The centralised Internet

"Cloudflare's bot bouncer blocks weirdo browsers" is certainly a nice clickbait headline. But it highlights a problem we have seen in so many areas lately. Large parts of the Internet run through a handful providers, using one or two applications. And if one of those decides to not play nicely the whole idea of the "free, decentralized Internet" quickly becomes a little bit less decentralized and less "free".

The word "free" to me includes the freedom to deciding how I browse the Internet. A website (which does not require JavaScript) should not care if I use Firefox, Chrome or links2. We are way past the days of "only works with Netscape Navigator".

We also have a noticeable browser monoculture which the EU is currently helping to solidify. There is Chrome. Then there are Safari users with a noticeable smaller market share. And somewhere at the bottom we have Mozilla trying everything they can to drive users away into the arms of other Chrome based browsers or "the weirdo browsers" for the few technical folks who decide to migrate.

But we have to be realistic: DDoS protection is a necessity for many (not all, important distinction) sites and Cloudflare, despite the controversy, provides an excellent one – for free. This offer is hard to beat, especially for sites which are not necessarily meant to be profitable. And I still consider Cloudflare a good company to be in business with, even given said controversies.

On the one hand I really do not like to see so much of the Internet being powered by a single, for profit company. On the other hand I feel like they are one of the easiest and best options out there for many sites which cannot justify spending money on a CDN. It truly is an odd and unsatisfying situation.