Comment by jiveturkey

hang on, you're reading some kind of cloudflare advocacy in my post. apologies if i implied that. i don't like to come off as a crank is all. IMO cloudflare is an evil that needs to be defeated. i'm just explaining how their business model "works" and why massive economy of scale matters, to support the GP poster.

i don't even think they are evil because of the concentration of power, that's just a problematic issue. the evil part is they convince themselves they aren't the bad guys. that they are saving us from ourselves. that the things they do are net positives, or even absolute positives. like the whole "let's defend the internet from AI crawlers" position they appointed themselves sheriff on, that i think you're referencing. it's an extremely dangerous position we've allowed them to occupy.

> they monetize it

yes, and they can't do this without the scale.

> scale saves money

any company, uber for example, can design their infra to not rely on a sole provider. but why? their customers aren't going to leave in droves when a pretty reliable provider has the occasional hiccup. so it's not worth the cost, so why shouldn't they externalize it? uber isn't in business to make the internet a better place. so yes, scale does save money. you're arguing something at a higher principle than how architectural decisions are made.

i'm not defending economy of scale as a necessary evil. i'm just backing up that it's how cloudflare is built, and that it is in fact useful to customers.