Earlier quoted context omitted.
The geographical blocks are not enforced by Cloudflare as a blanket ban, but are chosen by each account owner (it's a setting you configure). I've worked with a few companies that saw this as a very valuable service (like small domestic companies blocking international traffic, especially from Russia and China, because we had no presence there anyway and that cut down bot traffic by like 95%). Likewise, TOR access is…
I am convinced that while harder, there are more intelligent ways to block these DDoS attacks other than blocking entire geographies. I often travel between Africa and US, and there are things like buying furniture (home depot blanket blocks non US customers, but they would simply allow shipping only to US addresses), buying cars (there are large car sites that don't allow browsing from outside US, even if you've alr…
It's not usually a benefit to a business if a customer pays upfront.
Whether my customer pays by debit or credit, I get all of that money upfront before I let the transaction proceed.
Some businesses, like car dealers, actually make more money if the customer buys using debt, because they get incentivized by the loan company.
And lastly, the sheer scale of the US economy means that it's really not worth the hassle. All of Africa would be equal to one of the larger states (Wikipedia says $3T, Texas is 2.1T and Cali is 3.5T).
So it's vastly simpler, cheaper, and easier to deal with say 30m Texans or 40m Californians than literally 1.3 billion people in Africa or India, and you get roughly the same total addressable market and a fraction of the bots & scams.
Hence why many sites simply block non-North American traffic.
I wish we lived in a world that was more fair and open, but a couple of bad actors can really ruin things for everyone.