Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cloudflare Email Service: private beta

blog.cloudflare.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 578 posts

Re: Cloudflare Email Service: private beta

#121

Post by jasonjmcghee »

wiether wrote: post #115
jasonjmcghee wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh sure, a nice emailing experience (compared with SES) seems positive. But there are negative comments like Cloudflare shipping this is net negative, so just trying to understand the context.

The negatives are probably around the fact that Cloudflare is soon to be the master of the web (80/443) If they launch an email service and are as successful, they could become the master of the email (25/465) So soon, they'll be the master of the entire Internet To be clear: I don't share this view, in part because Google and Microsoft already are the masters of the email

Thank you for the context

Re: Cloudflare Email Service: private beta

#123

Post by drnick1 »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #92
azemetre wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Cloudflare is so vital to the internet, it should be nationalized for the public benefit as having a private entity with so much control over the internet is not a good thing. Corporatized control of the internet should not be encouraged.

Can't believe if you are joking or not. I trust a corporation more than I trust the nation you want it nationalized in (America?) EU maybe. But yes I don't want cloudflare to be part of america after patriotic acts and all the dystopia. Honestly, cloudflare is not so vital to the internet. Like, The only thing its gonna be a problem if they stop working without giving any way to migrate. Then yes, its gonna be a bit…

The EU is quickly becoming a dystopian nightmare with age verification, mandated encryption backdoors, and generally an extremely invasive form of government. So no thanks.

Re: Cloudflare Email Service: private beta

#124

Post by pmdr »

nextos wrote: post #55
neximo64 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then they'll offer to 'protect' you from AI scrapers for a fee and then bulk negotiate against Google, etc for another fee.

If you use an old web browser, lots of sites are already not usable because Cloudfare's CAPTCHA will deny you entry. New but non-standard niche browsers are also problematic.

I usually have the same (residential) IP for weeks on end and there's absolutely no malware or scraping or whatever the heck it is that Cloudflare thinks it's protecting against going on in my house. Yet I still get blocked or captcha'd.

Website owners may understandably be appreciative of CF. But as as someone browsing the web, I think it's done a lot of irreversible* damage to the open internet.

* I say irreversible because I don't think they'll be looking to improve this anytime soon, but rather add more restrictions.

Re: Cloudflare Email Service: private beta

#125

Post by bakies »

gethly wrote: post #9
mosura wrote: post #4

Eventually all Internet protocols will be MITMed by cloudflare. Your single point of interception!

Was about to comment on this but you got right to the point. All of this is because people are lazy to build, let alone maintain, their own damn programs and servers.

running email servers is a huge and terrible time sink

Re: Cloudflare Email Service: private beta

#126

Post by layer8 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #78
gethly wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was about to comment on this but you got right to the point. All of this is because people are lazy to build, let alone maintain, their own damn programs and servers.

I have more money than time. Take my money to do things I do not have time for. What you call lazy, I call time and capital/cashflow efficient. (cloudflare customer, in both personal and professional capacities; i pay Fastmail to host family email; both can easily be switched if needed to prevent lock in, with DNS changes and in the case of hosted email, an export of mailboxes and tenant config)

What GP is effectively saying is that you don’t value independence enough to invest the necessary money and (for personal use) time into self-hosting.

And there is a spectrum to this. For example, using a small, independent email or hosting provider may cost a little more time, but makes you more independent from big tech, and maybe more importantly, contributes to reducing the power of big tech. We are all paying for it, down the line.

Re: Cloudflare Email Service: private beta

#127

Post by charcircuit »

mtrovo wrote: post #89

Kind of off-topic, but it's such a pity that we arrived at email as the local minimum for the best communication protocol for transactional messages. Having to set up an email service just to be able to enable authentication flows on a new website is such a hindrance that I keep wondering if it would be different if sending push notifications to a cell phone was made an open protocol..

This is the fate of most open protocols. It becomes too hard to migrate to a new spec due to the increasing difficulty of coordination and then the protocol gets stuck in time.

Re: Cloudflare Email Service: private beta

#129

Post by iamacyborg »

scrollaway wrote: post #51
iamacyborg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mailjet, mailgun, sparkpost and a bunch of others.

Mailjet / Mailgun are one and the same service and since the acquisition, I haven't heard of anyone still happy with them. But yes good point, Mailjet is another one. Sparkpost to my knowledge is built on SES.

Sparkpost roll their own MTA’s on AWS, they’re not sending via SES.

Re: Cloudflare Email Service: private beta

#130

Post by makeitdouble »

stingraycharles wrote: post #68
mosura wrote: post #4

Eventually all Internet protocols will be MITMed by cloudflare. Your single point of interception!

To be honest, the internet was worse without Cloudflare, so as long as they provide a good service for their customers, I’m fine with it. This is one of those. Google is in a perfect position to compete but they don’t, so it’s not like Cloudflare is a monopoly or something. At least they’re not selling ads using your data.

I think the point is to keep them in that mindset, and that requires competition and some counterbalance that won't be there is everyone just moves to Cloudflare.
Post reply on HN