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Has avoiding Cloudflare become Impossible?
(links.hackliberty.org)
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this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
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Privacy
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The service they provide to websites is "better user experience" by acting as a cdn close to the user they get better download speeds and responsiveness. It also is a benefit for the business because they don't have to worry nearly as much about deploying and maintaining multiple servers around the world.
That is why it's impossible to avoid these companies, every sane website engineer is going to want the services they offer.
And it's a service that is easiest to offer when you are an already established large cdn.
User experience isn't just for businesses.
Sure 100% you can build a website without them.
But anyone expecting to serve millions of users is going to use and need them or the user experience will suffer
The pattern is that big businesses can afford their own infosec experts and have no use for CF (who poses a disclosure risk to their business). It’s the small mom & pop shops that cling to CF. They hire someone cheap who doesn’t have a high infosec proficiency, who just takes the cheap lazy path of deploying the site on CF. They usually don’t even bother to tweak CF’s extra privacy-hostile default settings.
You say “fundamental” when I think (from context) you mean to say “essential”. But to be clear, Cloudflare is not essential to business or the internet. Consider banking in the US. Big banks are competent enough to not need CF. But credit unions are small and on shoestring budgets. So CUs are increasingly exposing all their customers to Cloudflare to save money. If you are a client of a CU that starts using Cloudflare, I suggest switching to paper statements and quit using the website. Switch to a CU that does not expose you to Cloudflare. So far that’s not difficult but that could change.