Have you considered alternatives to Cloudflare?

2 months ago by xianjam to c/meta

Hi there, I wouldn't be making this post if I saw another one about it, but...

I both dislike centralization and nonfree Javascript. I believe the spirit of Lemmy embraces both ideals, however, Cloudflare both promotes a centralized internet that requires the execution of nonfree scripts to interact with it. I understand that bots (epsecially LLM powered) are a pervasive issue that plagues this (and many other) communities. I also understand that being logged-in prevents the requirement of using Cloudflare's captcha, so that only a one-time login is required, although I'm constantly blocking requests to cloudflareinsignts.com.

Finally, I understand that I the alternatives are not necessarily effective, although it seems to work for many projects. I'm not saying other solutions are better for short or medium term, but I was wondering if the management were planning on eventually replacing it.

onlinepersona 8 points 2 months ago

There are European alternatives. And also Anubis. I'm not sure how effective Anubis is but I do see it in many places.

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lysdexic 3 points 2 months ago

What problem would be solved by this hypothetical migration?

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Feyter 13 points 2 months ago

I trink this is rooted in forward thinking. If cloud flare gets a monopoly in that position (what it arguably already has), they can project all the power of a monopoly about us...

So this is more about preventing future problems and not solving problems that exist.

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lysdexic -4 points 2 months ago

So this is more about preventing future problems and not solving problems that exist.

The question remains unanswered: which problems, hypothetically or otherwise, would this migration solve?

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Valmond 5 points 2 months ago

Cloudflare projecting its dominating power onto lemmy?

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lysdexic -2 points 2 months ago

Cloudflare projecting its dominating power onto lemmy?

I'm sorry, this assertion is meaningless scaremongering. What exactly is "projecting it's dominating power" supposed to mean?

And by the way, may I point out that site maintainers purposely adopted Cloudflare to serve specific purposes?

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refalo 2 points 2 months ago

Personally I cannot visit most crimeflare sites because it just gives me an infinite captcha loop... so moving away from them seems like that would solve that issue.

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Deebster 4 points 2 months ago

Personally, my local Cloudflare seems to have some problem with IPv6 and some sites won't load. On my desktop I've set Firefox to use IPv4 for such sites, but on my phone I need to use mobile data (which doesn't support IPv6). I don't think it's a common problem, but you did ask.

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lysdexic 2 points 2 months ago

Personally, my local Cloudflare seems to have some problem with IPv6 and many sites won’t load.

Some global ISPs still struggle with IPv6. I recall that until somewhat recently Vodafone didn't supported it at all. Are you sure this is a Cloudflare issue?

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Deebster 1 point 2 months ago

Cloudflare gives its 522 error, but I can load via IPv6 from the same city. I've also found the issue with Cf in front of servers I run on a different continent, so I've been able to do some good testing and have spent plenty of time looking into it. I haven't found any other Cloudflare locations with the problem, but there's plenty of them.

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lysdexic 1 point 2 months ago

Cloudflare gives its 522 error

This means Cloudflare is forwarding the request but the origin server times out. Meaning, it's the origin server that is unable to handle the IPv6 request.

https://developers.cloudflare.com/...

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blamster19 4 points 2 months ago

I use Firefox Focus on my mobile and I can't enter sites with CloudFlare because it says my browser is incompatible. It gets annoying when I ramp up my privacy on the Internet and sites outright refuse to load if they see I don't allow cookies and trackers. I'd rather see broken js-free website than pitch black CloudFlare page.

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lysdexic 4 points 2 months ago

I use Firefox Focus on my mobile and I can’t enter sites with CloudFlare because it says my browser is incompatible.

I also use Firefox Focus and I never experienced that issue at all. Are you sure this is a Cloudflare issue?

Also, site owners are purposely using Cloudflare to protect themselves from abnormal traffic. If site owners are the ones paying Cloudflare to lift these barriers, why do you interpret this issue as a problem created by Cloudflare?

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lysdexic 2 points 2 months ago

Are you sure this is a Cloudflare issue?

For shits and giggles I logged into programming.dev with Firefox Focus, and suffice to say I'm posting this with that browser.

I also did some tweaking and I did noticed that it I configure Firefox Focus to strip all types of tracking (akin to NoScript) then Cloudflare complains about extensions.

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blamster19 1 point 2 months ago

Exactly that, Cloudflare complains about extensions. It's a matter of aggressive tracking protection. I can view Anubis protected sites just fine, only the Cloudflare ones prevent access.

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arsCynic 2 points 2 months ago

Have you tried Chrome Mask?

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