite pedantic)

The amount of forces seemingly actively trying to kill the internet of old is disconcerting. Chat control, DNS as arbiter of whats allowed, walled gardens etc.

by Havoc 1y ago

The amount of forces seemingly actively trying to kill the internet of old is disconcerting. Chat control, DNS as arbiter of whats allowed, walled gardens etc.

andy99 1y ago

Don’t forget cloudflare

forgotoldacc 1y ago
Cloudflare has always weirded me out. Back before everyone was using it, a lot of sites would be running just fine for years, then they'd suddenly be shut down for a few days due to DDoS attacks. Then they'd proudly announce they were on cloudflare when they came back. Funny thing was I noticed sites having more frequent downtime after using moving to cloudflare. I don't see those cloudflare pages much these days, but something about it in those early days always gave me protection money vibes. Cloudflare seemed to come out of nowhere during a wave of DDoS attacks across the internet in the late 2000s and found their way into every site. They had some incredible timing.
- verisimi 1y ago
  Just one of many protection rackets
  - Buge 1y ago
    Are you saying that cloudflare conducts or promotes DDoS?
    - pigggg 1y ago
      Most of the ddos as a service booter/stresser websites and front doors are on cloudflare.
    - gruez 1y ago
      The accusation is that cloudflare also refuses to take down ddos for hire sites, which some interpret as them at least condoning such sites, and they benefit from those sites being up because it makes their services necessary. The counterargument to this is that cloudflare doesn't host any content and therefore shouldn't be subject to takedown requests, similar to how you wouldn't send takedown requests to Lumen Technologies (a tier 1 transit provider) because they provide transit to some VPS provider that ultimately hosts the ddos for hire site.
      - pcthrowaway 1y ago
        > cloudflare doesn't host any content They do, they've been a CDN as long as they've been DDoS protection. But they definitely do DDoS protection for a much greater portion of the internet than they host.
  - sph 1y ago
    I’ve always said that if the NSA doesn’t have its hands on Cloudflare I wonder WTF they’re even doing. How do you track people on the internet? Make them go through a single gateway that ‘protects’ 90% of websites. Would explain why they’re always so reluctant to block unsavoury websites.
Havoc 1y ago
Yes. Alas my list was far from exhaustive :(

salawat 1y ago

I mean, DNS has always kinda been a layer of communication control in the sense that every website is a statement, and if you cut off the ability for a group of people to congregate around a nominative handle, you've basically societally black holed them in the great Interlocution.

matheusmoreira 1y ago

The internet will be destroyed as countries the world over seek to impose all of their silly and incompatible laws on it. The international network will fracture into multiple national networks with heavy filtering at the borders. I've been making this prediction for years now. Words can hardly capture the sadness I feel when I see evidence of its slow realization. I'm happy to have known the true internet. Truly one of the wonders of humanity.

cluckindan 1y ago
Not the entire internet, these developments are just about the WWW.
- chongli 1y ago
  Any part of the internet which starts to become popular faces the same fate. It's been known at least since September 1993 [1]. The "true internet", as people (myself included) remember so fondly, can only live on in obscurity. This is the dark forest hypothesis [2] for the internet. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis
- betaby 1y ago
  > these developments are just about the WWW. The article is literally about DNS.
  - cluckindan 1y ago
    And? It is literally a service for looking up Internet Protocol addresses.
- numpad0 1y ago
  (The whole http://example.com/index.html http://example.com/index.html thing is considered a mere application on the Internet among many, called World Wide Web, and not the Internet itself, but this is also quite pedantic)