Can someone please explain whether Cloudflare blackmailed Canonical?

Post by 0dayz » Tue, May 12, 2026, 9:50 AM UTC

raincole wrote: post #94

wood_spirit wrote: post #16

The article puts it very succinctly: Cloudflare fronts attackers for free and bills the victims for relief. Ddos protection services can be cast as a digital protection racket where they have a perverse incentive to keep attackers attacking. “It's a dangerous internet out there; you'd better pay us to protect your website from the attackers using our free tier.” At the least, even if there is no active collusion or p…

Ok, so what's the solution? I do agree with your comment. But obviously Cloudflare didn't invent DDoS. If Cloudflare just magically disappears tomorrow, the AI crawlers won't stop. So what's the alternative? It's not a world you need to upload a government-issued ID to browse the internet, right? ...right?

Post by john_strinlai » Tue, May 12, 2026, 1:02 PM UTC

tardedmeme wrote: post #152

john_strinlai wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are heartened to see people advocate for cloudflare to start proactively and arbitrarily deciding who can host legal content, instead of being content-neutral? their size and the "man-in-the-middle"-ing is a huge problem. however, i dont think the solution is to encourage them to also start acting as content police. i dont trust cloudflare, which is exactly why i dont want them policing my legal content. you want…

I don't think it's proactive, most people are just saying they should respond to abuse reports more or should be treated based on their lack of response. If I'm hosting anything I don't have to proactively police it. If someone alerts me that a certain domain I'm hosting points to something illegal, I then decide if I want to remove it or not (and don't decide this based on a shell script). Cloudflare is apparently j…

Post by naikrovek » Tue, May 12, 2026, 4:45 PM UTC

iamnothere wrote: post #127

nicce wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a robber sees Bob buy a bunch of expensive electronics at WalMart, and then buys a crowbar and robs him, is WalMart somehow responsible for the robbery Yes, if Walmart somehow knew robber’s intentions, but sold anyway. That is the primary question actually. Was the intent or act known or not.

Should Walmart be responsible for performing background checks on people buying crowbars to ensure they don’t intend to do harm? What about lighter fluid? Rat poison? Baseball bats?

Post by michaelmrose » Tue, May 12, 2026, 5:26 PM UTC

john_strinlai wrote: post #51

people will always be able to pick a handful of sites they think shouldnt be allowed to use cloudflare hosting services. the problem is that every person will have a different handful of sites. cloudflare should host everything and anything unless and until a lawful order is received. if they start sticking their fingers into sites and determining whether the site's content is "appropriate" or whatever, based on some…

Post by acdha » Tue, May 12, 2026, 5:58 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #122

acdha wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t offer service to DDoS rings?

That doesn't get rid of the important perverse incentives. They still "want" DDoS all over from a monetary perspective. Kicking off the web page of the attackers will have a slight impact but not a whole lot.