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.

  • blamster19@programming.dev
    0·
    25 days 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.

    • lysdexic@programming.devEnglish
      0·
      25 days 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?

      • lysdexic@programming.devEnglish
        0·
        25 days 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.

        • blamster19@programming.dev
          0·
          25 days 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.

          • lysdexic@programming.devEnglish
            0·
            24 days ago

            Exactly that, Cloudflare complains about extensions.

            What you are describing is not browser incompatibility. It’s default fallback page that Cloudflare shows when it fails to run its javascript code.

            Site owners such as programming.dev maintainers purposely onboarded Cloudflare to run those scripts, as that’s how their anti-abuse system works.

            • blamster19@programming.dev
              0·
              24 days ago

              The ‘browser incompatibility’ is what’s written on the fallback page. The question was about the problem that migration from Cloudflare would solve and I provided one particular problem. Not that it affects me personally, because I use a standalone app for Lemmy, but I assume there are some people that do not wish to run Cloudflare js

              • lysdexic@programming.devEnglish
                0·
                24 days ago

                The ‘browser incompatibility’ is what’s written on the fallback page.

                No. The page clearly says “Incompatible browser extension or network configuration”.

                It then lists a number of troubleshooting steps to get the page to work.

                The question was about the problem that migration from Cloudflare would solve and I provided one particular problem.

                I don’t think so. Site maintainers are expecting your browser to run the scripts to detect and prevent abuse, and you are going way out of your way to not run them. You are not describing a problem.