Thoughts on Cloudflare

I once interviewed at a UK gambling company that was doing option #3, and during the interview it was made clear that I'd never be able to visit the US because they were operating there illegally. (I declined the offer.) Some time later, it was in the news that one of their executives had been arrested and imprisoned in the US when he visited on holiday. (https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/news/another-uk-bettin...)

Think about the consequences of that. Anyone who connects to your site from China is MITM by Alibaba.

And I would not be surprised if they were abusing their middlebox position to do all kinds of surveillance based on secret "warrants" in other places.

> ... build checks and balances to avoid sleepwalking into a dictatorship.

This resonates well with me. I don't personally know the checks and balances that need to exist so that Cloudflare, or any big influential company, refrains from becoming evil. I find CF relying on open protocols for interoperability with vendors a very positive sign. I don't ever see them (or any company) backtracking of supporting some open standard once they already have support for it. I'm not aware of them having "custom" solutions that also don't have a spec for them. For example, they are absolutely best suited for the pay-per-[ai]crawl business model and if they wanted they could have easily taken advantage of their position. Instead they are relying on open standards and contributing to them. Paint me naive but this gives me a good deal of confidence of the short and medium term.

But I confess that I don't follow the company/market closely enough to know if that is enough or more is needed. More check and balances always seems good but I have no creativity in this regard. Perhaps that was one of my criticisms with the author's post - to collect all the bad press and identify the shortcomings but to stop short of digesting all those findings into a meaningful resolution.

A trash website that I like a lot, but still a trash website.

Maybe in 20 years we’ll be able to use emojis on here.

I understand that feeling but can be hard a provider that fill all that requirements without a expensive cost.

Integrate with the edge computing is part of the price you pay for all the conveniences like automatic builds, Cron and public reachable endpoints (and some of them almost free).

A minimal VPS with linux is always an alternative.

You could try to implement your logic in a WASI-compatible web assembly script - then things like I/O etc are abstracted and "standardised" (and then you can write it in whatever language makes you happy, though Rust will be the happy path in terms of ecosystem).

If you're into self-hosting, you can try Coolify - they take care of the Docker stuff and support all kinds services https://coolify.io/docs/services/overview (including plain Docker/compose deployments). So with this you could probably find a way to own it completely.

[0] https://bunny.net/edge-scripting/

Get real guys.

We really don't need huge data centers hosting our notes and discussion forms and spreadsheets in order to make these things collaborative.

It would be A LOT easier to make that work if the internet was end to end by default again.

Right now, we are like a school of fish who are already living inside the nets of a handful of hyperscalers who don't have much reason to treat us well.

We might as well take our chances in the open ocean.

With the exception of DDoS attacks we can protect ourselves through continuous improvement of our software and protocols. The sooner we take responsibility for doing that the better off we will be.

And even the DDoS attacks we can mitigate with replication and secret backend links via second ISP/mobile.

Not to mention all the alternatives are doing MITM anyway. So why single out Cloudflare?

I'm using FreeBSD - This is on the hit list

I'm using Waterfox - This is on the hit list

I'm using my colocated server for a VPN from a reputable provider - This is on the hit list

I eliminate the last two and suffer with my ADSL. My ADSL isn't a standard domestic provider so I'm hit with that too for using an alternative provider. I am still being penalized for using FreeBSD.

Every page I encounter that uses Cloudflare ends up with a captcha. Why isn't there a way to verify myself that I am an actual legit person? I've clicked the captcha enough times, why does it have to be every single time?

Why can't I whitelist my IP?

If this is truly the only way to restrict bad actors, then it's pathetic. Am I'm going to be hit for using Xorg and not Wayland in the future? Their "bot" protection technology is years out of date.

I don't like that Cloudflare has total control on how I can see the internet. I don't need any of their services, I don't want any of their services and others may praise them but to me not required.

This may of worked five years ago, but like cookie banners, it doesn't work now. Yet they wish to spin up new modern services and neglect the old that actually made Cloudflare and not some power-hungry MiTM service. That's what it feels like but not that they will listen. I hate the fact that any point they can just go full anal and force you to X.

The internet is suppose to have some sort of freedom, it's less than freedom. Using the internet now is like an animal in a cage. Heck, I would even register an account with Cloudflare if it allowed me to verify legitimacy.