Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me • Hacker News Board

Re: Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me

#21

Post by mrtksn » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

bluetidepro wrote: post #15

core-questions wrote: post #9

It's okay, don't worry. Cloudflare would never use this incredible power for political purposes... ...oh wait, yes, they have and they will again. We've given them the power to censor and with the power increasingly comes the onus to do so, to satisfy the political whims of an elite that doesn't like anything counter to their narrative.

> ...yes, they have and they will again. I don't doubt this, but do you have more info on what you're referring to on "they have"? I'm a bit out of the loop on that.

They blocked Nazis after some attack or something like that. The founder wrote an emotional letter back then, acknowledging how bad is this and how he hates becoming the internet police.

Re: Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me

#22

Post by Tomte » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

bluetidepro wrote: post #15

core-questions wrote: post #9

It's okay, don't worry. Cloudflare would never use this incredible power for political purposes... ...oh wait, yes, they have and they will again. We've given them the power to censor and with the power increasingly comes the onus to do so, to satisfy the political whims of an elite that doesn't like anything counter to their narrative.

> ...yes, they have and they will again. I don't doubt this, but do you have more info on what you're referring to on "they have"? I'm a bit out of the loop on that.

They threw out Neonazi Twitter, a.k.a. Gab.

Re: Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me

#23

Post by chewmieser » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

jagger27 wrote: post #19

hmhrex wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which settings would those be? I'm using Cloudflare for a couple of my sites, and if I can fix this, I will. Otherwise I'll stop using Cloudflare.

The simplest way is just to use CloudFlare for DNS only (grey cloud button) until you're under attack. edit: do not follow my advice

This is a horrible recommendation and will ensure that the attack can continue after activating CloudFlare. You've already exposed your origin's IPs in this circumstance.

Re: Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me

#24

Post by crypt1d » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

I suspect Cloudflare is doing some form of 'fingerprinting' to flag potential attacks. Fingerprinting is probably based on things like IP, user agent, js being enabled, etc. In this case it seems that Cloudflare only banned a specific user agent with js_enabled=no.

Obviously this is all just an educated guess, since I've worked on building scrapers for cloudflare-protected websites.

Re: Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me

#25

Post by ecnahc515 » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

bluetidepro wrote: post #15

core-questions wrote: post #9

It's okay, don't worry. Cloudflare would never use this incredible power for political purposes... ...oh wait, yes, they have and they will again. We've given them the power to censor and with the power increasingly comes the onus to do so, to satisfy the political whims of an elite that doesn't like anything counter to their narrative.

> ...yes, they have and they will again. I don't doubt this, but do you have more info on what you're referring to on "they have"? I'm a bit out of the loop on that.

There's been a few occurrences of them terminating service for the sites promoting extremist views, eg: https://blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-for-8chan/

I don't entirely disagree with it but it's censorship nonetheless.

Re: Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me

#26

Post by hmhrex » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

jagger27 wrote: post #19

hmhrex wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which settings would those be? I'm using Cloudflare for a couple of my sites, and if I can fix this, I will. Otherwise I'll stop using Cloudflare.

The simplest way is just to use CloudFlare for DNS only (grey cloud button) until you're under attack. edit: do not follow my advice

Is there any way around that? I'd rather set it and forget it so I don't have to worry about the attack in first place.

Re: Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me

#27

Post by reaperducer » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

djannzjkzxn wrote: post #18

stopads wrote: post #11

I also refuse to complete captchas because I'm not interested in giving a trillion dollar company my free labor to help train their models. I'm really close to just defaulting JavaScript off entirely, the web is becoming so much worse by the day.

They’re also using your labor to train models by serving you pages and checking which links you click. No js required.

Just because he's being exploited by Google in one way doesn't mean he has to allow himself to be exploited in every possible way.

Re: Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me

#28

Post by kradeelav » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

corobo wrote: post #13

core-questions wrote: post #9

It's okay, don't worry. Cloudflare would never use this incredible power for political purposes... ...oh wait, yes, they have and they will again. We've given them the power to censor and with the power increasingly comes the onus to do so, to satisfy the political whims of an elite that doesn't like anything counter to their narrative.

Do you have any evidence of this? I'd take a dodgy looking blogspot URL over absolute nothing

OP is most likely referring to the news/articles when they shut down service for neo-nazi sites. There may be others I'm unaware of.

Re: Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me

#29

Post by partiallypro » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

Dunedan wrote: post #5

There is another side effect of visiting sites served by CloudFlare with disabled JavaScript: Email addresses (or any other words separated by an @) appear as "[email protected]" instead. Take this blog post from CloudFlare themselves for example: https://blog.cloudflare.com/serverless-performance-compariso... That's just ridiculous.

How is it ridiculous? It's called email obfuscation (it can be disabled within Cloudflare) it's to stop spam bots from ripping email addresses from websites and adding them to mailing lists.

Re: Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me

#30

Post by cortesoft » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

bluetidepro wrote: post #15

core-questions wrote: post #9

It's okay, don't worry. Cloudflare would never use this incredible power for political purposes... ...oh wait, yes, they have and they will again. We've given them the power to censor and with the power increasingly comes the onus to do so, to satisfy the political whims of an elite that doesn't like anything counter to their narrative.

> ...yes, they have and they will again. I don't doubt this, but do you have more info on what you're referring to on "they have"? I'm a bit out of the loop on that.

I am guessing it is the cutting of service to neo-nazi websites: https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-cloudflare/

Personally, I don't think free speech requires providing services to neo-nazis, but I get the nuances of the case.