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Rampant bot traffic and scrapers are the real cancer. Until that goes away everyone is going to need cloudflare or some other bot firewall service.

by petcat 7mo ago

Duwensatzaj 7mo ago
It won’t. Some people are perfectly happy to destroy and destroy as long as they get some small portion as profit for themselves.
- sph 7mo ago
  That, ironically, includes Cloudflare. Without rampant bots making the internet worse for everybody, they wouldn't have as much work. And their portion of profit is anything but small.
adrian_b 7mo ago
Perhaps that is true, but the Cloudflare anti-bot protection is too stupid and annoying. They should have used a cookie or something else that does not require asking me every few minutes to prove once more that I am not a bot. There was a time when Cloudflare had become less intrusive, but for the last months it has begun again to intervene almost each time when opening some pages. There is no doubt that anti-bot protection can be implemented in a better way than Cloudflare does, but presumably the alternatives would consume more resources on their servers, so probably they choose whatever minimizes their costs, regardless if that ensures maximum discomfort for Internet users.
- post-it 7mo ago
  You're getting frequent verification requests because you're behaving like a bot. Are you modifying your user agent string or using a VPN?
  - encom 7mo ago
    Who knows what upsets ClownFlare? I'm using Vivaldi on Linux on IPv6 in Denmark with every uBlock filter enabled and Cookie Auto-delete. That seems to confuse and anger CloudFlare and I get CAPTCHA tarpitted constantly.
    - bethekidyouwant 7mo ago
      So you know why.
      - encom 7mo ago
        No, it could be any, or other, totally normal and reasonable factors. Or maybe I posted too much Cloudflare hate on HN and they singled me out. They're in the walls! NO CARRIER +CREG: 0,0
    - post-it 7mo ago
      > They should have used a cookie or something else that does not require asking me every few minutes to prove once more that I am not a bot. > every uBlock filter enabled and Cookie Auto-delete Hmm
fc417fc802 7mo ago
Those are easy enough to dissuade with readily available PoW solutions. People use CF & co. out of convenience, the exact same reason that most websites load resources from at least half a dozen third parties instead of self hosting.

Rampant bot traffic and scrapers are the real cancer. Until that goes away everyone is going to need cloudflare or some other bot firewall service.

by petcat 7mo ago

Rampant bot traffic and scrapers are the real cancer. Until that goes away everyone is going to need cloudflare or some other bot firewall service.

Duwensatzaj 7mo ago

It won’t. Some people are perfectly happy to destroy and destroy as long as they get some small portion as profit for themselves.

sph 7mo ago
That, ironically, includes Cloudflare. Without rampant bots making the internet worse for everybody, they wouldn't have as much work. And their portion of profit is anything but small.

adrian_b 7mo ago

Perhaps that is true, but the Cloudflare anti-bot protection is too stupid and annoying. They should have used a cookie or something else that does not require asking me every few minutes to prove once more that I am not a bot. There was a time when Cloudflare had become less intrusive, but for the last months it has begun again to intervene almost each time when opening some pages. There is no doubt that anti-bot protection can be implemented in a better way than Cloudflare does, but presumably the alternatives would consume more resources on their servers, so probably they choose whatever minimizes their costs, regardless if that ensures maximum discomfort for Internet users.

post-it 7mo ago
You're getting frequent verification requests because you're behaving like a bot. Are you modifying your user agent string or using a VPN?
- encom 7mo ago
  Who knows what upsets ClownFlare? I'm using Vivaldi on Linux on IPv6 in Denmark with every uBlock filter enabled and Cookie Auto-delete. That seems to confuse and anger CloudFlare and I get CAPTCHA tarpitted constantly.
  - bethekidyouwant 7mo ago
    So you know why.
    - encom 7mo ago
      No, it could be any, or other, totally normal and reasonable factors. Or maybe I posted too much Cloudflare hate on HN and they singled me out. They're in the walls! NO CARRIER +CREG: 0,0
  - post-it 7mo ago
    > They should have used a cookie or something else that does not require asking me every few minutes to prove once more that I am not a bot. > every uBlock filter enabled and Cookie Auto-delete Hmm

fc417fc802 7mo ago

Those are easy enough to dissuade with readily available PoW solutions. People use CF & co. out of convenience, the exact same reason that most websites load resources from at least half a dozen third parties instead of self hosting.