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Cloudflare took down our website

robindev.substack.com

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Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#21

Post by chadsix »

This is a really important lesson here. Don't put your eggs in one basket, and if network delivery/etc. is core to your revenues and livelihood, don't trust a random third party host to look out for you.

10TB/80TB at 120k/yr, either way, Cloudflare is taking you for a ride.

If you aren't self hosting, you're really doing it wrong.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#22

Post by nolongerthere »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #3

> When we told them we were also in talks with Fastly, they suddenly "purged" all our domains Holy shit.

What’s especially shocking is how closely coupled sales and engineering are. Like I get they talk, but for a sales call to end in engineering pulling the plug…

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#23

Post by foolswisdom »

candiddevmike wrote: post #5

Sounds like OP is a casino and plays domain games to avoid regulatory interest. Recommend reading article carefully before reacting to the headline. Hopefully Cloudflare provides a perspective.

So the thing that stands out in the article, is that cloudflare's initial communications (and the final communications, when they moved to ban) implied issues with their behavior (trust and safety team, terms of service violations), but in between it sounds like the didn't talk about ToS at all, just sales team asking them to buy enterprise. Though it's possible OP is omitting some explanation given by as why enterprise plan would alleviate ToS issues.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#24

Post by brigadier132 »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #14
brigadier132 wrote: post #8

has this happened to any businesses that were not questionably legal?

There are links in the article, for example: "Small SaaS banned by Cloudflare after 4 years of being paying customer" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34639212 Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31336515

Thanks, I was genuinely curious

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#25

Post by ajross »

jmvoodoo wrote: post #10
candiddevmike wrote: post #5

Sounds like OP is a casino and plays domain games to avoid regulatory interest. Recommend reading article carefully before reacting to the headline. Hopefully Cloudflare provides a perspective.

But for $10k a month cloudflare is ok with that? Either it's acceptable or it's not, there is no way that this looks good for cloudflare either way.

The point is more that the author is an unreliable narrator and you need to apply a little salt to the rest of the story. Cloudflare absolutely shouldn't be taking bribes to permit regulatory evasion. But if they are, I want more evidence than a substack post.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#27

Post by thinkingkong »

Im reading between the lines here but it seems like the traffic amount, the saas subscription tier, and the actions required to remidiate some issue were all unaligned.

1. Its quite possible thar CF having this site on some multi-tenant infrastructure could be threatening. Not unreasonable at least to ask them to have their own IP block.

2. If thats the issue then a clear explanation should have been provided. Routing to sales is inexcusable. Someone isnt being transparent.

3. If it’s a pure cost / revenue issue then say that, set a deadline and negotiate. This is bad karma and even though CF is clearly the market leader, what they do isnt rocket surgery. Not worth it.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#28

Post by CydeWeys »

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 green employee who hadn't even made a single sale yet! What more obvious of a layoff target is there than that? Would you keep a green unproven salesperson over a proven veteran salesperson who's landed 9 figures in sales?

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#29

Post by scrollaway »

candiddevmike wrote: post #5

Sounds like OP is a casino and plays domain games to avoid regulatory interest. Recommend reading article carefully before reacting to the headline. Hopefully Cloudflare provides a perspective.

Yeah, there's some pretty key info being left out. I don't doubt that Cloudflare communication sucks especially when dealing with their sales team (aka bizdev which is what OP was originally contacted by), but the second screenshot is pretty damning.

My guess: Their account fell out of the non-enterprise TOS for some reason which is being obscured in the post (probably domain rotation related). Their T&S team proposed moving to enterprise for a custom resolution. OP's company refused, their account was purged because they had gotten several warnings about it.

I'm sure this sounds frustrating to the average HN dev who runs a legitimate startup with cloudflare on top and is now biting their nails worried to death about what will happen to them. But "online casino" immediately raised a million alarm bells in the post.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#30

Post by lightedman »

candiddevmike wrote: post #5

Sounds like OP is a casino and plays domain games to avoid regulatory interest. Recommend reading article carefully before reacting to the headline. Hopefully Cloudflare provides a perspective.

"Now this needs a bit of context on what they are talking about. We do have multiple domains that mostly act as mirrors to our main domain. We have these for a few reasons. One is that since we are a casino, we have different regulatory requirements we need to comply with in many countries. For example, many games are only available in some countries. Some countries we block completely. Then we have a few different domains that remove certain game groups or site features - for example our social features (chat, user tipping / interaction) or our sportsbook. Another is that we use them to target different global user groups and affiliates and track conversions long-term. This also means that if a country DNS-blocks our main domain, a secondary domain may still be available. This could arguably be seen as a violation of the Cloudflare TOS, as they wrote above."

Looks like they COMPLY with regulatory interest, to me.

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