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wand3r • today at 12:21 AM • 3 replies • view on HN

Tangentially related gripe: Cloudflare has ruined the internet. I can't even read an article about a turtle using a US VPN with US IPs without solving 2 captchas. I assume some uptick is the amount of scraping labs are doing as well as a plethora of tools and bots made with AI, but it is extremely annoying how consolidated players dictate what is possible on the internet and there is no escape from surveillance capitalism. These little bits of friction add up.

Edit: I was using the VPN. The turtle was not using the VPN


Replies

f33d5173 • today at 12:26 AM

Cloudflare has no part in this beyond providing the technology. There are various alternative "security check" pages that are used by others; cloudflare's is the best of the bunch IMO, though still annoying.

This page isn't cloudflare's, cloudflare stopped using google's captcha some years ago. It says ray id at the bottom, idk what's up with that, but it's clearly different.

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throwaway2037 • today at 7:39 AM

Real question: Why are you using a VPN?

alex1138 • today at 8:24 AM

I tried selling a VPN service once called TurtleSpeed

I have no idea why no one bought it