[fxbl0i]

Are people actually downvoting this comment just because it's not politically correct?

I mean, you could argue that it's not fair to discriminate entire countries because of the lax abuse policy of their ISPs, but the comment is correct: that's the reason those countries are discriminated against in this context.

[snorlaxle]

I didn't downvote but I don't believe the claim was 100% factual. Cloudflare has always been horrible with dealing with shared IP's even if the users are all legitmate non-malicious. I once worked in an office with a single shared IP for ~200 people and we got constantly captcha-blocked by Cloudflared websites. It was also a problem with google but it was less prevalent and their captcha system was less annoying than Cloudlfare's.

When I was a sysadmin for a few admittedly-not-highly-popular websites, there were definitely more unwelcome bot traffic from US and EU IP's than there were from any 3rd world countries.

I also don't agree that social media "like-factories" should be a concern for Cloudflare at all. Even if they are truly a concern; social media "like-factories" are probably human-operated on third-world countries or bots that are likely running from developed world servers with access to cheaper bandwidth and IP's.

[grenoire]

This is more insightful than anything else in the comment chain that was spawned from my GP. My opinion on the 'justifiable' end has shifted a bit, thanks!

[lucb1e]

Maybe people are downvoting because GP says it's justified in their opinion? It might be the truth, not most of us can't tell either way, but saying it's justified is a judgemental statement that I find 'justified' to downvote.

[chii]

downvoting to indicate disagreement is the worst kind of downvoting.

[lucb1e]

It's not downvoting for disagreement, I think adding a judgement (like "they deserve it if that's where click farms are") is not constructive to the conversation.

[chewz]

I have downvoted because despite having 1st World passport I had experienced traveling a lot in SE Asia how Cloudflare blocks (sorry protects) 1/3 of websites.

Browsing from a cafe, using VPN results in almost every attempt of following link from HackerNews in solving endless captchas. It is like being harrassed on the border control just because you have the wrong passport.

Saddly many of the sites "protected" by Cloudflare are interesting personal sites owned by honest people who had been scared about dangers of traffic from bad places.

Cloudflare is running internet protection racket Al Capone style.