Comment by johnklos | Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnklos | Hacker News Reader

I think people are Cloudflare fans simply because so many other services suck more.

I gave Cloudflare a fair shake. But after hearing their lies way too many times, I'm calling them out for being deceptive and unscrupulous.

After being told that sites pretending to host Adobe Flash updaters and pretending to be Bank of America can't be taken down by Cloudflare because of their rights to free speech, I knew their attempts to pretend to be one of us, attempts to pretend to care, were nothing but bullshit.

They claim they don't host. If hosting DNS is not hosting, then what do you call DNS hosting? You literally CANNOT use their abuse web form to report domains which use Cloudflare just for hosting DNS. They do not handle abuse sent to their abuse email address (they simply send a form response saying to spend ten minutes filling out their crappy form that has all sorts of problems).

Of course, their web proxy services are also "not hosting", even though they're protecting all sorts of scammers.

So why should we think they're not bullshitting us when they run 1.1.1.1 and tell us they're not logging? Why should we trust them more than our ISPs by running DoH through them?

They WANT us to be dependent on them, because the more control they have, the more money they can make. It's dangerous, and they've shown they have no honor.

I've genuinely tried to correspond with them on Twitter, and they excel at not answering the question asked but instead just diverting. It's scummy, unprofessional behavior and I encourage everyone to consider whether they deserve anyone's data or business.

> They WANT us to be dependent on them

I think this is an important point about CloudFlare that can't be made often enough. It's been some years since I first noticed, and it seems as true today as it was then: wedging themselves into core Internet services and data flows seems to be an intentional part of CloudFlare's strategy.

There is no case given the architecture of the Internet where one company need be exposed to so many traffic flows from millions of people. The search engines got there first and we eventually stopped complaining, but this does not make it any more justifiable to copy the model.

What reason would a company have for desiring this outcome? We know Google can detect and predict flu outbreaks. Imagine what is possible when you have every click on every target web site.

There is a fair chance their data is already approaching the comprehensiveness of Google, and I'd be surprised, if not disappointed to learn they were not already working on unannounced (now or eternally) internal intelligence products based on that data. There are simply too many pockets who would be willing to pay for it.

For me, the biggest disappointment was when they were defending hosting terrorist site for "free speech" reasons:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90312063/how-cloudflare-straddle...

https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-and-free-speech/

> the company serves at least seven groups on the U.S. State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, including al-Shabab, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), al-Quds Brigades, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and Hamas.

> CEP has sent letters to Cloudflare since February 13, 2017, warning about clients on the service, including Hamas, the Taliban, the PFLP, and the Nordic Resistance Movement. The latest letter, from February 15, 2019, warns of what CEP identified as three pro-ISIS propaganda websites.

All this while routinely censoring other sites. Their actions are very different than their words.

From the article:

“ This question assumes the answer. A website is speech. It is not a bomb. There is no imminent danger it creates and no provider has an affirmative obligation to monitor and make determinations about the theoretically harmful nature of speech a site may contain.”

Are DDOS-for-hire sites "speech"?

Their only use is to suppress speech.

Well that would depend on what the target of the DDOS is wouldn’t it? Either way the point being we want companies out of politics. They have no business in them.

I thought 'we' were for 'Net Neutrality'?

Remember, carriers and service providers not allowed to decided what to do based on content?

Yeah, Cloudflare shouldn't be censoring anyone. I could understand if it were requested by law enforcement but why would we want them trying to police the web?

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Seeking problems is another way to write it.

refusing to provide your services to someone is not censoring them. did they black hole their dns entries in 1.1.1.1? did they steal their domain name? no. companies fire customers all of the time.

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