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| ▲ | dwedge an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| > CF serves a customers need CF serves something it convinced customers they need. Static blogs hiding behind bot protection (in some cases blocking legit users from GrapheneOS because it's difficult to fingerprint them) because someone convinced them they'll be DDoSed by bots otherwise is a loss to the Internet. A lot of self-hosters running CF tunnels because they don't know better also contributes. > It's more healthy to start the conversation of _why_ CF services are valuable. Begging the question. It's what TFA is about - telling people they need CF. |
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| ▲ | majke an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > A lot of self-hosters running CF tunnels because they don't know better also contributes. Are you saying CF documentation is better than Computer Science / Networking education resources? Why don't people know better? I thought the tunnels are mostly used to bypass NAT's. > Static blogs hiding behind bot protection I'm not sure what is the proportion of the static vs dynamic sites, but I would argue that for wordpress CF is adding real value. | | |
| ▲ | dwedge an hour ago | parent [-] | | > I thought the tunnels are mostly used to bypass NAT's. While not free, you can do with with TCP HAProxy streams on a cheap VPS. A lot of people using them to bypass NAT don't realise that Cloudflare decrypt the traffic on the way - that's what I meant about them not knowing better. |
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| ▲ | NetOpWibby an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | A lot of self-hosters running CF tunnels because they don't know better also contributes.
If you know better, you should contribute. | |
| ▲ | rs_rs_rs_rs_rs an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | >A lot of self-hosters running CF tunnels because they don't know better also contributes. Of course, everyone else is incompetent except you... | | |
| ▲ | dwedge an hour ago | parent [-] | | It's not about being incompetent. Quite often in selfhosted subreddits and forums you will see people surprised that Cloudflare can see their traffic in plaintext. Of course, they probably don't, but the fact that they can and that their policies now influence XX% of internet traffic is bad for the open internet. |
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| ▲ | Groxx 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think it counts as "allowed" regardless of utility. CF is so massively over-weight on the internet that it's impossible to trust them with anything because if they can be forced to do something by a hostile government (hint: they can be!) then they can get away with it invisibly and affect billions of people. That is something that should not be allowed to exist. It's one of the reasons monopolies (or even majority-opolies) are bad. It's a weapon hanging on the wall, waiting to be used. |
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| ▲ | epistasis an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Then I think the real question is why haven't any serious competitors emerged that can handle the essential services that Cloudflare provides? Are there network effects like what happens with Microsoft in the business computing space? With Microsoft, I'm also aware of a great amount of anti-competitive behavior, and though I haven't seen that from Cloudflare personally and haven't heard accusations of it, I also haven't paid attention. When I learned econ 101 in high school there was a concept of a "natural monopoly" like an electricity utility, a concept that was probably mostly post-hoc rationalization of the regulatory structures that were chosen a century ago, but it at least was a coherent narrative. I can't see any coherent narrative about Cloudflare's services being a natural monopoly. So I'm left wondering if they are just way better at what they do than anybody else, and perhaps the space isn't big enough to drive a competitor to enter it? I hope somebody on HN has a much better explanation of this than I do. | | |
| ▲ | Groxx 39 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I suspect a big part of it is that CF is running other businesses on the side, and offering basic features at a loss - they've artificially depressed the price of the service so it's hard to compete with them on only that service. Everyone using the free service likes that, of course, but honestly I wish we'd make it illegal to do. It's heavily used as a way to steal small markets simply by being successful in a different large one. |
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| ▲ | sophrosyne42 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Seems more of a moral hazard of government intervention than of ventures whose economies of scale demand large market cap to most economically serve customer needs. | | |
| ▲ | Groxx 9 minutes ago | parent [-] | | "Most economically" can be bent to nearly any purpose, there's almost always a cost-benefit to owning more of what you do, or externalizing costs onto others. It's not enough of a reason, and it's why laws restricting private behavior to serve the greater public exist. Which is very nearly the only reason to have governments: forcing restrictions that lead to better results in aggregate. (malicious control is another reason, but you kinda can't argue public benefit there) |
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| ▲ | layer8 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Regulation could conceivably disallow a single company to control such a significant portion of internet traffic. The parent can be interpreted as lamenting the absence of such regulation. |
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| ▲ | stickfigure an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | The only thing more annoying than people chanting "regulation is bad" is people chanting "regulation is good". What regulation? Be specific. CloudFlare provides significant utility to me. I chose to use them. Explain why you think someone else needs to butt into this relationship. | |
| ▲ | autoexec an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's certainly a huge risk when one company's outage can take down so much of internet. Decentralization and the ability to route around damage was a core feature of the internet. The more we depend on the internet, the less acceptable that loss becomes. |
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| ▲ | autoexec an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| cloudflare (and CDNs more generally) certainly started out as an own goal. Warnings were ignored and most people did the easy thing instead of the right thing. |
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| ▲ | tmpz22 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The fent dealer just serves the customers needs too |
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| ▲ | bluefirebrand 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| CF's current position in the internet is way larger than "serves a customer's need" |
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| ▲ | thejazzman 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | CF's customer is the website that elected to put CF in-between you and them |
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| ▲ | EnergyAmy 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| No, it's more healthy to start the conversation on why we allow corporations to do bad things with excuses like "just serving customer's needs" |
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| ▲ | oytis 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don't get it, what is bad about what they are doing? People need a CDN, they choose the one they find the best. | | |
| ▲ | thm 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | The discussion revolves around the equivalent of taking nutrition advice from Coca-Cola's blog. | | |
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