Maybe their point is just privatisation or something.
For example a dns provider like cloudfare just could artificially make latency costs for servers that don’t agree with something cloudfare does bigger, which would result in them being less likely to be displayed in a search result because a search engine would have IP adresses faster from other servers. This obviously depends on if a search engine makes dns requests or just provides hostnames for the end user.
But everybody is also moving into their castle. Many for free.
They are not allowed to let people do that unless they have an argument that, somehow, this makes money for the owners of Cloudflare. Maybe that’s in the form of good publicity. Maybe they’re hoping to set up some tollbooths at the castle gate, once enough people are inside and the other options have withered for lack of customers.
That suggests they’re less likely to try to frantically monitize in a way that risks killing their brand’s reputation. Maybe they’ll stay nice indefinitely.
They also have payed plans. It’s actually nice of them to offer free plans for those in dire need. When your business critical site (eg. your small business shop) gets DDOSed and your hoster wants drastically more money for the traffic or will shut it down, both of which threatening your existance, cloudflare is a blessing.
My negative experiences as an end user take priority over any positive experience told to me by a third party in a usage case that doesn’t apply to me.
Normal users only really notice if the site is actually being attacked and therefore has enabled some checks. You will then not be able to use wget or so, but it’s better than the site being down or unusably slow due to the attack.
You’re all circle jerking around the problem. Proxy DNS and CDN’s should be decentralised into standard protocols and not centralised into one company, for what should be obvious reasons (privacy being one of them).
I use CloudFlare on my websites and I feel like I don’t have a choice. The fact that it’s free to use proxy DNS is the kicker here, and the big selling point behind the DDoS protections. But the milliseconds CF DNS and page caching shave off page loads is also dangerous, because now it becomes mandatory if your websites are actually competing against someone else.
Again: this is a single entity, a single point of failure and in effect a monopoly. We don’t just get to use it, we have to use it.
Of course one can’t complain unless one has made an effort to do something about it, like I dunno, make a national version of CloudFlare?
Mwahahahaha! Didn’t like that one, did you?!? Soon that will be mandatory and departments that investigate will honeypot your ass when they need a some justification for taking your in for a little private interrogation… wait, no, GO BACK!!
Okay, so protocols. Hard as fuck, static as hell. Yes? But, decentralised. Si? DNS proxying and content caches are staples of the modern internet. Content go quick, content go real quick ya. All we need to do is figure out a way to facilitate those things without having to rely on a single company, government body or even access to the many nodes that comprise the internet.
We used to write spec, damnit! We must return to the source. I have been some schmuck on the internet and this was my TL;DR.
Your experience as an end user is only available because cloudflare exists. That’s why your end user opinion doesn’t matter, because bad actors are constantly trying to ruin the internet and cloudflare is the gatekeeper. As a server owner I need security at the door to keep our illegal activity. Your opinion of “I don’t like security at the door” is dually noted and immediately thrown away.
Only if you don’t know what Cloudlfare does. It protects against all kinds of attacks.
Yeah this post is nearly upsettingly ignorant.
Cloudflare is just about the only big internet company out there objectively doing good things for the Internet.
This seems like saying road construction makes driving objectively worse or security guards make a stadium venue objectively worse.
BACK IN MY DAY WE BROUGHT RIFLES TO GAME DAY TO TAUNT THE PLAYERS
Maybe their point is just privatisation or something.
For example a dns provider like cloudfare just could artificially make latency costs for servers that don’t agree with something cloudfare does bigger, which would result in them being less likely to be displayed in a search result because a search engine would have IP adresses faster from other servers. This obviously depends on if a search engine makes dns requests or just provides hostnames for the end user.
And then you could change your 1.1.1.1 to 8.8.8.8 and be free 🫢
You can set up a caching dns server on a pi at home with very little effort.
using google is not what i’d call free
Yeah. Maybe not 8.8.8.8. More like 9.9.9.9.
Right now.
But everybody is also moving into their castle. Many for free.
They are not allowed to let people do that unless they have an argument that, somehow, this makes money for the owners of Cloudflare. Maybe that’s in the form of good publicity. Maybe they’re hoping to set up some tollbooths at the castle gate, once enough people are inside and the other options have withered for lack of customers.
They have existed for over a decade wtf are you on about. They’re publicly traded and doing very well.
This is more nonsense in a thread full of nonsense.
That suggests they’re less likely to try to frantically monitize in a way that risks killing their brand’s reputation. Maybe they’ll stay nice indefinitely.
Anyone providing services for a profit could pull a Unity at anytime. Still, I think you need more for the “slippery slope” argument.
They also have payed plans. It’s actually nice of them to offer free plans for those in dire need. When your business critical site (eg. your small business shop) gets DDOSed and your hoster wants drastically more money for the traffic or will shut it down, both of which threatening your existance, cloudflare is a blessing.
I dont like monopolies, but a world without cloud flare would go down constantly just because a few script kiddies decided to ddos something
Also made my company I worked for saved ton of money, instead of using other usage-based CDN since we got some ddos for the past year.
The CF Pages and their video encoding platform also ok and easy to use.
My negative experiences as an end user take priority over any positive experience told to me by a third party in a usage case that doesn’t apply to me.
Most of the time that a site is using Cloudflare you’ve likely not noticed and it has improved your experience.
Normal users only really notice if the site is actually being attacked and therefore has enabled some checks. You will then not be able to use wget or so, but it’s better than the site being down or unusably slow due to the attack.
You’re all circle jerking around the problem. Proxy DNS and CDN’s should be decentralised into standard protocols and not centralised into one company, for what should be obvious reasons (privacy being one of them).
I use CloudFlare on my websites and I feel like I don’t have a choice. The fact that it’s free to use proxy DNS is the kicker here, and the big selling point behind the DDoS protections. But the milliseconds CF DNS and page caching shave off page loads is also dangerous, because now it becomes mandatory if your websites are actually competing against someone else.
Again: this is a single entity, a single point of failure and in effect a monopoly. We don’t just get to use it, we have to use it.
Of course one can’t complain unless one has made an effort to do something about it, like I dunno, make a national version of CloudFlare?
Mwahahahaha! Didn’t like that one, did you?!? Soon that will be mandatory and departments that investigate will honeypot your ass when they need a some justification for taking your in for a little private interrogation… wait, no, GO BACK!!
Okay, so protocols. Hard as fuck, static as hell. Yes? But, decentralised. Si? DNS proxying and content caches are staples of the modern internet. Content go quick, content go real quick ya. All we need to do is figure out a way to facilitate those things without having to rely on a single company, government body or even access to the many nodes that comprise the internet.
We used to write spec, damnit! We must return to the source. I have been some schmuck on the internet and this was my TL;DR.
I don’t like how you say it, but what you say is true. Truth is hard to hear, sometimes.
If cloudflare wasn’t a thing your negative experiences as an end user would be worse
I doubt that.
Why do you doubt that my man?
They don’t even know.
Tell me you have no idea how content delivery networks work without telling me you have no idea how content delivery networks work.
Your experience as an end user is only available because cloudflare exists. That’s why your end user opinion doesn’t matter, because bad actors are constantly trying to ruin the internet and cloudflare is the gatekeeper. As a server owner I need security at the door to keep our illegal activity. Your opinion of “I don’t like security at the door” is dually noted and immediately thrown away.
“You only know about the bad thing because the bad thing exists” what a compelling argument. Did you know water makes things wet because it’s wet?
Yes, speed limits are dumb it affect me personally idc how it benefits the rest of us. Great philosophy.