By being a monopoly and having a unique chokehold on the internet. Even if we don’t get into their ties with various governments that they inevitably have to have, the fact that they alone can cripple the internet is concerning
How so? There are dozens of website hosts and DDOS protection services around.
having a unique chokehold on the internet
Have they ever utilised it in any extent?
Even if we don’t get into their ties with various governments that they inevitably have to have
That sounds suspiciously close to “I have zero proof but I think they’re doing X”. Can you elaborate on those government ties?
the fact that they alone can cripple the internet is concerning
Imagine a hosting company that’s 100% open-source, 100% vegan, 100% green, 100% pro-consumer. Their service is so good that the vast majority of the Internet starts using them.
Do you start hating them at the point where they reach, lets say, 50% market share, just because they managed to grow that large?
I guess what I’m asking is: do you have any concrete cause for the Cloudflare hate, or is it just a “they’re big therefore they must be bad, because big == bad”?
Just ignore that they heavily contribute to opensource, have extremely generous free tiers, open incident reports and regularly share deep dives into their architecture and problems
It’s such a weird mix of people with very strong opinions on topics they’re extremely ignorant about here, on Lemmy. I was first shocked to see it on the Technology community.
I thought that, since Lemmy (and fediverse in general) is relatively difficult to get into, it’d attract more tech-savvy people, but now. Here, in this thread, we have a dude saying that “Cloudflare always sucked”. Any Windows-related discussion always devolves into crying about data being siphoned (and nobody has bothered to read the telemetry documentation, of course)…
Just getting a weird cognitive dissonance whenever I’m browsing here.
By the fiftieth “your browser is outdated, please upgrade to an up to date browser” on an up to date version of Firefox, but with privacy extensions and on a VPN, yeah forgive me if I harbour some resentment. Not even a captcha challenge half the time, just “you’re not worthy of seeing this website, peasant.” And don’t even think about disabling JS, that gets you blacklisted all the same. And if you’re using Tor, forget about it.
They also block you from loading standalone images, so you can’t download images from search results or even open an image from an article in a new tab. Should I be grateful that they’re saving the website megabytes of server traffic while making it impossible to save stuff offline or use the browser’s zoom tools to get information out of a high resolution image? Also, you’re literally the world’s largest CDN. You’re saying you can’t spare enough of your basically unlimited computational power to let me download a static image you’re probably already cached in every data centre?
Also, they’re literally a man in the middle as a service. And not just in the ISP sense, they control the TLS certificates and can see literally everything you’re sending to or receiving from the website. Including passwords. Including credit cards. Literally defeats the purpose of TLS. And even if the website itself doesn’t use their traffic passthrough service, they infect even more websites with their CDN service, AKA basically one of those old school tracking pixels but holding libraries needed by the site hostage so you can’t block them without breaking the site.
Also also, just because they say their DNS service is “private” doesn’t make it private. Companies have been lying about their privacy policy since privacy policies started being mandated with zero consequences. As Amy from Futurama said, “Fool me seven times, shame on you. Fool me eight or more times, shame on me.”
By the fiftieth “your browser is outdated, please upgrade to an up to date browser” on an up to date version of Firefox, but with privacy extensions and on a VPN, yeah forgive me if I harbour some resentment
Interesting! I used Firefox for ages and never encountered that issue.
Not even a captcha challenge half the time, just “you’re not worthy of seeing this website, peasant.” And don’t even think about disabling JS, that gets you blacklisted all the same.
Super weird. I’m using Mullvad Browser half the time, never had any such issues. It automatically kills all cookies, has uBlock and NoScript installed, etc. EDIT: oh, yeah, it’s also Firefox-based.
They also block you from loading standalone images, so you can’t download images from search results or even open an image from an article in a new tab
What…? I do that literally every day - I handle the service catalogue at work so I need a lot of icons for the hardware and software we provide to users. Just yesterday I downloaded the images for a bunch of Apple hardware, straight from the search results.
Should I be grateful that they’re saving the website megabytes of server traffic while making it impossible to save stuff offline or use the browser’s zoom tools to get information out of a high resolution image?
Other than the fact that I fail to see that “impossible to save stuff” bit - yeah, you should, somewhat. Again: over 60% of traffic is bots, that generates A LOT of traffic. These days a lot of people wouldn’t be able to afford hosting a website if they didn’t have services that Cloudflare and similar companies offer.
Also, they’re literally a man in the middle as a service (…)
I don’t know enough about networking to have an opinion on that. I only know that the two network security companies that I follow on socials recommend them. And it’s not “shills shilling”, these are two companies that will take governments and companies to court for threatening user rights.
Also also, just because they say their DNS service is “private” doesn’t make it private. Companies have been lying about their privacy policy since privacy policies started being mandated with zero consequences
Sure, I get that. But I’m a fan of Occam’s Razor. Can they exfiltrate data from their DNS? Of course. Everybody can. But why would they? If anyone finds out, it effectively kills the entire company, and they don’t do business with personal data - that’s Google’s market. It’s a lot of risk for zero reward, the way I see it.
I seem to remember that they only did after backlash to originally refusing to do so but I wasn’t following it super closely. That’s why I prefaced it with “IIRC”.
Why is Cloudflare suddenly the enemy on Lemmy?
Well, not a straight answer but, there you go.
(yes, late, also my first post so hi)
I think that’s the first time I’ve seen a url in hiragana. And welcome to lemmy. I hope you enjoy it here, it’s normally very chill.
Suddenly? They’ve always sucked
How did the literal best DDOS protection on the planet and the provider of a very safe and secure DNS suck?
By being a monopoly and having a unique chokehold on the internet. Even if we don’t get into their ties with various governments that they inevitably have to have, the fact that they alone can cripple the internet is concerning
How so? There are dozens of website hosts and DDOS protection services around.
Have they ever utilised it in any extent?
That sounds suspiciously close to “I have zero proof but I think they’re doing X”. Can you elaborate on those government ties?
Imagine a hosting company that’s 100% open-source, 100% vegan, 100% green, 100% pro-consumer. Their service is so good that the vast majority of the Internet starts using them.
Do you start hating them at the point where they reach, lets say, 50% market share, just because they managed to grow that large?
I guess what I’m asking is: do you have any concrete cause for the Cloudflare hate, or is it just a “they’re big therefore they must be bad, because big == bad”?
Liberalism really does a cook a lot of peoples brains dont it?
This dude has previously defended Microsoft, you can ignore their opinions. They defend companies for free.
Oh, yeah, since I sometimes state facts about topics you don’t like, clearly, I can be ignored.
How fucking pathetic are you?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act
Just big company = bad
Nothing new on lemmy
Just ignore that they heavily contribute to opensource, have extremely generous free tiers, open incident reports and regularly share deep dives into their architecture and problems
just ignore that cloudflare was founded to collect data for the department of homeland security
It’s such a weird mix of people with very strong opinions on topics they’re extremely ignorant about here, on Lemmy. I was first shocked to see it on the Technology community.
I thought that, since Lemmy (and fediverse in general) is relatively difficult to get into, it’d attract more tech-savvy people, but now. Here, in this thread, we have a dude saying that “Cloudflare always sucked”. Any Windows-related discussion always devolves into crying about data being siphoned (and nobody has bothered to read the telemetry documentation, of course)…
Just getting a weird cognitive dissonance whenever I’m browsing here.
It always was?
Why?
By the fiftieth “your browser is outdated, please upgrade to an up to date browser” on an up to date version of Firefox, but with privacy extensions and on a VPN, yeah forgive me if I harbour some resentment. Not even a captcha challenge half the time, just “you’re not worthy of seeing this website, peasant.” And don’t even think about disabling JS, that gets you blacklisted all the same. And if you’re using Tor, forget about it.
They also block you from loading standalone images, so you can’t download images from search results or even open an image from an article in a new tab. Should I be grateful that they’re saving the website megabytes of server traffic while making it impossible to save stuff offline or use the browser’s zoom tools to get information out of a high resolution image? Also, you’re literally the world’s largest CDN. You’re saying you can’t spare enough of your basically unlimited computational power to let me download a static image you’re probably already cached in every data centre?
Also, they’re literally a man in the middle as a service. And not just in the ISP sense, they control the TLS certificates and can see literally everything you’re sending to or receiving from the website. Including passwords. Including credit cards. Literally defeats the purpose of TLS. And even if the website itself doesn’t use their traffic passthrough service, they infect even more websites with their CDN service, AKA basically one of those old school tracking pixels but holding libraries needed by the site hostage so you can’t block them without breaking the site.
Also also, just because they say their DNS service is “private” doesn’t make it private. Companies have been lying about their privacy policy since privacy policies started being mandated with zero consequences. As Amy from Futurama said, “Fool me seven times, shame on you. Fool me eight or more times, shame on me.”
Interesting! I used Firefox for ages and never encountered that issue.
The VPN “click to confirm you’re human” is annoying but at the same time understandable - 60% of all Internet traffic is bots.
Super weird. I’m using Mullvad Browser half the time, never had any such issues. It automatically kills all cookies, has uBlock and NoScript installed, etc. EDIT: oh, yeah, it’s also Firefox-based.
What…? I do that literally every day - I handle the service catalogue at work so I need a lot of icons for the hardware and software we provide to users. Just yesterday I downloaded the images for a bunch of Apple hardware, straight from the search results.
Other than the fact that I fail to see that “impossible to save stuff” bit - yeah, you should, somewhat. Again: over 60% of traffic is bots, that generates A LOT of traffic. These days a lot of people wouldn’t be able to afford hosting a website if they didn’t have services that Cloudflare and similar companies offer.
I don’t know enough about networking to have an opinion on that. I only know that the two network security companies that I follow on socials recommend them. And it’s not “shills shilling”, these are two companies that will take governments and companies to court for threatening user rights.
Sure, I get that. But I’m a fan of Occam’s Razor. Can they exfiltrate data from their DNS? Of course. Everybody can. But why would they? If anyone finds out, it effectively kills the entire company, and they don’t do business with personal data - that’s Google’s market. It’s a lot of risk for zero reward, the way I see it.
IIRC a lot of hate comes from their refusal to blacklist kiwifarms after they bullied several people to suicide.
But… they did blacklist Kiwifarms? In 2022.
I seem to remember that they only did after backlash to originally refusing to do so but I wasn’t following it super closely. That’s why I prefaced it with “IIRC”.
Yes, but someone said they didn’t and since no one ever fact checks, the consensus is that they didn’t, even though they factually did.