this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2025
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Explain Like I'm Five

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ELI 5, how can CloudFlare block traffick to sites? (kbin.earth)
submitted 1 month ago by Coopr8@kbin.earth to c/explainlikeimfive@lemmy.world
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Explain to me like I'm a 5 year old who just learned what an internet is how CloudFlare can block traffick to websites that dont sign up for their services?

News from the UK shows that CloudFlare is now blocking a bunch of domains associated with peer to peer file sharing, but I dont understand why these domains wouldn't just migrate away from CloudFlare services and that would fix the problem. Do the ISPs use CloudFlare to provide services between the user and the website hosts when the user requests a web page via the browser?

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[–] Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 3 points 1 month ago

Worth noting that those sites typically use Cloudflare as a way to hide their real servers, both for average users (so you can't attack the server directly) and law enforcement. You have to get Cloudflare to cooperate and that requires valid court orders from the right countries.

It's also a useful double-edged sword: if Cloudflare refuses to cooperate, there's not much you can do because if you block Cloudflare you also block a ton of legitimate websites, so it forces law enforcement to do a lot of collateral damage. Spain did it, and they ended up blocking a lot of legitimate traffic, upsetting a lot of people. Without Cloudflare they'd just block the pirate site's IPs and DNS and be done with it.

The double-edge part is your traffic all goes through Cloudflare, so if they comply and shut you down, you're shut down until you move to another provider.