How Cloudflare ruined the Internet

[JohnnyDoe]

The internet was supposed to be a free, chaotic marketplace of ideas. Then came Cloudflare, the company that turned it into a sterile shopping mall with one security guard at the door.

Their “protection” means you can’t even read a small blog without solving puzzles like you’re auditioning for Mensa. Captchas, timeouts and pointless browser checks are shoved in your face in the name of “user experience". Translation: they own the front door, and you’re just lucky if they let you in, like that bouncer who thinks letting people into the club is his divine right.

Worse, they centralized everything. The web was meant to be decentralized, resilient, impossible to kill. Now one company controls access to a huge chunk of it. When Cloudflare sneezes, the internet catches pneumonia.

And the cherry on top: their supposed neutrality. They say they don’t police speech… right before dropping clients when it’s politically convenient. They’re judge, jury, and executioner, and they pretend otherwise.

Are there any alternatives?
bunny.net - The Global Edge Platform that truly Hops ?

 

[CEO]

I like BunnyCDN.

There is another project still in development:

EdgeCDN-X is an open source CDN solution built purely on top of k8s and CNCF projects.

EdgeCDN-X

Open Source CDN solution built on top of CNCF and OSS - EdgeCDN-X

github.com

 

[CEO]

The project in reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1lkxeaw/an_open_source_self_hostable_cdn

 

[JohnnyDoe]

Aaaaand here we go again, the internet keeps being ruined by Cloudflare:

Cloudflare down latest: ‘Fix’ update issued after X, ChatGPT and more go down

Outage comes around a month after Amazon Web Services outage also took much of the internet offline

www.independent.co.uk

Cloudflare Status

Welcome to Cloudflare's home for real-time and historical data on system performance.

www.cloudflarestatus.com

 

[Fiscal]

Lost a lot of money today because of the downtime. Lesson learned, I need to find a better set-up.

 

[JohnnyDoe]

Is it possible to do without a CDN?
Btw, Bunny keep functioning smoothly.

 

[Fiscal]

Is it possible to do without a CDN?
Btw, Bunny keep functioning smoothly.

Should be no issue for me personally. As for some of clients/partners I deal with: Common occurrence I see is they rent a server from the same people that built their websites and for some reason they always slap Cloudfare on it. Totally pointless most of the time.

Also bunny has been rock-solid for a long time from what I've understood. I'm going to look into it right away.

I don't know why, because I'm not that technical, but I've noticed a big change in the accessibility of websites since 2020. Even when running a very expensive set-up earlier this year shit would go offline or be slow every now and then. There must be some theory behind this.

 

[Columbus]

without solving puzzles like you’re auditioning for Mensa. Captchas

that’s an anti ddos feature used by the webmasters/website owners.
It’s called Cloudflare turnstile.

Yet I did read some horror stories of their sales department - if you wanna go for an enterprise plan, they can charge you what they want, no transparent pricing.

 

[void]

CF is one of the biggest threats to the free internet, the level of centralization is beyond comprehension, boycott CF, not using them is a virtuous decision

 

[JohnnyDoe]

Is a CDN the only way to "protect" a website?

 

[marioIT]

no but is the most comfortable way if you don't want to hire a full time guy!
one of my servers doesn't have cdn... it's nginx + fail2ban and other modules... it's a pain to setup, a pain to handle and a pain to monitor...
of course if one does it daily there are scripts/docker etc to automate it all. Yet a PITA...
I've set it very aggressively, it bans scanners too. Banlist gets huge quickly.
Don't have anything mission critical there, so it's kinda set and forget.
In this server I don't care about huge ddos (have some isp protection). I care that people/bots gets banned as soon as they try to hack me or scan for vulns.
Cloudflare also make it very easy to hide your server IP.
A self hosted cdn with multiple servers... don't even want to think about that 🤣

 

[Columbus]

A self hosted cdn with multiple servers...

That would be a real PITA… 🤓

 

[Marty McFly]

no but is the most comfortable way if you don't want to hire a full time guy!
one of my servers doesn't have cdn... it's nginx + fail2ban and other modules... it's a pain to setup, a pain to handle and a pain to monitor...
of course if one does it daily there are scripts/docker etc to automate it all. Yet a PITA...
I've set it very aggressively, it bans scanners too. Banlist gets huge quickly.
Don't have anything mission critical there, so it's kinda set and forget.
In this server I don't care about huge ddos (have some isp protection). I care that people/bots gets banned as soon as they try to hack me or scan for vulns.
Cloudflare also make it very easy to hide your server IP.
A self hosted cdn with multiple servers... don't even want to think about that 🤣

Fully agree on everything, but then why big corporation use Cloudflare? They are just too lazy?

 

[void]

Fully agree on everything, but then why big corporation use Cloudflare? They are just too lazy?

in corporations work and decide employees - they have different incentive model than business owners - this model is incompatible with meritocratic decision making - employee doesn't have to be stupid or mean to make stupid decisions, he simply lives in a different reality

 

[JohnnyDoe]

in corporations work and decide employees - they have different incentive model than business owners - this model is incompatible with meritocratic decision making - employee doesn't have to be stupid or mean to make stupid decisions, he simply lives in a different reality

Most workplaces look like a talent inversion machine.
The least capable always end up running the show. Corporations reward visibility, compliance, and politics, not competence. So the mediocre climb, because climbing is the only thing they are good at. The competent stay in place, because they are the ones doing the work that keeps the whole circus from collapsing. Managers keep them anchored because losing them would hurt output.

Those who know, do it.
Those who do not know, teach.
Those who cannot teach, manage.
Those who don't know, cannot teach and cannot manage, those are the politicians.

 

[void]

Most workplaces look like a talent inversion machine.
The least capable always end up running the show. Corporations reward visibility, compliance, and politics, not competence. So the mediocre climb, because climbing is the only thing they are good at. The competent stay in place, because they are the ones doing the work that keeps the whole circus from collapsing. Managers keep them anchored because losing them would hurt output.

Those who know, do it.
Those who do not know, teach.
Those who cannot teach, manage.
Those who don't know, cannot teach and cannot manage, those are the politicians.

good point regarding politicians... that's the very same principle - blatantly wrong incentive model again - it's no surprise they don't maximize well-being of the citizens (tax payers, slaves) because it doesn't lead to their reelection

there one crucial thing to understand - it's all about preferences of those whose energy is burned - burning someone else's energy to express my own preferences breaks the thermodynamic balance and causes instability

 

[JohnnyDoe]

good point regarding politicians... that's the very same principle - blatantly wrong incentive model again - it's no surprise they don't maximize well-being of the citizens (tax payers, slaves) because it doesn't lead to their reelection

there one crucial thing to understand - it's all about preferences of those whose energy is burned - burning someone else's energy to express my own preferences breaks the thermodynamic balance and causes instability

We can break the chain only by altering the incentives so the climbers gain nothing from climbing and the competent stop being penalized for competence.
In other words, if you remove the reward for parasitism you restore a balance.

 

[CEO]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1994838785495073146

 

[JohnnyDoe]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1994838785495073146

Because of “illegal” IPTVs streaming the matches 🤣
They try to put fences around the web, but no fence is tall and strong enough

 

[JohnnyDoe]

Here we go again. Zoom is down, among others.