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Comment by dannyw | Hacker News Reader

Yep. I trust cloudflare more than Gmail actually. One isn't known for having algorithms delete accounts without human appeal.

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It is much deeper than that. The incentives for advertisement are misaligned between the user and the service provider. Cloudflare is akin to Apple in this regard where privacy is feature, not a bug for their business model. Google can engage in their core advertisement business or they can provide cloud services and Business apps. Not both. It's like hiring a security guard that also has a second job of stealing what they're guarding.

well said.

> Cloudflare ... privacy is feature, not a bug for their business model.

They are literally a MITM service.

But to OPs point, their incentives are not aligned with advertising. Cloudflare is not incentivized to sell user data or misuse data for targeted ads or mining data.

If they start selling data they gather as a result of their product they will burn user trust and goodwill in a single day and seriously harm their business and brand. So they would never do it intentionally.

> One isn't known for having algorithms delete accounts without human appeal.

I once lost access to my Cloudflare account, and the only way to get support... wait for it.... required you to log into your account.

Why are companies doing this?

Same happened to me with PayPal. My 2FA was through Google Voice, and they blocked Google Voice so I couldn't authenticate. Now I refuse to use them. Recently I emailed a band to get an alternate payment option to buy a t-shirt just to not do business with through them.

> I once lost access to my Cloudflare account, and the only way to get support... wait for it.... required you to log into your account.

cc jgrahamc

> I trust cloudflare more than Gmail actually. One isn't known for having algorithms delete accounts without human appeal.

No, instead it's known for leaking private customer data (think authentication tokens and the like) onto the public internet [1]. Imagine if Gmail ever had a bug like that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudbleed

I fear (potentially?) hostile agents like Google more than bugs.

Not sure why you think Google is a potential hostile agent, but not Cloudflare?

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