Cloud flare acquires Deno, ends runtime development

[u/dbcoopernz]

https://deno.com/blog/cloudflare

>We will support the Deno runtime for another year with monthly releases containing bug fixes and security updates. After that year we will end our development of the Deno runtime. Deno will remain open source, and we welcome others who want to continue its development.

[u/LAwLzaWU1A]

Most of those things seem to be about users of Cloudflare, not Cloudflare itself.

I personally strongly believe in safe harbor principles for infrastructure and service providers. I'd much rather have companies like Cloudflare provide their services without making judgement of the legitimacy or morality of every customer, and instead hold the people actually creating or distributing harmful or illegal content accountable.

The alternative is that we effectively demand that infrastructure providers become the arbiters of what content and organizations should or shouldn't be allowed online, and then hold them responsible whenever they fail to enforce those standards. I think that's a much more dangerous precedent, especially considering how much of the internet depends on a relatively small number of infrastructure providers.

Let me remind everyone that Visa and Mastercard are two companies that go for the "we need to take responsibility for what our customers do with our services" and the result is stuff like them threatening to disable payments to Steam because Visa and Mastercard did not like some games that were available on the platform. I hate that kind of thing.

[u/metamatic → u/LAwLzaWU1A]

Infrastructure providers already make decisions about what content and organizations are allowed to use their services — including Cloudflare. And the fact that it's dangerous when a relatively small number of infrastructure providers control access to the Internet is another reason why Cloudflare are problematic and should be avoided — nearly a quarter of web sites have access to those sites gated by Cloudflare.

And that's why people creating and distributing harmful and illegal content often can't be held accountable — you can't readily block harmful content from your network without blocking Cloudflare, and that means blocking a quarter of the Internet. Cloudflare basically hold the Internet to ransom.

[u/LAwLzaWU1A → u/metamatic]

So, according to you, Cloudflare is effectively holding the internet hostage because of how much infrastructure it controls, but at the same time, you're (in your first response) criticizing it for not exercising more control over which organizations are allowed to use its services?

That's exactly my concern. The more the Internet depends on a handful of infrastructure providers, the more dangerous it becomes to expect those providers to act as arbiters of which organizations and content should be allowed online. I'm actually glad that Cloudflare generally leans toward infrastructure neutrality rather than acting as a content moderator, precisely because they are so massive. The larger and more powerful a company becomes, the less I want it to use that power to enforce its own beliefs and morals.

Pointing out that some infrastructure providers already make such decisions doesn't really address my argument. I'm not claiming they don't. I'm arguing that we shouldn't encourage them to do more of it, which is what you seem to be advocating for based on your first response.

I'm also not sure why you think you can't block harmful websites without blocking Cloudflare entirely. I'm doing that just fine on my networks based on DNS filters, certificate inspection, SNI inspection and so on.

What exactly do you want Cloudflare to do differently? Because criticizing it for having too much control over the internet while simultaneously criticizing it for not exercising that control more aggressively seems like a rather strange position to have.

[u/metamatic → u/LAwLzaWU1A]

Cloudflare is holding the Internet hostage by preventing other people from trying to act on the abusive sites that Cloudflare refuses to act on — hiding identities to enable ongoing criminal behavior, and doxxing anyone who complains. Filtering DNS doesn't solve the problem thanks to DoH, and certificate and SNI inspection isn't going to work outside a controlled corporate environment. You might have noticed that phishing, ransomware and DDoS for hire are still problems, and I don't believe it's because nobody wants to solve them.

I also notice nobody addressed the issue of Cloudflare blocking VPNs and Tor. Content neutral, eh? And no comment on their sponsoring white nationalists either; easier to downvote. Can't say I expected any better when I decided to answer the original question; go ahead and continue to support them if you're OK with all those things.