Tell HN: Cloudflare is blocking Pale Moon and other non-mainstream browsers

As a website owner and VPN user I see both sides of this.

On one hand, I get the annoying "Verify" box every time I use ChatGPT (and now due its popularity, DeepSeek as well).

On the other hand, without Cloudflare I'd be seeing thousands of junk requests and hacking attempts everyday, people attempting credit card fraud, etc.

I honestly don't know what the solution is.

Simple: We need to acknowledge that the vision of a decentralized internet as it was implemented was a complete failure, is dying, and will probably never return.

Robots went out of control, whether malicious or the AI scrapers or the Clearview surveillance kind; users learned to not trust random websites; SEO spam ruined search, the only thing that made a decentralized internet navigable; nation state attacks became a common occurrence; people prefer a few websites that do everything (Facebook becoming an eBay competitor). Even if it were possible to set rules banning Clearview or AI training, no nation outside of your own will follow them; an issue which even becomes a national security problem (are you sure, Taiwan, that China hasn't profiled everyone on your social media platforms by now?)

There is no solution. The dream itself was not sustainable. The only solution is either a global moratorium of understanding which everyone respectfully follows (wishful thinking, never happening); or splinternetting into national internets with different rules and strong firewalls (which is a deal with the devil, and still admitting the vision failed).

I hate that you're right.

To make matters worse, I suspect that not even a splinternet can save it. It needs a new foundation, preferably one that wasn't largely designed before security was a thing.

Federation is probably a good start, but it should be federated well below the application layer.

I mean, it wasn't even that security wasn't a thing: the earliest incarnations of the Internet were defense projects, and after that, connections between university networks. Abuse was nonexistent because you knew everyone on your given network. Bob up the hall wouldn't try to steal your credit card or whatever, because you'd call the police.

I think a decent idea is, we need to bring personal accountability back into the equation. That's how an open-trust network works, and we know that, because that's how society works. You don't "trust" that someone walking by your car won't take a shit in your open window: they could. But there are consequences for that. We need rock solid data security policies that apply to anyone who does business, hosts content, handles user data online, and people need to use their actual names, actual addresses, actual phone numbers, etc. etc. in order to interact with it. I get that there are many boons to be had with the anonymity the Internet offers, but it also enables all of the horseshit we all hate. A spammer can spam explicitly because their ISP doesn't care that they do, email servers don't have their actual information, and in the odd event they are caught and are penalized, it's fucking trivial to circumvent it. Buy a new AWS instance, run a script to setup your spam box, upload your database of potential victims, and boom, you're off.

A lot of tech is already drifting this way. What is HTTPS at it's core if not a way to verify you are visiting the real Chase.com? How many social networking sites now demand all kinds of information, up to and including a photo of your driver's license? Why are we basically forbidden now by good practice from opening links in texts and emails? Because too many people online are anonymous, can't be trusted, and are acting maliciously. Imagine how much BETTER the Internet would be if when you fucked around, you could be banned entirely? No more ban evasion, ever.

I get that this is a controversial opinion, but fundamentally, I don't think the Internet can function for much longer while being this free. It's too free, and we have too many opportunistic assholes in it for it to remain so.