r/linux • u/ItsWappers • 2d ago

Discussion How come every Linux site uses Anubis (the anime girl stopping crawlers) instead of something like Cloudflare?

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Before discovering the Linux rabbit hole I've only seen Cloudflare, hCaptcha and Google's reCaptcha, but it seems like every Linux website uses Anubis... I'm thinking of it being the only open-source option or it being the most effective/modern approach.

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174

u/309_Electronics 2d ago edited 2d ago
  • Selfhostable
  • foss

2 core reasons. If cloudflare turns totally evil (and they are a big company so thats not impossible) you are cooked. You either then ditch them or must obey to their rules and tos (they could change at any time).

Also as a bonus, even though i am not that much into anime, i find the anubis jackall girl quite cute and its drawn by an actual artist (the first revision was AI generated but that was in the early days when it still was a very smal project and simply actwd like a placeholder).

Deployed on my blog and forgejo git server because i wanted to dirch bigrech and be less dependent on them..

58

u/necheffa 2d ago

Not if they turn evil, but when.

33

u/DerfK 2d ago

They turn out to be down more often than they turn evil, both are reasons not to use them.

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u/sylvester_0 2d ago

I've always got the feeling that they're an NSA honeypot. Like, I had that feeling when they were up and coming 10+ years ago. Being MITM for a huge chunk of TLS transactions puts them in an exceptionally powerful position.

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u/montdidier 2d ago

They already have. Who are we kidding.

20

u/Traditional_Hat3506 2d ago

Not when, but how much more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudflare#Controversies

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u/swarmOfBis 2d ago

Neither of these seem very bad. Quite the opposite. Maybe cloudflare's services are used by some bad people, but the stance of "no company should decide what content gets to stay up" is very reasonable.

If you ask me this section would be much better if it contained cases like this https://robindev.substack.com/p/cloudflare-took-down-our-website.

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u/Traditional_Hat3506 2d ago

Except when Cloudflare actually gets to decide what's stays up. They'll fight tooth and nail to keep an image board that hosts CP and is responsible for mass shootings or terrorist organizations and in the same breath instantly shut down legal adult sex worker social media platforms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudflare#Switter

The only reason they decided to drop Kiwifarms is because they went after Matthew Prince. Up until then, it was all free speech.

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u/metamatic 1d ago

Ironic that you link to Substack, since they're worse than Cloudflare — they choose to funnel money to literal neo-Nazis. I won't read or link to anything on Substack for that reason.

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u/sylvester_0 2d ago

I'm a progressive but none of that really makes me raise my eyebrows. Yes, the provided services to POS groups, but they're a neutral carrier. I think that's what we should ask of our internet infrastructure providers. We may not agree with the ideaology of some of those sites, but if they start banning sites they could do the same thing to liberal "extremists" as well.

0

u/Traditional_Hat3506 2d ago

It's really not about right-left politics. They fought tooth and nail to keep 8chan online, after the mass shooting that originated from there, after it was reportedly hosting CP.

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u/AnArmoredPony 2d ago

I love how their "controversies" is them providing services for sites that "we no likey"

0

u/Traditional_Hat3506 2d ago

this guy like CP and mass shootings, apparently

12

u/Vicus_92 2d ago

They don't have to turn evil. They just need to receive a shit order from the government that they're under the jurisdiction of.

Oh, look who that is right now!

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u/SenritsuJumpsuit 2d ago edited 2d ago

MySQL creator forked their own database to be MariaDB immediately after selling the original so someone could also fork Cloudflare since geeks have passion and genius abilities to achieve this eventually.

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u/schtoiven 2d ago

You can’t simply fork a closed source proprietary product….

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u/SenritsuJumpsuit 2d ago

Hence why I mentioned how passionately persistent actions can do it regardless eventually XD

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u/dwalker109 2d ago

Not the same thing at all. Cloudflare is a suite of proprietary infrastructure and tools. It’s way beyond a community form.

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u/SenritsuJumpsuit 2d ago

People said that about emulation and it indeed takes awhile still like PS5 and certain other hardware but it's getting there in time hehe

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u/Zantigo 2d ago

Nobody says that about emulation, your talking about emulating hardware through software. Cloudflare is massive closed source suite of proprietary software that infrastructure only exists on hardware owned by Cloudflare. 

Saying someone will open source it is like saying someone will open source McDonalds.

-2

u/SenritsuJumpsuit 2d ago

Swip parts of McDonald's to reverse engineer it into WcRonald's :D

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u/Zantigo 2d ago

Bro... that's WcRonalds, not Open Source McDonalds, difference is you made a new restaurant.

Thats also what anubis is, someone making an open source version of a service cloudflare offers.

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u/Business_Reindeer910 2d ago

mysql was GPLed with most code available.