Comment by ThePhysicist
7 years ago
I don't know how Cloudflare can on one hand fight for net neutrality [1] and on the other hand play such an active role in creating a "two-class" Internet. I understand that spamming and DoS attacks are a real problem and that they provide a solution for this e.g. using CAPTCHAs, I just think their approach will lead to a world where your IP address (and thus often your country) decides more and more how easy or hard it is to browse large parts of the Internet. Not sure how to solve this in a better way but I really don't like what they're doing here considering their recent VPN/DNS efforts, which (IMHO) seem to be part of a long-term strategy to create a "fast-track" Cloudflare-powered Internet (for those who can afford it).
I see your point but 10% of the world's http traffic flows through Cloudflare, it is in their interest to provide a better web experience for their customers (enterprises and end-users alike).
For instance, for my mom, if instead of being subject to endless captchas due to privacy.resistFingerprinting [0], it might be okay to use Cloudflare's VPN/extension (esp since they promise to respect privacy), be able to resist fingerprinting, and not be subject to captchas. I see this as a better of two evils, since captchas aren't going away if you resist fingerprinting or use Tor, at least not anytime soon.
I'd like to think of this as OpenID-- even though it is bad privacy-wise (and single-point-of-failure security-wise), it was widely used for benefits to both the user and the service.
For me, though, the endless captchas are a price I'm willing to pay. YMMV.
[0] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Privacy/Privacy_Task_Force/firefox_...
Net neutrality is the principle that _Internet service providers_ should treat all Internet communications equally. Cloudfare is not an ISP.
Web service like Hacker News don't have any obligation to provide everyone equal access to their site. Cloudfare works for the web services. As a web service provider, you don't have, nor should you have, any obligation to provide equal access to anyone.
I understand the difference between an ISP privileging network packets based on service and a CDN / content provider privileging / filtering traffic for their customers, however the result for the end user is very similar. Also, Cloudflare is much bigger than most ISPs and already serves a sizeable portion of the Internet traffic, so I don’t think they should get a free pass regarding this issue just because formally they’re not an ISP.
> Hacker News don't have any obligation to provide everyone equal access to their site.
i disagree. Net neutrality to me also means that a site like HN should serve all customers coming to the site the same, and not discriminate against TOR users or VPN users, or users from a certain IP range, or users with different/non-standard user-agent headers.
> Net neutrality to me also means that
I don't see how individual inserting his own meaning to well defined terms adds anything positive to the.
If you encounter term you don't understand, you look it up and don't try to make up your own definition. There is no disagreement of what the term means in a way you insist.
That is definitely not what "Net neutrality" means. It might be an admirable goal, but it needs a different name.
If only that. They're also forcing the hands of people that try to protect themselves from pervasive tracking online.