4 ms·

Why is cloudflare a problem?

zbrozek 28d ago
Because they slow down and often block access to websites, particularly for people that try to avoid being fingerprinted or otherwise tracked. Pretty evil behavior.
- esseph 28d ago
  > Because they slow down and often block access to websites, particularly for people that try to avoid being fingerprinted or otherwise tracked. Pretty evil behavior. Bots and scrapers and hackers also try and avoid being tracked, which is by far a bigger problem for them and most websites than the 15 of us using tons of antifingerprinting techniques. Evil? No, that's silly.
- nickff 28d ago
  It is very challenging to distinguish individuals interested in privacy from bots acting maliciously or with reckless indifference. If you devise a way to do this more effectively than Cloudflare, you should start a business to sell this as a service.
  - lynx97 28d ago
    Sure, I am practicing understanding for the tyranny around me everyday when I wake up, as a meditation exercise. Answers like yours kill the little remaining faith I have in people. This same argument has been used to defend sloppily implemented CAPTCHAS destroying accessibility since what, 20 years.
    - nickff 28d ago
      My employer is a small business that has an e-commerce website that is attacked by fraudsters trying to validate stolen credit cards or obtain customer information hundreds of times per day. Operations like CloudFlare are the only way to foil these actors. Just trusting you is not a viable strategy.
      - karmakurtisaani 28d ago
        The people who downvote could propose how to solve the fraudster problem instead of shooting the messenger.
        gib444 28d ago
        That isn't the done thing here, lamentably. Downvote is a de facto disagree button
        lynx97 28d ago
        "We removed the wheelchair ramp because it was used by rodents to enter our building." "Don't shoot the messenger!" Security can't be a reason for discrimination.
        deleted 28d ago
        [deleted]
        karmakurtisaani 28d ago
        So keep the ramp then. Now your business is full of rats and even the disabled don't want to shop there. What do you do now? Edit: The downvotes have spoken! This view is simply wrong with no justification!
      - salawat 28d ago
        Your rate limits on adding and removing credit cards? Your input sanitization? Designing your system to not just disclose details around anything but that relevant to a logged in/authenticated user? There are many practical ways to handle that sort of thing that isn't Cloudflare. It just requires thinking and a bit of dev time. t. Been there, done that, cartels used an app to try to launder money through loyalty programs. Management was deadset against doing the one single thing that would make it impossible to do that at scale. Ulterior motives abound everywhere but especially behind people claiming X is the only answer. Fingerprinting is far more intrusive than just only allowing one to add at max 2 cards a day per user.
  - selfhoster1312 27d ago
    The technique is simple: don't publicly serve expensive (CPU/RAM-wise) pages. A simple blog like the linked article can be 100% cached and served to anyone without needing CloudFlare. Performance optimization for website already is a business. It's just that product managers mostly don't care and optimize for other metrics (eyeball retention, SEO, etc).
- webdoodle 28d ago
  Don't listen to these hecklers, you have every right to your privacy, and should demand it. Anonymity is paramount if people want to be able to talk without repercussions. Gaslighting, heckling and other forms of harassment are to convince you to self censor. Don't take the bait. Ignore them.
- neya 28d ago
  "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
  - polotics 28d ago
    well in my experience mostly you get either: - stupidity - stupidity and malice
  - salawat 28d ago
    Hanlon's Razor is especially effective at getting Good people to put out their own eyes to keep them nice and soft targets for the malicious. I'll take being a harder to find likable by people I have no desire to be liked by to make myself a harder mark. The honest ones will understand. The malicious were never worth being close with, and I'm doing the world a service by getting the borderline enlightened. Sufficiently advanced stupidity being indistinguishable from malice is also something to keep in mind.
deleted 28d ago
[deleted]
JohnFen 28d ago
Cloudflare doesn't reliably let me through.
- dlcarrier 28d ago
  It regularly blocks me too. I've begun search Google for: what does [url] say about [search query] It'll make a Gemini summary of the page, and can be prompted for more details. It's really the only use for Gemini I've found reliable. I'd still rather directly view the output of the scraper bot, though. If anyone knows a good scraping bot that lets you view the output directly, without running it through an LLM, please let me know.
pibaker 28d ago
Getting past cloudflare can be a problem if you are from a less reputable country or a VPN or if you use a less conventional browser. There is also a larger problem of a private entity being the MITM for a large portion of internet traffic. But i don't think this is the point GP was trying to make.
ranger_danger 28d ago
Most CF sites I try to visit only give me an endless captcha loop, so I cannot visit them at all. I suspect it's simply because my ISP regularly rotates IPs, and so I unfortunately have to share "reputation" with other users who can't behave online.

Because they slow down and often block access to websites, particularly for people that try to avoid being fingerprinted or otherwise tracked. Pretty evil behavior.

esseph 28d ago
> Because they slow down and often block access to websites, particularly for people that try to avoid being fingerprinted or otherwise tracked. Pretty evil behavior. Bots and scrapers and hackers also try and avoid being tracked, which is by far a bigger problem for them and most websites than the 15 of us using tons of antifingerprinting techniques. Evil? No, that's silly.
nickff 28d ago
It is very challenging to distinguish individuals interested in privacy from bots acting maliciously or with reckless indifference. If you devise a way to do this more effectively than Cloudflare, you should start a business to sell this as a service.
- lynx97 28d ago
  Sure, I am practicing understanding for the tyranny around me everyday when I wake up, as a meditation exercise. Answers like yours kill the little remaining faith I have in people. This same argument has been used to defend sloppily implemented CAPTCHAS destroying accessibility since what, 20 years.
  - nickff 28d ago
    My employer is a small business that has an e-commerce website that is attacked by fraudsters trying to validate stolen credit cards or obtain customer information hundreds of times per day. Operations like CloudFlare are the only way to foil these actors. Just trusting you is not a viable strategy.
    - karmakurtisaani 28d ago
      The people who downvote could propose how to solve the fraudster problem instead of shooting the messenger.
      - gib444 28d ago
        That isn't the done thing here, lamentably. Downvote is a de facto disagree button
      - lynx97 28d ago
        "We removed the wheelchair ramp because it was used by rodents to enter our building." "Don't shoot the messenger!" Security can't be a reason for discrimination.
        deleted 28d ago
        [deleted]
        karmakurtisaani 28d ago
        So keep the ramp then. Now your business is full of rats and even the disabled don't want to shop there. What do you do now? Edit: The downvotes have spoken! This view is simply wrong with no justification!
    - salawat 28d ago
      Your rate limits on adding and removing credit cards? Your input sanitization? Designing your system to not just disclose details around anything but that relevant to a logged in/authenticated user? There are many practical ways to handle that sort of thing that isn't Cloudflare. It just requires thinking and a bit of dev time. t. Been there, done that, cartels used an app to try to launder money through loyalty programs. Management was deadset against doing the one single thing that would make it impossible to do that at scale. Ulterior motives abound everywhere but especially behind people claiming X is the only answer. Fingerprinting is far more intrusive than just only allowing one to add at max 2 cards a day per user.
- selfhoster1312 27d ago
  The technique is simple: don't publicly serve expensive (CPU/RAM-wise) pages. A simple blog like the linked article can be 100% cached and served to anyone without needing CloudFlare. Performance optimization for website already is a business. It's just that product managers mostly don't care and optimize for other metrics (eyeball retention, SEO, etc).
webdoodle 28d ago
Don't listen to these hecklers, you have every right to your privacy, and should demand it. Anonymity is paramount if people want to be able to talk without repercussions. Gaslighting, heckling and other forms of harassment are to convince you to self censor. Don't take the bait. Ignore them.
neya 28d ago
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
- polotics 28d ago
  well in my experience mostly you get either: - stupidity - stupidity and malice
- salawat 28d ago
  Hanlon's Razor is especially effective at getting Good people to put out their own eyes to keep them nice and soft targets for the malicious. I'll take being a harder to find likable by people I have no desire to be liked by to make myself a harder mark. The honest ones will understand. The malicious were never worth being close with, and I'm doing the world a service by getting the borderline enlightened. Sufficiently advanced stupidity being indistinguishable from malice is also something to keep in mind.

deleted 28d ago

[deleted]

JohnFen 28d ago

Cloudflare doesn't reliably let me through.

dlcarrier 28d ago
It regularly blocks me too. I've begun search Google for: what does [url] say about [search query] It'll make a Gemini summary of the page, and can be prompted for more details. It's really the only use for Gemini I've found reliable. I'd still rather directly view the output of the scraper bot, though. If anyone knows a good scraping bot that lets you view the output directly, without running it through an LLM, please let me know.

pibaker 28d ago

Getting past cloudflare can be a problem if you are from a less reputable country or a VPN or if you use a less conventional browser. There is also a larger problem of a private entity being the MITM for a large portion of internet traffic. But i don't think this is the point GP was trying to make.

ranger_danger 28d ago

Most CF sites I try to visit only give me an endless captcha loop, so I cannot visit them at all. I suspect it's simply because my ISP regularly rotates IPs, and so I unfortunately have to share "reputation" with other users who can't behave online.