Live data from Hacker News

Cloudflare took down our website

robindev.substack.com

211–220 of 483 posts

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#211
post #108

From personal experience I know that 10TB per month is like 30k/year and SSL for SaaS is around 40k/year on the enterprise plan. No idea about pricing for having your own IP. I have no idea why Cloudflare would ask you to use these two features. SSL for SaaS is only useful if you want to add domains and certificates via API. I have had my fair share of negative experience with Cloudflare but this is next level bad. U…

> 10TB per month is like 30k/year

That can’t be right. I’ve hit 10+ TB within a few weeks on free tier and everything was fine

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#212
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

this is exactly what is happening. Cloudflare uses an anycast network, so IPs are shared by default. this customer is damaging Cloudflare IP reputation which hurts other customers. Cloudflare can either fire the customer to protect other customers using Cloudflare IPs, or force this customer to use their own IPs and damage/manage their own IP reputation. unfortunately this is expensive and OP is mad they can't do the…

> this is expensive and OP is mad they can't do their legally fraught gambling operation on Cloudflare's addresses for free

This is directly contradicted by the contents of the article, perhaps you should re-read it.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>I think the call is for companies to be less psychopathic and stop onboarding people within 90 days of mass layoffs.

Was there any indication that the "mass layoffs" were planned 90 days in advance?

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#214
post #128
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.

Didn’t they also deplatform stormfront and a few others they didn’t like?

Yes but then people argued it's about these websites being bad. Turns out it's just about money, considering Cloudflare has no problem with CP or other website calling for violence and celebrating it.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#215
post #108

From personal experience I know that 10TB per month is like 30k/year and SSL for SaaS is around 40k/year on the enterprise plan. No idea about pricing for having your own IP. I have no idea why Cloudflare would ask you to use these two features. SSL for SaaS is only useful if you want to add domains and certificates via API. I have had my fair share of negative experience with Cloudflare but this is next level bad. U…

> From personal experience I know that 10TB per month is like 30k/year Is this true? We are at 3TB and growing so I'm slightly concerned

It's not even 100Mbps sustained. That is nowhere near 30k/year or you're getting ripped off.

For 3k/month you can get a good quality 10Gbps link. That's 3.2PB with a P.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reasonable scenario to me seems to be: An automatic "upgrade to the enterprise plan" requirement was triggered, and then in the process of the sales calls to make that happen, Cloudflare got serious eyes on the customer for the first time (whereas at a paltry $250/month previously they wouldn't have), and realized exactly what line of business the customer was involved in, and decided to fire them.

I was rushing to judgment until I heard this... pretty plausible. In support of your theory particular is I don't think enterprise sales "ragequits" a conversation when the customer is mid-evaluation based simply on the idea that they are considering multiple options. Why would they walk away at this point, let alone ban the customer. From the write-up I bet CloudFlare had it as a "60% to close" in their CRM at this…

> In support of your theory particular is I don't think enterprise sales "ragequits" a conversation when the customer is mid-evaluation based simply on the idea that they are considering multiple options.

> Why would they walk away at this point, let alone ban the customer.

It wasn't just that they were considering multiple options. Looking at the timeline, this was about a month after their initial soft gloves approach/enforcement action and they drug their feet the entire way through it.

Once CF got to the top of the leadership chain at their company and it was clear that all the relevant decision makers were involved in the conversation but were unwilling to pay, they just folded their cards, resumed the initial enforcement action, and moved on with their day.

If this was a small account they probably wouldn't have even blinked twice with just striking down the user for causing reputation harm and violating TOS but since they were a large account CF clearly went out of their way to meet with them multiple times and try to find a solution. But after a month of little to no progress while the account continues causing reputational harm and is unwilling to budge, they just called it quits and moved on.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#217

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.

That's one of the main reasons I'm leary about them. Such a big f-up is difficult to forget. It shows that they have a move fast and break things culture which for a company that is responsible for critical infrastructure feels wrong.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#218
post #71
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking a step back, why would they even care if their platform is supposedly neutral and not responsible for the content ? If they can indeed stop providing services to a casino, why cannot they shutdown a website spreading pro-war propaganda, or a website selling illegal services ? It means they are making editorial choices, instead of just being the technological provider and being a neutral "internet pipe". Not su…

> Not sure it's really in their best interest to self-police in the end, as they could lose their DMCA safe harbor provision ? This. That said, we're seeing this across so many platforms, from datacenters to social network sites. They blew their safe harbor provisions years ago and yet remain untouched despite this.

It’s not “editorial” to choose to stop serving (or charge more money to) a customer whose actions pose legal difficulties or risks to your business. If some country’s vice division contacts cloudflare legal due to a customer’s illegal online gambling presence, I guarantee that cop does not care about a US/EU copyright law.

The same thing is true for IP reputation, just without an external official complaining. If other CF customers are negatively impacted by one customer’s action, CF isn’t violating safe harbor by booting that customer or passing on the costs of mitigating that impact. That’s just running a business, not exercising editorial review of hosted content in violation of safe harbor provisions.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#219
post #189

Can any1 explain how HN algo works that this post, which at time of writing has 355p, 180comments while being posted 1 hour ago, isn't even on first page (ranked 31)???

Yeah I commented, refreshed and was shocked to see it disappear. It's ironic that we're (reasonably) asking for transparency about a post which is kind of about non-transparency.

It could have flags on it or maybe the flamewar detector got tripped.

Moderator action seems unlikely because it’s still on the second page.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#220
post #189

Can any1 explain how HN algo works that this post, which at time of writing has 355p, 180comments while being posted 1 hour ago, isn't even on first page (ranked 31)???

Flags below the [flagged] threshold are invisible but still act to downweight the post.

I've noticed that cloudflare complaint threads get flagged with surprising and unwarranted regularity.
Post reply on HN