Cloudflare, the internet's new single point of failure, seems very widely adopted around here. Apparently, 3,299 instances sit behind Cloudfed, 14.5% of fedi's 22,761 total instances.
The same people that think Google and Facebook are evil appear to forget how Google and Facebook got where they are, and they say "B-But it's free DDoS protection! 1.1.1.1 is free DNS upstream! They're just trying to give us nice things for free!", trying to justfiy their own part in enabling the next Google.
Remember: Cloudflare has IPO'd and valuation is about market capture: they will burn money until that 14.5% is 84.5% and then they start clamping down. This isn't some kind of theory, this isn't abstract, I didn't make this up. This *is* the strategy. It's not just the strategy, it's a legal obligation: once you have taken the VC money or you are a publicly traded company, you have a fiduciary duty to not misuse the shareholders' money. You take their money and you promise to do your damnedest to turn a profit, that's what stocks are. The hedge funds, pension funds, money market accounts that hold your stock, your board of directors, they can sue if you leave a dollar on the table, and your board will toss you out. You don't get blind-sided by this, either: if you're executing the strategy, you plan to see it through, and if you take that money, you are executing that strategy. It's already naive to put your trust in a third party, but it is completely retarded to trust a company that is publicly traded or that has taken a Series A.
Cloudfed has already hung at least three large instances out to dry, sinblr.com because FOSTA-SESTA passed, poa.st (just the media servers; API remains behind boat-clicker), and kiwifarms.cc because of a Twitter mob. Say what you will about those instances (I don't feel like anything of value was lost when KF went down), but it's a bad precedent and if it worked once, it will be used again, and you might not like the next target. If most of the web is dependent on a single service and that service is willing to censor just because some lunatics on Twitter got mad, then we are all fucked. Amazon decides not to host you and Cloudfed decides not to provide "free" MitM services and what do you think is going to happen? Using Cloudflare gives random shareholding entities and Twitter mobs veto power over what you do.
Here is a TSV of all the instances that live behind Cloudfed. 
cloudfed_instances.tsv
The same people that think Google and Facebook are evil appear to forget how Google and Facebook got where they are, and they say "B-But it's free DDoS protection! 1.1.1.1 is free DNS upstream! They're just trying to give us nice things for free!", trying to justfiy their own part in enabling the next Google.
Remember: Cloudflare has IPO'd and valuation is about market capture: they will burn money until that 14.5% is 84.5% and then they start clamping down. This isn't some kind of theory, this isn't abstract, I didn't make this up. This *is* the strategy. It's not just the strategy, it's a legal obligation: once you have taken the VC money or you are a publicly traded company, you have a fiduciary duty to not misuse the shareholders' money. You take their money and you promise to do your damnedest to turn a profit, that's what stocks are. The hedge funds, pension funds, money market accounts that hold your stock, your board of directors, they can sue if you leave a dollar on the table, and your board will toss you out. You don't get blind-sided by this, either: if you're executing the strategy, you plan to see it through, and if you take that money, you are executing that strategy. It's already naive to put your trust in a third party, but it is completely retarded to trust a company that is publicly traded or that has taken a Series A.
Cloudfed has already hung at least three large instances out to dry, sinblr.com because FOSTA-SESTA passed, poa.st (just the media servers; API remains behind boat-clicker), and kiwifarms.cc because of a Twitter mob. Say what you will about those instances (I don't feel like anything of value was lost when KF went down), but it's a bad precedent and if it worked once, it will be used again, and you might not like the next target. If most of the web is dependent on a single service and that service is willing to censor just because some lunatics on Twitter got mad, then we are all fucked. Amazon decides not to host you and Cloudfed decides not to provide "free" MitM services and what do you think is going to happen? Using Cloudflare gives random shareholding entities and Twitter mobs veto power over what you do.
Here is a TSV of all the instances that live behind Cloudfed. cloudfed_instances.tsv
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@p This is only going to get worse with Wildebeest. At that point, instances would be no different than using custom domains on Gmail. This is why we need an anti-clouflare culture on here. Anyone using it should be shamed and have their instance boycotted. There is zero justification to use something like Cloudflare. The internet worked fine without CDNs and MiTM proxies for years.
@xianc78
> This is only going to get worse with Wildebeest.
No one's using it. http://demo.fedilist.com/instance?software=wildebeest
63 instances, and that has barely budged since the first release. Only one of them (rob365.online) has more than a single-digit number of posts. People seem to try it out and abandon it.
> There is zero justification to use something like Cloudflare
Yes.
> This is only going to get worse with Wildebeest.
No one's using it. http://demo.fedilist.com/instance?software=wildebeest
63 instances, and that has barely budged since the first release. Only one of them (rob365.online) has more than a single-digit number of posts. People seem to try it out and abandon it.
> There is zero justification to use something like Cloudflare
Yes.
I've said many times before: There's nobody coming to save us. We can only save ourselves.