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Comment by dylan604

2 hours ago

I'm not defending Cloudflare, but what is a better solution? If small websites can just be DDOS'd out of existence because some group thinks it'll be funny, what protections do they have? It takes too much equipment and know-how to stop an attack for people to be able to survive online. The next thing you'll hear about is a monthly service fee to the hackers as a protection racket just like the mob.

The better solution to blocking entire continents is probably doing nothing.

For DDoS resistance... Well I can imagine a world where a tech in the same area as IPFS or freenet gives backup access to websites that are overloaded.

  • Would IPFS need to be a part of the browser? Or is there an easy to use browser out there that runs on IPFS? If you need the average user to go find proxys, it won't work.

  • > For DDoS resistance... Well I can imagine a world where a tech in the same area as IPFS or freenet gives backup access to websites that are overloaded.

    As a small website owner, I can use Cloudflare or I can wait for this imagined tech.

The site's also blocked for me, also on a normal residential IP. Making your site inaccessible for people out of fear that somebody might make it inaccessible for people feels reminiscent of blockading the strait because you don't want the strait blockaded.

  • > feels reminiscent of blockading the strait because you don't want the strait blockaded

    I think this is a poor analogy, unnecessarily politicizing the topic.

    It might be a good analogy the other way around, if hackers DDOSed the website as revenge for partial IP-based blocking, in order to apply pressure to the website operator to remove IP-based blocking. But that wasn't the topic.

  • The internet is killing itself.

    And no I do not blame small website owners they just have to live with this mess same as everyone else.

How many small websites served by Cloudflare risk being DDOS'd? How many small website owners would incur serious loss of livelihood if they are DDOS'd for a few days? Is DDOS risk so important that the web needs a protection racket?

> If small websites can just be DDOS'd out of existence

DDOS doesn't destroy websites. It just makes them unreachable until the disgruntled person decides it's been running long enough.

Please stop exaggerating a very real problem only a few entities on the web have; what you are perpetuating is FUD, which enables companies like Cloudflare to kill the web.

> The next thing you'll hear about is a monthly service fee to the hackers as a protection racket

How do you not even see the irony of this?

  • > DDOS doesn't destroy websites. It just makes them unreachable until the disgruntled person decides it's been running long enough.

    You can be absolutely destroyed if your hosting provider later hits you as a Website Owner with an excess traffic bill.

  • > Please stop exaggerating a very real problem only a few entities on the web have; what you are perpetuating is FUD, which enables companies like Cloudflare to kill the web.

    I'm not exaggerating, I'm just playing what if. That's a game where you think of random things that could go wrong, and then deciding if it is worth the expense. Just because maybe you can't think of things of varying plausibility does not make me exaggerating. We already see ransomware working from the hacker's perspective. There's no reason to think that greed will not come into play. If I can think of it, there's no reason to think that hackers are not also considering various ways to expand on ransomware as a service

    >> The next thing you'll hear about is a monthly service fee to the hackers as a protection racket

    > How do you not even see the irony of this?

    How do you not? If every hacking group can come along and extort any site they choose to pay them a protection fee, there's no way websites will accept any of this. Compare that to paying a single legit service protecting against all of those hacking groups. Can't imagine why people would be willing to do that.

    • This is the same mindset that wants to make it illegal to sell kitchen knives with sharp tips.