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Cloudflare took down our website

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Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#181

Post by bluelightning2k »

At the moment the account got banned, I would guess that the CloudFlare sales team had this down as a "60% likely to close, estimated close in 6 weeks".

There is just no reason they would suspect that they were going to lose the deal to Fastly at this moment. They were very much the default winner.

Extortion or not, I just can't fathom that they ragequit the deal at this moment, because they were about to win it.

It therefore seems likely that after looking into it they disqualified it as a business category which is against their TOS or whatever.

Or that the enforcement and sales teams have very similar, overlapping triggers for engagement, etc.

Cloudflare's behaviour here was shitty and this is not the only report. By all means their reputation is very generous free tier and a horrible experience in paying.

BUT seriously who ragequits a winning deal? Another comment summed this up - the attention caused them to take a look and realize they don't support shady-ish casinos, possibly (seeming to) evade US legislation, etc.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#182

Post by luuurker »

ecjhdnc2025 wrote: post #122

I will remind HNers: is Cloudflare not the company that leaked sensitive data through cache files that were indexed by at least Google, and when the tech community were up in arms about the massive leakage of sensitive data, the CEO’s strategy was to turn up here and criticise Google for not deindexing quickly enough? You get what you pay for.

I remember them criticising Google for not being faster at removing cached files. I don't remember them blaming Google for their screw up.

And let's be honest, if a big provider wants to offer cached versions of pages, they probably should have a way to purge those files in case there's a problem (eg: malware).

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#183

Post by KingOfCoders »

J_tt wrote: post #99
getlawgdon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. My take is the casino structured its business to comply, not to evade interest. Further, I don't see how Cloudflare benefits by taking on the risk to charge more to help a customer avoid scrutiny. More like: they know it's a humming business and want a piece.

The way I read the screenshots of the emails from the articles seemed to suggest that something the authors company was doing was causing issues with IP reputation on CloudFlares range. Them very aggressively highlighting the BYO IP feature and then even suggesting third parties to rent IPs from strikes me as a significant detour from their normal “script” (having dealt with their AU sales team before).

CF calls and says there is a problem with traffic. They want to push an enterprise plan. Customer says no.

CF calls and says there is a problem with domains. They want to push an enterprise plan. Customer wants to solve problem, dropping domains, making changes. CF says, only enterprise plan will remedy the situation.

There is obviously a sales script involved.

“get back to Trust & Safety"

Heard that story several times, it's always another team, e.g. "Licensing" that need to be satisfied, or that if you don't pay up, that team will be off the leash. Also heard the pay-for-a-year-upfront for several large vendors who pull this. The reason is, some sales reps need to make numbers, so they shake the tree and see who falls down:

"Cloudflare has absolutely no information on when they will force you into custom billing, but when they start "urgently" needing to talk to you you're probably not going to get out until you have a juicy custom contract with them."

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#184

Post by hawthornio »

byyll wrote: post #98

After they deplatformed KiwiFarms, I thought that's an isolated case but turns out they are just unprofessional. I can't have pity for a casino service anyways.

> a web forum that facilitates the discussion and harassment of online figures and communities. Their targets are often subject to organized group trolling and stalking, as well as doxxing and real-life harassment.These actions have tied Kiwi Farms to the suicides of three people targeted by members of the forum.

Sounds like a pretty abhorrent website

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#185

Post by develatio »

yxhuvud wrote: post #179
Vvector wrote: post #169

Why is HN demoting this article? It was at the top of HN, then quickly buried to #20-#30. It is now at #27, being a hour old with 318 points.

It is actually more likely it is the opposite, that it got temporarily boosted to get exposure, and then fell back as interest vaned. If mods want it gone, then it will be gone.

175 comments and +350 points in 1 hour is anything but "vanished interest" imho.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#186

Post by greyface- »

cookiengineer wrote: post #180
jrochkind1 wrote: post #77

I have been hearing stories from developers/entrepeneurs about Cloudflare being very weird to deal with: "We'd like to talk to you about an enterprise plan." "No thanks, I'm fine with the free plan." "Based on your traffic, we'd like to talk to you about an enteprrise plan." "Is there a traffic limit on the free plan?" "No, there is no limit. But based on your traffic, we require you to get an enteprirse plan." [Give…

You forget to mention that the DDoS traffic causing these issues are also behind cloudflare, but they don't give a damn about them, for obvious business reasons. Cloudflare controls supply and demand, which, by definition of the law, should be classified as extortion.

> should be classified as extortion.

It meets the definition of a RICO "enterprise". The question is, will anyone bring it up for judicial review?

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#187

Post by gruez »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #143
gruez wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like most things in the legal system, it depends on intent. It's pretty obvious that twitter's rebrand to x.com was an actual rebrand and not some way of evading domain bans.

The author claims a reasonable intent and they give a traffic number that proves they're not doing "domain rotation".

>The author claims a reasonable intent

Right, I'm not arguing that they're guilty, just that the legal system doesn't operate off pure black and white rules like "if you have two seemingly unrelated domains then you're trying to evade bans".

>and they give a traffic number that proves they're not doing "domain rotation".

Are you talking about the part where they said "95% of our traffic through the main domain"? Without additional context behind that number it's a stretch to claim that "proves" they're not trying to evade bans. For instance if their country is banned in country A, but country A is a small country that only makes up 3% of their overall traffic, they can confidently claim "95% of our traffic through the main domain" while still theoretically using alternate domains for ban evasion purposes.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#188

Post by Vvector »

yxhuvud wrote: post #179
Vvector wrote: post #169

Why is HN demoting this article? It was at the top of HN, then quickly buried to #20-#30. It is now at #27, being a hour old with 318 points.

It is actually more likely it is the opposite, that it got temporarily boosted to get exposure, and then fell back as interest vaned. If mods want it gone, then it will be gone.

In the last 10 minutes, it got 35 more upvotes, but dropped from 27 to 30.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#190

Post by busterarm »

CydeWeys wrote: post #28
softwaredoug wrote: post #7

Cloudflare was the company that went viral for the firing of an account rep not hitting her goals. I wonder if it’s overall indicative of not a great culture in terms of relationships with enterprise customers. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7LuwPdp-_4c

> Cloudflare was the company that went viral for the firing of an account rep not hitting her goals. How is that something worth going viral over? Salespeople get fired all the time for not meeting their sales goals. Engineers similarly get fired all the time for not meeting their productivity goals. If you don't do your job well, don't expect to keep it. And if I recall correctly, in this particular case, she was a…

While I agree with you, I think the call is for companies to be less psychopathic and stop onboarding people within 90 days of mass layoffs.

Especially in a world where people pick up their whole lives and relocate for jobs. Recent joiners aren't getting any sustainable kind of severance either. The idea is if you're hiring them you have a minimum commitment to support their success.

Yes she was an obvious fire, but it's also the organization's fault. Enterprise deals also take way longer to close than that...

All that said, salespeople can and do move jobs a lot. I'm sure she'll be fine.

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