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Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me

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Re: Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me

#171

Post by [deleted] »

detaro wrote: post #158
erichocean wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neo-Nazi sites, for better or worse (obviously: worse) should still be on the Internet. If only for the rest of us to point at as an example of what not to do. Censorship is a bit like antibiotics: short-term positive impact but long-term negative impact. Neo-Nazis are not a threat to anyone, anywhere, in any way. We can survive their stupid web page, and have no need to censor it. The cure is MUCH worse than the dis…

> Neo-Nazis are not a threat to anyone, anywhere, in any way. Except to the people they attack or murder of course.

[deleted]

Re: Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me

#172

Post by Rebelgecko »

erichocean wrote: post #152
Rebelgecko wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a ridiculous claim, I honestly can't imagine how anyone could make that in good faith. The website is named after a Nazi tabloid that was so virulent its publisher was executed at Nuremberg. The website's style guide for guest writers talks about the importance of "gassing kikes". If a website that glorifies Adolf Hitler, fascism, and genocide isn't enough to be considered neo-Nazi, then what is?

Neo-Nazi sites, for better or worse (obviously: worse) should still be on the Internet. If only for the rest of us to point at as an example of what not to do. Censorship is a bit like antibiotics: short-term positive impact but long-term negative impact. Neo-Nazis are not a threat to anyone, anywhere, in any way. We can survive their stupid web page, and have no need to censor it. The cure is MUCH worse than the dis…

My comment isn't meant to make a judgement call or restart the argument as to whether or not neo-nazi sites should be on the internet.

I'm just saying that it is ridiculous to question whether the people behind the site are Neo-Nazis and fascists. They admit what they are— there's not much room for debate.

Re: Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me

#173

Post by cortesoft »

erichocean wrote: post #152
Rebelgecko wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a ridiculous claim, I honestly can't imagine how anyone could make that in good faith. The website is named after a Nazi tabloid that was so virulent its publisher was executed at Nuremberg. The website's style guide for guest writers talks about the importance of "gassing kikes". If a website that glorifies Adolf Hitler, fascism, and genocide isn't enough to be considered neo-Nazi, then what is?

Neo-Nazi sites, for better or worse (obviously: worse) should still be on the Internet. If only for the rest of us to point at as an example of what not to do. Censorship is a bit like antibiotics: short-term positive impact but long-term negative impact. Neo-Nazis are not a threat to anyone, anywhere, in any way. We can survive their stupid web page, and have no need to censor it. The cure is MUCH worse than the dis…

Does Cloudflare have to provide CDN services for them, though?

Re: Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me

#174

Post by erichocean »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #172
erichocean wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neo-Nazi sites, for better or worse (obviously: worse) should still be on the Internet. If only for the rest of us to point at as an example of what not to do. Censorship is a bit like antibiotics: short-term positive impact but long-term negative impact. Neo-Nazis are not a threat to anyone, anywhere, in any way. We can survive their stupid web page, and have no need to censor it. The cure is MUCH worse than the dis…

My comment isn't meant to make a judgement call or restart the argument as to whether or not neo-nazi sites should be on the internet. I'm just saying that it is ridiculous to question whether the people behind the site are Neo-Nazis and fascists. They admit what they are— there's not much room for debate.

> there's not much room for debate

I'm not aware of anyone, anywhere, debating that. The debate is: what do we do about it? Do we compromise our values to hurt a minute group of bad actors? Or do we have integrity and tough it out?

The answer, at least in the United States, both culturally but also at the government is: nothing is done to them, they get speech like everyone else.

I oppose CloudFlare's decision because, culturally, it's un-American—and they are an American company. I expect all Americans, and especially the most prosperous and successful Americans—like the CEO of CloudFlare—to uphold those values.

Re: Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me

#175

Post by driverdan »

vageli wrote: post #81
JakeTheAndroid wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, because most custom browsers are malicious. They have the data to prove it. This isn't a side feature, it's a direct feature that is 100% intentional. They maintain a backend whitelist of known "good" user-agents. Curl is on that list and there are a few others outside of the big players. Most people building custom browsers are doing it to do something Chrome would disallow. One instance would only supporting…

Any sufficiently bad actor will already modify their user agent. Who is this really stopping?

Check server logs sometime. You'll be surprised how many malicious requests come from user agents that aren't regular, current browsers.

Re: Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me

#176

Post by erichocean »

cortesoft wrote: post #173
erichocean wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neo-Nazi sites, for better or worse (obviously: worse) should still be on the Internet. If only for the rest of us to point at as an example of what not to do. Censorship is a bit like antibiotics: short-term positive impact but long-term negative impact. Neo-Nazis are not a threat to anyone, anywhere, in any way. We can survive their stupid web page, and have no need to censor it. The cure is MUCH worse than the dis…

Does Cloudflare have to provide CDN services for them, though?

I oppose CloudFlare's decision because, culturally, it's un-American—and they are an American company. I expect all Americans, and especially the most prosperous and successful Americans—like the CEO of CloudFlare—to uphold those values.

I would 100% support legislation requiring anyone providing a platform or infrastructure, such as CloudFlare, to have a 100% neutral policy as to who they provide service to. It's a civil rights issue to me.

Corporations have rights, but with those rights come responsibilities.

Re: Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me

#177

Post by cortesoft »

merpnderp wrote: post #90
cortesoft wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, no one said the SPLC is the final say for this. Second, do you have any examples of an organization that the SPLC deemed a white supremacist that wasn't?

I know the SPLC has paid out in defamation suits rather than allow the cases to go to trial. Pretty good sign they knew they'd lose as it has severely hurt their reputation. Here's a particularly egregious case where a UN affiliated group was labeled an extremist hate group and the SPLC wouldn't relent even after evidence was presented: https://www.newsweek.com/splc-nawaz-million-apologizes-98187...

It sounds like they did relent? It doesn't say anything about them refusing to relent after evidence was presented.

It seems like they made a mistake in this case, clearly, but I don't know if you can extrapolate from that that they acted in bad faith.

Re: Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me

#178

Post by z3t4 »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #38
Liquix wrote: post #17

The problem presented by services like ReCaptcha and Cloudflare is a tough nut to crack. They're silently embedded in a huge portion of modern websites, and the average user will never even know about them. But it seems to be way too easy for them to blanket-ban or serve an absurd amount of captchas to powerusers, linux gurus, privacy geeks, or anyone with the wrong combination of browser+addons. And the failures (as…

Yeah, you can't really talk about downsides of Recaptcha/Cloudflare without also acknowledging the extreme amount of malicious actors and abuse on the internet. We're in a "this is why we can't have nice things" predicament and you have malicious actors to thank for that, yet most people on HN only seem capable of attacking the few affordable solutions to that problem. I'm even down with the theory that Cloudflare is…

For caching: Learn how to code. If your web page dies when there are only two visitors, then that's on you.

DDoS attack: If possible, the easiest solution is to just swallow the traffic. If that doesn't work you want to block all networks that allows IP spoofing. Then it's a wack-a-mole game. And if you have the resources, use any-cast and many co-locations. Or ask your ISP for help.

Hiding your server: Use onion address via TOR network.

SSL certificate: Use Letsencrypt

Edge SSL/DNS/CDN: Use a fast web server or proxy, like Nginx. With Cloudflare the connection to the Edge server might be faster, but time to first byte (on your site) often slower. So you get better bang for the buck by optimizing on your end.

Note that DNS by itself already have edge caching out of the box, for free! eg. if a user looks up your domain, it will be cached both at their ISP and LAN. So you don't need Cloudflare for DNS.

Re: Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me

#180

Post by big_chungus »

ReCaptcha is a necessary evil, but there's something that needs to change: the internet-wide rate limit. If I try to scrape a site and start getting captchas, when I go back and try to browse a completely different site, I'm suddenly trying to drag the points to outline a plane for ten minutes. Keep track of reputation on a site-specific basis.
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