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Comment by jasonvorhe | Hacker News Reader

I don't know what kind of internet you used but mine didn't randomly decide to block my access to a website because some quasi monopolist decided I wasn't allowed to use a certain website for intransparent reasons.

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Being blocked from a web site and having to hit a little box are two different things. Are you talking about the former or the latter? If it's the former ... that has literally never happened to me unless I'm on a VPN and even then it's rarely (if ever) CF that's doing the blocking.

If it's the latter then it reflects the sad truth that we can't have nice things anymoret. I have lots of problems with the accessibility of that box, but either Cloudflare would be implementing it, somebody else would be implementing it, or a huge chunk of data would be unavailable to you anyway because of accidental DDoS attacks caused by irresponsibly deployed bots.

> Being blocked from a web site and having to hit a little box are two different things.

Maybe for you.

But I don't let random unvetted websites run code on my computer. Checking that box requires it.

So you're blocking yourself? Seems really disingenuous to imply it's someone's fault when you know it's your own.

Why do you keep hitting yourself? Hahah

--childhood bullies

Due to implementation chosen by Cloudflare, allowing Cloudflare also allows the proxied website to run code, because Cloudflare blends with it, but why the proxied website should be trusted if the challenge is served by Cloudflare?

> So you're blocking yourself?

That's like saying that you're blocking yourself when installing an adblocker.

No, it's for safety and hygiene.

> Seems really disingenuous to imply it's someone's fault

That's because it is. I didn't make the web and I don't work on websites. But I have to deal with it because some fucking dumbasses decided they wanted to save some server cycles by offloading all the hard work onto the client and ruining internet safety in the process, while also offloading the cost of power and performance onto users.

So if disabling javascript is what's needed to keep my safety? So be it. If it breaks some asshats' websites, then they're websites I don't want to use anyway.

May I ask what the risk is with letting websites run JS on your computer?

The constant flow of js vulnerabilities in browsers. Also misbehaving scripts.

This has happened for me on regular residential Internet access.

(Check the box, and get redirected to check the box again.)

I hit this too, maybe on the order of one day every month or two?

I'm using a fairly mainstream ISP in a fairly mainstream country.

I don't get why I seem to have such a hard time. I've kept the same IP for months.

But the worst thing overall is that it just doesn't acknowledge it.

Want to block me? OK. But tell me that! Don't just make me tick a box again and again and untick it. It's infuriating.

Infinity captchas are the most toxic thing ever. I have trouble completing many of the challenges.

> never happened to me

"Never happens to me means never happens to anyone"

Also it's quite amusing what if you had got hit with an infinite captcha here then you couldn't post your comment.

> "Never happens to me means never happens to anyone"

I see your point.

> Also it's quite amusing what if you had got hit with an infinite captcha here then you couldn't post your comment.

And you couldn't have hit me with that sick burn ;)

Seriously though I see where you're coming from in that I was implying that there must be something wrong with the original person's set-up that causes this, and that is not the case.

The thing is that while there's plenty of complaining about CF's approach nobody is offering a better alternative.

The thing is what CF essentially became a monopolist and if for whatever reason you are on the CF's naughty list you are essentially blocked from a lot of resources even if the resource itself pretty fine with you. And yes, there are no alternatives because guess who isvthe first one both in Google's top search and word of mouth?

I can’t book a table at a local restaurant without calling because their resy link is behind Cloudflare and Cloudflare has decided that my up-to-date Firefox is out of date and therefore can’t pass the challenge. In reality it’s more likely that one of my ad blockers is stopping it from doing what it wants. It doesn’t even let me hit the box.

I might whitelist Cloudflare, but it pretends to be not Cloudflare, because it's MITM by design.

It was implied that the "let's check you're human" didn't do a good job at that, causing the block - without a VPN. Meanwhile, certain bots just circumvent it (there's even a couple of videos showing robot arms/fingers prove their humaness) while legit users, even coming from Tor, get blocked. That's the internet I used to know. (I am not in the "everything was better" camp though.)

That’s the website owner deciding to do that, Cloudflare just gives them the tools to do so.

Sure, the restaurant down the street chose to protect themselves against the likely risk of their competitor running DDoS against their website instead of their website agency getting a kickback out of a cloudflare partnership.

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