this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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Cloudflare is a cancer
Most people who dislike cloudflare do so for their centralization of the internet, rightly so.
Me? I HATE THE STUPID "VERIFYING YOUR REQUEST" PROMPTS. THEY TAKE WAYYY TOO LONG AND DONT WORK WITH MY USER AGENT SWITCHER. STUPID WEBSITES WITH 3 MONTHLY USERS ARE TURNING ON ADVANCED "DDOS PROTECTION" JUST TO MAKE EVERY FUNCTION OF THEIR APP TAKE 18 MONTHS
You can try https://github.com/FlareSolverr/FlareSolverr
Interesting, I have a lot less problems with the Cloudflare verification, than with Google captchas. The slightest unusual thing seems to put you in captcha hell
When I get to that screen, I just x out most of the time. It's usually not that important.
tell me more
It blocks anyone not using one of its preferred browsers, among other things. It's become the gatekeeper for a large fraction of the Internet.
It also flags my DNS filter and nearly every site I go to has to "check if I'm human"
What browsers does it block?
Minority browsers. Since I daily drive Pale Moon, I'm among the people affected. It's suspected that they test only the 3-4 most popular browsers, and whether anything else works with their code is up to luck.
You may think browsers with tiny market shares aren't important, but all new browsers start out that way. I fear for Ladybird if it ever makes it past the alpha stage, for instance.
I'm super interested in alternative browsers but never have the time to test them. I always wonder what the Internet would be like if we built it from scratch right now instead of having the legacy of 30 years of development to support.
https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/07/cloudflare-once-again-comes-under-pressure-for-enabling-abusive-sites/
great article, and I had no idea that happened to Brian Krebs, of all people! o.O
I do think the EFF makes a good point though, and I think personally I tend to be biased towards content neutrality over moderation (at least, more strongly the larger the platform is, and Cloudflare is very large). Not to the point of Xitter, obviously, but I think there's at least a reasonable argument for Cloudflare in this case.
that said, after some searching, I did find the following two articles, and I find their arguments against Cloudflare very compelling:
Fortunately I'm already using end-to-end SSL certs via Caddy, but now I'm considering just moving off Cloudflare entirely and instead providing regular backups to Internet Archive--most of the stuff I host is entirely static and very lightweight.
Like the bad kind