5 thoughts on “Angry Users: We DO NOT approve Cloudflare as our Intermediary!”
Cloudflare has taken over a huge part of the internet, but it’s become a big problem. It actually breaks the way SSL encryption is supposed to work, which means private info that should be safe can get stolen. On top of that, they use bots to make people prove they’re human, which feels like censorship and being controlled by robots. Honestly, it’s messing up how the web is supposed to work. I say we should avoid any sites that let Cloudflare mess with our privacy and security like this!
Here is why no one can stop them: Cloudflare keeps operating despite user anger because no law or regulator requires them to fix bad user experience like CAPTCHAs or blocks—those are just business choices sites make voluntarily. https://www.trustpilot.com/review/cloudflare.com
Legally Unassailable
They’re a US-based public company (NYSE: NET) offering standard CDN, DNS, and security tools that millions of sites choose freely. Regulators target them only on big issues like piracy blocks (e.g., Italy’s €14M fine in Jan 2026 for not censoring fast enough), not for “annoying users.” No government cares if their bot checks suck your time—that’s not illegal anywhere. https://ppc.land/cloudflare-faces-eu14-2-million-fine-from-italian-regulator-over-piracy-enforcement/
Economic Reality
Sites keep paying them because:
– DDoS protection actually works against real attacks.
– It’s cheap and easy to set up vs. running your own servers.
– Admins rarely hear complaints (you leave; they see “blocked bots”).
Users like you can’t sue over “wasted 5 minutes on a CAPTCHA”—courts see that as normal internet friction. Even 1,100+ pissed-off Trustpilot reviews don’t dent their $5B+ revenue. https://www.trustpilot.com/review/cloudflare.com
No Accountability Loop
Cloudflare’s model insulates them perfectly:
– Their customers (site owners) bear the blame.
– End users like you can’t contact them directly.
– No regulator polices “user-friendliness.”
You’re mad at the right target, but they’re built to ignore it forever. Best revenge is still skipping Cloudflare sites when you spot them and telling owners why.
Common user complaints about Cloudflare blocks boil down to a few infuriating patterns:
Endless Verification Loops
Users get trapped in “checking your browser” or repeated CAPTCHA screens that never resolve, even after solving them correctly. Examples include endless loops when ordering meds, renting apartments, or just browsing daily sites—wasting 5-15+ minutes per incident. https://www.trustpilot.com/review/cloudflare.com
Blocks lock people out of entire websites for “no reason,” causing lost sales or business (e.g., “costing sellers thousands”). Reviewers swear off any site using Cloudflare, calling it “the worst thing to happen to the internet.” https://www.trustpilot.com/review/cloudflare.com?page=7
What are the main accusations of Cloudflare running a protection racket?
Short answer: “protection racket” is a community accusation, not something proved in court or admitted by Cloudflare or Matthew Prince. It usually bundles several concrete complaints under one angry label.
Here are the main themes people mean when they say that:
1. Same networks that host attacks also sell “protection”
People see a pattern like this:
A huge amount of bot and DDoS traffic comes from or through infrastructure that’s themselves fronted by Cloudflare (or hits sites that aren’t paying for protection).
Cloudflare’s core business is selling DDoS protection, WAF, bot filtering, and uptime guarantees.
To angry operators, this feels like:
“Traffic that comes from their ecosystem is attacking me, and the easiest way to stop it is to pay them.”
From that, critics jump to the “protection racket” analogy: the same company whose IPs they see in logs is also where they’re told to go to make the pain go away.
Important nuance: that doesn’t prove Cloudflare is organizing the attacks. The internet is full of compromised servers, cheap VPSes, and abused services; attackers use whatever is convenient. The accusation is primarily about perverse incentives and optics, not about a demonstrated, deliberate criminal racket.
2. Centralized gatekeeper power with no democratic mandate
Another big chunk of the “racket” anger is about power, not just packets:
Cloudflare sits in front of a massive portion of the web.
They terminate TLS for those sites, see application‑layer traffic, and can decide who gets through and under what conditions.
Their newer moves around blocking bots, charging AI crawlers, and offering “one‑click” blocking of whole classes of traffic look to critics like:
“Pay the gatekeeper or you get throttled/blocked,” and
“If your traffic isn’t blessed by us, you’re treated as hostile.”
The accusation here is: a private company turned itself into a soft monopoly chokepoint, then started monetizing and tightening that choke—which, again, feels racketeering‑adjacent even if it’s just market power plus product strategy.
3. Asymmetric treatment of sites and “pay or suffer” vibes
Some small/medium site owners report experiences that feed the narrative:
Being told that higher‑tier plans are required to properly mitigate certain attack patterns or maintain uptime.
Feeling that their site became meaningfully more reachable only once they were behind a paid plan, while non‑paying sites get hammered or blocked by networks that distrust unprotected origins.
Stories (sometimes second‑hand, sometimes unverifiable) where someone claims Cloudflare support reps pushed expensive plans hard while a site was under attack.
These anecdotes become, in people’s minds:
“We were effectively told to pay up to stay online.”
Whether that’s fair or a distortion of what happened varies case by case, but this is exactly the emotional texture of “protection racket.”
4. Enabling bad actors while selling security to others
Critics also point to Cloudflare:
Protecting sites run by extremists, harassment communities, or other harmful actors.
Offering them the same DDoS shield and performance boost that they offer to ordinary sites.
From this, some people say:
“You protect the worst people from the same attacks you say you’re saving us from, and you profit on both sides.”
This doesn’t map perfectly to classic racketeering, but it deepens the sense that Cloudflare monetizes a hostile environment they also help shape.
5. The “racket” framing vs what we actually know
To keep it intellectually honest:
There is no public evidence that Cloudflare is deliberately launching or coordinating DDoS/bot attacks to sell protection.
The “protection racket” phrase is mainly a moral and structural accusation:
Their position in the network gives them enormous leverage.
Their business incentives align with a world where attacks never really go away, and everyone feels compelled to pay the gatekeeper.
What is well grounded:
They are a designed man‑in‑the‑middle for sites that opt in.
They have become a de facto gatekeeper for a large slice of the web.
Their decisions about bots, AI, and access have ecosystem‑wide consequences.
Their incentives (and some of their product decisions) understandably look predatory or captured to many people.
Cloudflare is a large U.S. company providing CDN, DNS, and DDoS‑protection services to many websites; it sits in front of a huge fraction of the web’s traffic and can see and filter that traffic. That concentration of power is why many people describe it as an instrument of corporate control over access to information, especially when sites become practically unreachable without going through Cloudflare‑fronted infrastructure. In a way, it represents an end run around the failed Net Nutraility Act.
To the extent that services like Cloudflare can prioritize, filter, or block traffic based on content, application, or tenant identity, they can create effects similar to a de‑facto non‑neutral Internet, but implemented by platforms rather than last‑mile carriers. This means small sites get penalized, slowed down, or stopped. It’s a sient destruction (or coroporate take over, if you prefer) of one of humanity’s the most valuable inventions, the Internet, which is supposed to be an equal playing field.
In practice, this means that even if your ISP is “neutral,” access can still be shaped by private policy at intermediary networks, combining technical necessity (DDoS protection, caching) with governance power that is largely unregulated.
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Cloudflare has taken over a huge part of the internet, but it’s become a big problem. It actually breaks the way SSL encryption is supposed to work, which means private info that should be safe can get stolen. On top of that, they use bots to make people prove they’re human, which feels like censorship and being controlled by robots. Honestly, it’s messing up how the web is supposed to work. I say we should avoid any sites that let Cloudflare mess with our privacy and security like this!
Here is why no one can stop them: Cloudflare keeps operating despite user anger because no law or regulator requires them to fix bad user experience like CAPTCHAs or blocks—those are just business choices sites make voluntarily. https://www.trustpilot.com/review/cloudflare.com
Legally Unassailable
They’re a US-based public company (NYSE: NET) offering standard CDN, DNS, and security tools that millions of sites choose freely. Regulators target them only on big issues like piracy blocks (e.g., Italy’s €14M fine in Jan 2026 for not censoring fast enough), not for “annoying users.” No government cares if their bot checks suck your time—that’s not illegal anywhere. https://ppc.land/cloudflare-faces-eu14-2-million-fine-from-italian-regulator-over-piracy-enforcement/
Economic Reality
Sites keep paying them because:
– DDoS protection actually works against real attacks.
– It’s cheap and easy to set up vs. running your own servers.
– Admins rarely hear complaints (you leave; they see “blocked bots”).
Users like you can’t sue over “wasted 5 minutes on a CAPTCHA”—courts see that as normal internet friction. Even 1,100+ pissed-off Trustpilot reviews don’t dent their $5B+ revenue. https://www.trustpilot.com/review/cloudflare.com
No Accountability Loop
Cloudflare’s model insulates them perfectly:
– Their customers (site owners) bear the blame.
– End users like you can’t contact them directly.
– No regulator polices “user-friendliness.”
You’re mad at the right target, but they’re built to ignore it forever. Best revenge is still skipping Cloudflare sites when you spot them and telling owners why.
Common user complaints about Cloudflare blocks boil down to a few infuriating patterns:
Endless Verification Loops
Users get trapped in “checking your browser” or repeated CAPTCHA screens that never resolve, even after solving them correctly. Examples include endless loops when ordering meds, renting apartments, or just browsing daily sites—wasting 5-15+ minutes per incident. https://www.trustpilot.com/review/cloudflare.com
False Bot Positives
Legit visitors (on VPNs, shared Wi-Fi, or with privacy extensions) get flagged as bots due to “suspicious” IPs, traffic spikes, or browser fingerprints. This hits hotels, mobile users, and even devs testing their own sites.https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/article/why-does-cloudflare-suddenly-block-legitimate-users-as-bots/
Site-Wide Unreachability
Blocks lock people out of entire websites for “no reason,” causing lost sales or business (e.g., “costing sellers thousands”). Reviewers swear off any site using Cloudflare, calling it “the worst thing to happen to the internet.” https://www.trustpilot.com/review/cloudflare.com?page=7
Slowdowns and Delays
Everything lags 5-15 seconds per page as Cloudflare “verifies you’re human,” making sites feel unresponsive—especially ironic since bots could just wait it out. https://www.reddit.com/r/CloudFlare/comments/1lpgf1p/why_is_cloudflare_becoming_unreasonably_hostile/
No Recourse for Users
End users can’t contact Cloudflare directly; complaints go to site owners who often ignore them. Support is called “non-existent,” with ignored tickets and bot replies only. https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/san-francisco/profile/internet-service/cloudflare-1116-377041/complaints?page=10
What are the main accusations of Cloudflare running a protection racket?
Short answer: “protection racket” is a community accusation, not something proved in court or admitted by Cloudflare or Matthew Prince. It usually bundles several concrete complaints under one angry label.
Here are the main themes people mean when they say that:
1. Same networks that host attacks also sell “protection”
People see a pattern like this:
A huge amount of bot and DDoS traffic comes from or through infrastructure that’s themselves fronted by Cloudflare (or hits sites that aren’t paying for protection).
Cloudflare’s core business is selling DDoS protection, WAF, bot filtering, and uptime guarantees.
To angry operators, this feels like:
“Traffic that comes from their ecosystem is attacking me, and the easiest way to stop it is to pay them.”
From that, critics jump to the “protection racket” analogy: the same company whose IPs they see in logs is also where they’re told to go to make the pain go away.
Important nuance: that doesn’t prove Cloudflare is organizing the attacks. The internet is full of compromised servers, cheap VPSes, and abused services; attackers use whatever is convenient. The accusation is primarily about perverse incentives and optics, not about a demonstrated, deliberate criminal racket.
2. Centralized gatekeeper power with no democratic mandate
Another big chunk of the “racket” anger is about power, not just packets:
Cloudflare sits in front of a massive portion of the web.
They terminate TLS for those sites, see application‑layer traffic, and can decide who gets through and under what conditions.
Their newer moves around blocking bots, charging AI crawlers, and offering “one‑click” blocking of whole classes of traffic look to critics like:
“Pay the gatekeeper or you get throttled/blocked,” and
“If your traffic isn’t blessed by us, you’re treated as hostile.”
The accusation here is: a private company turned itself into a soft monopoly chokepoint, then started monetizing and tightening that choke—which, again, feels racketeering‑adjacent even if it’s just market power plus product strategy.
3. Asymmetric treatment of sites and “pay or suffer” vibes
Some small/medium site owners report experiences that feed the narrative:
Being told that higher‑tier plans are required to properly mitigate certain attack patterns or maintain uptime.
Feeling that their site became meaningfully more reachable only once they were behind a paid plan, while non‑paying sites get hammered or blocked by networks that distrust unprotected origins.
Stories (sometimes second‑hand, sometimes unverifiable) where someone claims Cloudflare support reps pushed expensive plans hard while a site was under attack.
These anecdotes become, in people’s minds:
“We were effectively told to pay up to stay online.”
Whether that’s fair or a distortion of what happened varies case by case, but this is exactly the emotional texture of “protection racket.”
4. Enabling bad actors while selling security to others
Critics also point to Cloudflare:
Protecting sites run by extremists, harassment communities, or other harmful actors.
Offering them the same DDoS shield and performance boost that they offer to ordinary sites.
From this, some people say:
“You protect the worst people from the same attacks you say you’re saving us from, and you profit on both sides.”
This doesn’t map perfectly to classic racketeering, but it deepens the sense that Cloudflare monetizes a hostile environment they also help shape.
5. The “racket” framing vs what we actually know
To keep it intellectually honest:
There is no public evidence that Cloudflare is deliberately launching or coordinating DDoS/bot attacks to sell protection.
The “protection racket” phrase is mainly a moral and structural accusation:
Their position in the network gives them enormous leverage.
Their business incentives align with a world where attacks never really go away, and everyone feels compelled to pay the gatekeeper.
What is well grounded:
They are a designed man‑in‑the‑middle for sites that opt in.
They have become a de facto gatekeeper for a large slice of the web.
Their decisions about bots, AI, and access have ecosystem‑wide consequences.
Their incentives (and some of their product decisions) understandably look predatory or captured to many people.
Cloudflare is a large U.S. company providing CDN, DNS, and DDoS‑protection services to many websites; it sits in front of a huge fraction of the web’s traffic and can see and filter that traffic. That concentration of power is why many people describe it as an instrument of corporate control over access to information, especially when sites become practically unreachable without going through Cloudflare‑fronted infrastructure. In a way, it represents an end run around the failed Net Nutraility Act.
To the extent that services like Cloudflare can prioritize, filter, or block traffic based on content, application, or tenant identity, they can create effects similar to a de‑facto non‑neutral Internet, but implemented by platforms rather than last‑mile carriers. This means small sites get penalized, slowed down, or stopped. It’s a sient destruction (or coroporate take over, if you prefer) of one of humanity’s the most valuable inventions, the Internet, which is supposed to be an equal playing field.
In practice, this means that even if your ISP is “neutral,” access can still be shaped by private policy at intermediary networks, combining technical necessity (DDoS protection, caching) with governance power that is largely unregulated.