RFC 8890 – The Internet is for End Users (2020)

Post by iso1631 » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 2:19 PM UTC

ACCount37 wrote: post #9

dlcarrier wrote: post #7

Inevitably the internet will have two types of users: 1. The anti-bot bots that must stop you from proceeding, because they aren't entirely sure you aren't a bot and 2. The bots that can get past them, which we all must eventually deploy, if we want a chance to visit a web page

Why would anyone ever want to solve 99 Cloudflare captchas a day if you can get a bot to do it instead?

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 2:22 PM UTC

1718627440 wrote: post #5

iso1631 wrote: post #2

Who's an end user. Unless you own your hardware, you aren't the end user. When your phone, tv, camera, or even laptop on a non-free OS is on your network, you can get some semblance of control by controlling what network services it uses. Things like DoH are part of the removal of my control as a home user and give it to Sony, or Apple, or TPLink The most obvious thing is it becomes harder to block adverts. Throw in…

I do share your actual concern, but I think the term 'end user' applies to any human sitting in front of a computer, trying to achieve something, independently of whether the effective sysadmin works against his interests or not.

Post by pocksuppet » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 3:46 PM UTC

aftbit wrote: post #3

The internet is for whoever wants to send bits to each other and is willing to pay for transit to do it. The WWW might be for end users, though that seems less obvious by the day.

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 4:02 PM UTC

pocksuppet wrote: post #14

iso1631 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally used an LLM to answer the latest one 20 minutes ago, which was "what can climb a tree". Cloudflare is a blight on the internet, but HN loves it.

Cloudflare just started blocking Googlebot, so maybe we'll see an exodus away from Cloudflare by people who want their sites indexed? Hopefully?

Post by Atlas667 » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 4:21 PM UTC