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Cloudflare CEO is lying to you about the bot traffic jump

flyingpenguin.com

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Re: Cloudflare CEO is lying to you about the bot traffic jump

#141

Post by trumpdong »

reconnecting wrote: post #113
LorenPechtel wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When most of your server capacity is going to answering the scrapers it matters. It's not that the stuff is hidden, it's that storefront being flooded with 10x as many customers as the fire code allows. And some of them go around asking your employees mindless questions. (Small forum I help moderate: we were getting hammered with what was probably some sort of AI that was taking search queries and feeding them into t…

> When most of your server capacity is going to answering the scrapers it matters I've been dealing with the web since the previous century and still haven't managed to build a website that could be hurt by scrapers visiting it. If you went through the logs, you'd probably see that these bots are on a single IP or subnet, which can be easily detected and blocked instead of closing off search to non-registered users.

That's incorrect, they use residential proxy networks.

Re: Cloudflare CEO is lying to you about the bot traffic jump

#142

Post by trumpdong »

NetOpWibby wrote: post #79

The amount of people in these comments demonizing Cloudflare services or conflating their very existence with rubbish/trash/nonsense because you personally know better is wild. Y'know what would be better? Making a site showcasing what tools are better than Cloudflare's services! And how to use them! And sharing said site so people know about them!

Literally just don't use any of them. Don't use cloudflare. Don't use a cloudflare competitor. Just host your website.

Re: Cloudflare CEO is lying to you about the bot traffic jump

#143

Post by pixelat3d »

trumpdong wrote: post #140
pixelat3d wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind-of a requirement in 2026 -- you need something to MTM the amount of bot traffic that's going around these days and CF provides a good product and service (even outside of just the challenges portion.) If you want to be mad at somebody, then it should be at the AI companies for basically forcing the rest of the internet to use them. They have broken every non-enforceable contract that it was built upon. We w…

No you don't need that. I don't have it.

Oh, well in that case I'll just turn it off then

Re: Cloudflare CEO is lying to you about the bot traffic jump

#145

Post by dentemple »

Bender wrote: post #134
dentemple wrote: post #85

A lot of folks in these comments complaining about Cloudflare, but not many suggesting alternative solutions.

For little hobby sites I use some crude methods that have some false positives but work fairly well at keeping most of the riff-raff of the site. [1] It is work in progress but I am making something at your request. It's far from perfect but it's good enough for me. Probably won't be good enough for some. The document will evolve over the next few days. [1] - https://blawg.nochan.net/b/Internet-Crap/20260606-How-To-B…

Thanks, I'll check out what you got.

Re: Cloudflare CEO is lying to you about the bot traffic jump

#146

Post by LorenPechtel »

reconnecting wrote: post #113
LorenPechtel wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When most of your server capacity is going to answering the scrapers it matters. It's not that the stuff is hidden, it's that storefront being flooded with 10x as many customers as the fire code allows. And some of them go around asking your employees mindless questions. (Small forum I help moderate: we were getting hammered with what was probably some sort of AI that was taking search queries and feeding them into t…

> When most of your server capacity is going to answering the scrapers it matters I've been dealing with the web since the previous century and still haven't managed to build a website that could be hurt by scrapers visiting it. If you went through the logs, you'd probably see that these bots are on a single IP or subnet, which can be easily detected and blocked instead of closing off search to non-registered users.

Botnet.

Our offending searches were coming from many addresses.

Re: Cloudflare CEO is lying to you about the bot traffic jump

#147

Post by kordlessagain »

gruez wrote: post #128
kordlessagain wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on. I'm not here to Google things for you. Go investigate.

>Come on. I'm not here to Google things for you. And what, I'm here to do research for your arguments?

No, you aren't. The substantive argument was about the single choke point they represent and the decrypting of traffic. Nevertheless, you need not agree with my claim that they "require" you to use their crawler, and it's your prerogative to push back on this particular part of my comment.

Cloudflare provides services that any of their users may enable to charge crawlers for access. And they announced a while ago that this was going to be enabled by default on new domains, whether the customer asked for it or not (and there is plenty online about people wondering why they aren't being crawled). When it is enabled, Cloudflare either blocks, require registration of the crawler (forcing enabled billing), or provide one themselves: https://developers.cloudflare.com/changelog/post/2026-03-10-...

My compressed claim was close enough (in my opinion), given the substantive argument was broader: chokepoint, MITM, decryption, the IP vs AI tension.

It's the same pattern as Flock cameras quietly becoming the default license plate surveillance layer across US cities. Private infrastructure is becoming the substrate for something that used to be public or distributed, with the concentration happening faster than any deliberative process about whether we want it.

I'm willing to be wrong on any specific piece of this. But chasing down receipts for every line is effort, and I'm tired and old. The shape is what matters, and the shape is a man-in-the-middle.

Re: Cloudflare CEO is lying to you about the bot traffic jump

#148

Post by sophrosyne42 »

Groxx wrote: post #108
sophrosyne42 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"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…

"Most economically" means to satisfy the desires of the buyers without impairing the satisfaction considered more important. It has public benefit built in.
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