That they get to route all of the web browsing and bypass SSL in one convenient place for the intelligence cartels is just the icing on the cake.
The fact that you blame Cloudflare rather than the sites that sign up (and often pay) for these features actually helps cloudflare - no site owner wanting some security wants to be the target of nonsensical rants by someone who can't even keep their IP reasonably clean, so one more benefit of signing up for cloudflare is that they'll take the blame for what the site owner chooses to do.
Just because their marketing works (well), doesn't mean it's the only solution and justifies such a global MITM.
> nonsensical rants by someone who can't even keep their IP reasonably clean
Says who? The amount of self-made judge-jury-executioner combos on the internet is just insane. Why should we _like_ one more in the mix?
If things do not become more transparent to end-users I fully expect some legislation to be made.
Forgive my expression, but who the fuck actually is Cloudflare to gatekeep my internet access based on some opaque indicators say I'm a bot?
Cloudflare is in no way gatekeeping your internet access. Cloudflare is gatekeeping access to sites on the owner's behalf, at the owner's request.
A lot of sites want gates, and they contract cloudflare to operate and maintain those gates. If it wasn't cloudflare it would be some other company, or done in-house. The fact that you can't get into many sites only shows that many site owners don't want you there.
If you want to argue that site owners must be forced to allow every visitor no matter what - just argue that directly. Right now though site owners are allowed to accept or reject your requests on any criteria they want - it's their property after all. Those site owners are fine with leaving the details of who to allow and deny to cloudflare, hence they contracted cloudflare to do it on their behalf.
> Says who? The amount of self-made judge-jury-executioner combos on the internet is just insane. Why should we _like_ one more in the mix?
Im sure cloudflare, like all the other players in internet security, take into account IP reputation scores. It's a common and fairly effective tool.
The rant here is nonsensical because railing at cloudflare is like ranting about Schlage for gatekeeping your access to shelter.... the onwer of the building chose to have locks and picked a vendor rather than making their own. Much like cloudflare.... Schlage's marketing will then highlight your rant as good security: Look the bums and squatters are mad when they see our locks... do you really want to trust another vendor.
Another reason it's nonsensical is this:
> justifies such a global MITM.
It only does MITM on sites that sign up for cloudflare. It's not global - any site that isn't behind cloudflare is not MITMed. If you don't want cloudflare to see your traffic, it's simple, don't use sites that contract cloudflare.
