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Comment by cj | Hacker News Reader

I agree using Cloudflare proxy (or really any VPN) gives the company a lot of power.

But the idea of Cloudflare intercepting all of my traffic doesn't bother me since the alternative is simply another company (Spectrum, or my random friend's wifi, or Starbucks) intercepting all of my traffic by virtue of being my ISP. It's up to you which is the lesser of two evils.

I suppose Cloudflare may have more insight into the data being proxied if they're also managing the SSL certificates at the other end, however.

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I can believe that Cloudflare's current leadership are currently more conscientious than, say, Comcast's. But, especially post-IPO, what is that actually worth? I think that, worldwide, it's likely that Cloudflare is already bigger than Comcast. So, unless I'm given evidence to the contrary, I think Comcast is the lesser evil.

My sense was that Comcast is far bigger than cloudflare, and from my googling that appears to be the case.

Xfinity: $52 B revenue 2017

Comcast holdings (the parent of xfinity, couldn't find numbers for xfinity): 184,000 employees

Cloudflare: < $ 0.2 B revenue 2018, several thousand employees (looks like less than 2000)

If size is your only criteria then you might be right, but look at the company policies on privacy. Cloudflare has some pretty specific customer-oriented privacy policies. Comcast's policies are specifically set up to sell you and your information. That's a meaningful distinction and one with some (not much, but some) legal weight in the US.

I'm consistently amazed at how many people [on HN...] over-estimate the size/scale of Cloudflare.

Comcast is a huge, multi-billion $ operation with global contracts and broadcasting capabilities, and > 184,000 employees globally (that's more than Google, and even MSFT).

That's not to say that we shouldn't be wary of Cloudflare for many other reasons; but that they have more influence over the Internet than one of the world's largest consumer & corporate ISPs is definitely "a take".

How many websites have you visited that are hosted or proxied by Comcast? The fact that Cloudflare is now mediating the connection on both ends is what makes it frightening.

Comcast operates a CDN, launched in 2014. [0] [1]

After some googling, it's very unclear how popular their CDN service is. Based on some of their marketing, seems like it might be focussed more on the video delivery side, which would also make sense given that it's Comcast. (If it indeed is an enterprise video delivery service, they may only have a handful of very large customers)

If this is accurate, it seems like Comcast also controls the data end-to-end (being both an ISP and CDN).

[0] https://www.comcasttechnologysolutions.com/

[1] https://www.comcasttechnologysolutions.com/sites/default/fil...

According to [0] between 5 and 10% of all websites use Cloudflare. Even using the lower number, I'm pretty sure that neither 5% of websites are hosted by Comcast nor that they serve 5% of internet users. This gives Cloudflare already a much larger potential to monitor/censor than Comcast has. I am not saying that they actively do so, just pointing out that they do have the scale and market share to do so. What is more, in contrast to said Comcast, they also have the ability to access unencrypted traffic for those 5-10% percent.

[0] https://www.wired.com/story/cloudflare-spectrum-iot-protecti....

You realize people are worried about more power being concentrated among less people, right?

> it's likely that Cloudflare is already bigger than Comcast.

Unless I'm given evidence to the contrary, I will adamantly say it is silly to say Comcast is the lesser evil.

Is your legal relationship with Cloudfare the same as with your ISP? Is Cloudfare liable for the same things as the ISP? Genuinely asking, I have no clue, just a vague sense that it's not apples to apples.

Very good point... Cloudflare is probably considered a third party according to the law... so no warrant is needed to get all of your data that is 6 months or older... a bit like your email hosted in the cloud: https://newspunch.com/government-can-read-any-email-over-six...

The law is wrong in this case, of course.

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