Comment by bastawhiz
4 years ago
One thing I wish CF would address is their hand-waving about what "security services" actually means. Based on the original post from Wednesday, this seems to include caching services (though it is only mentioned once in the post). Despite saying they're not the host, providing caching services is effectively hosting. Consider, for instance, the "always online" feature, which literally makes sure your site stays online even when your hosting is down.
Yes, caching is also (in some ways) a security service, in that "security" can mean protection from resource utilization attacks. But that very feature also necessarily makes the cache the source for the content in the overwhelming majority of cases.
It doesn't irk me that Cloudflare provides security services to kiwifarms. I don't think, for instance, McAfee should withhold virus protection from 8chan, or clinics withholding vaccines from people they're ideologically opposed to. But it does irk me that they essentially provide hosting but wiggle out of the repercussions of providing hosting through some corporate doublespeak. It's one thing to have morals, but it's another thing to use loopholes in your own morals to (try to) avoid the consequences of those morals.
They're type of caching is definitely hosting, to the point that I would argue that it's not (just) caching.
They're providing the HTTP servers that serve the client requests.
IMO they're both hosts that work together. Want to prove that the downstream server is the real host and isn't just part of the hosting? Okay, point the DNS directly to the downstream server.