why i don’t like cloudflare
estimated reading time: 4 - 5 min
the views expressed in this blog post are my personal opinions and are not intended to defame, harm, or discredit any individual, business, or service. this content is not meant to be taken as factual assertions, and i disclaim any liability for any potential consequences that may arise from the use of this content.
cloud... what the fuck is even that? well, cloud, it’s just someone else’s computer, really. and in essence, that’s not really a problem. this website, itself is hosted on a cloud provider. so? what's the problem with cloudflare then? well, sit down, and let’s get started!
as you may, or may not have noticed, this website is “exposed”, or in better terms, not running behind a proxying dns+cdn service. why? for a project of my size, i think it’s overkill. uneccessary. stupid.
in their own words about 20% of websites run under cloudflare. which is extremely worrying. if something goes south on their end, a good portion of the global network will be unavailable and unreachable. which already happened back in 2022. do you see the problem now? and sure, outages of big scale are rare and unlikely, so why do i think you should avoid cloudflare?
they’re shady at best, and probably much more sinister at worst. people cling to them for their free services, but do you really think they provide them out of the goodness of their heart? hell no! obviously, they want your money, if not now, they want it eventually.
you may have heard that they’re the best ddos protection service, and the fastest cdn network, and similar things. while that may be true, is it worth the hassle? a company so icky, they aren’t kind even to their paying customers. allegedly, back in may 2024, cloudflare threatened one of their customers to pay $120,000.00 or lose their website. how is that fair to the customer? this is how they’ll lose their paying customers! so, if they don’t treat their paying customers with dignity, why do you think they’ll treat you in any other way? you’re nothing else but their doormat, at their mercy to keep your website running and cached.
and sure, maybe you aren’t interested in hosting a website. what about just visiting them? annoying ass captcha. every. single. fucking. time. the captcha that has the tendency to fail, even if you did everything correctly, so you must redo it just to visit a stupid website! how don’t you find that so fucking annoying!? i know, i certainly do! “but-- that stops bots!!”, you cry! yeah, stops them my ass! the internet is still filled with bots and spam on every fucking corner of it!
more on the captcha absurdity
those annoying captchas, cloudflare claims that this is based on ip reputation, but how is it possible that majority of people have “bad” ips? most of us aren’t spammers, or bots, or anything similar. the issue probably lies in the fact that a large portion of the residential internet users are behind a cg-nat. so, all it takes is one bad person for everyone to suffer. normal users shouldn’t have to go through all those hoops just to visit a website, and read the content they were looking for.
also, this whole captcha system might be wonky, or non-functional at all, if the user has their cookies disabled, javascript disabled or uses a terminal-based web browser. why should those people be excluded from visiting certain webpages? shouldn’t the internet be free and open for all of us?
cloudflare says those measures are necessary to counter abuse. this claim is dubious and ridiculous, as websites that use other cdn providers never have this “solve captcha before u can visit” bullshit. this annoying bullshit that should be burned with fire and sent to the deepest circles of hell!!!
politically charged webmasters
okay, this is not cloudflare’s fault, but they make it too easy to do “soft blocks”. and it’s still annoying, and a problem. so, remember those annoying captchas? yeah, you’ll see more of them! many developers either being filled by irrational fear of cyberattacks, or by politically charged ideologies add certain countries to the blacklists. bulgaria, china, mexico, pakistan, poland, russia, vietnam, often finds themselves on those lists? why? because by some dumb-fuck researchers said those countries send “the most” attacks. or because the webmaster themselves considers them “bad, scary” countries based on the lies of mass-media. but how is it people's fault? people who just want information? making it more difficult for them to access it is not the greatest thing to do, it could drive people away.
suspicious and dubious
no other cdn service offers a free service comparable to that of cloudflare. why do they offer it for free? it clearly is not because they care about the internet, or about you, or about security, or anything. they either want your money, or your data. it’s really that simple. they’re a business after all, and they need to stay profitable somehow. so, if you’re using their free plan, you’re not the customer, you’re the product. (the same could be said about many other services though not just cloudflare, and it’s up to you which services you decide to use or not)
their free plan is so “generous” that it surpasses paid plans of some other providers. how this isn’t even a little bit suspicious?
threat to anonymity of tor users
remember those captchas i mentioned earlier? well, if you’re a tor user, they’ll pop up even more often and would fail more often as well. this is a potentially great threat to people’s privacy and safety. in certain countries, there is no free access to information, and tor could circumvent that. tor is not only used by cybercriminals and drug lords. there are genuine reasons an average joe might need to use tor. cloudflare making access to information harder, certainly isn't helping.
in conclusion, cloudflare is a shady bussiness that only pretends to do what they are doing is for the good of the internet. meanwhile they make access to information harder and more annoying under the pretence of “safety and protection”.
got more to say? email me: hi[at]riri[dot]my
posted on: 2024-08-10 02:16 AM