this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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Both can be true?
Yup
Cloudflare is a business. Businesses protect their profits. Online casinos are scams subject to regular massive DDOS by their scumbag competitors and by people who want them shut down. Cloudflare wasn't going to eat that loss anymore so they kicked them to the curb to save money. Also the time frame wasn't 24 hours. More like a month. This makes me suspect the scamming casino's story more.
Cloudflare as a business provides DDOS protection. If they kick out those who get ddos's, what's their value? (Sure, WAF etc. but you get the point).
Also, as much as casinos are ethically questionable, they are also business. Very regulated businesses even (while tech is kind of a Wild West).
And insurances provide monetary compensation until you become a common liability, too high to be covered by any sort of fee. DDOS protection is just the same. It's only feasible if it happens rarely, like they usually happen. However if it's a common occurrence it will just eat up the profits made by the fees and then some, which just is stupid to do in any case.
Comparing Cloudflare to insurance companies is not how you'll convince me they're not acting like jerks lol
I think they are only “very regulated” if they are based in certain western countries?
I used to hear a bunch of stories about issues getting payouts.
It's not that they got DDoSed, it's that unregulated off-shore gambling is illegal in many countries, so their IP addresses were getting blocked in these countries. The way CDNs like CloudFlare work is that many customers share the IP addresses, so they were getting other CloudFlare customers blocked as well.
CF wanted them to move to a "bring your own IP" plan so that their IP blocks wouldn't affect other customers, and that came with the steep price tag.
I was reading the blog post by the casino's tech person and kept thinking to myself, "this is a casino; they may not be the most reliable narrator". That said, CF was also stupid slow on taking down kiwi and stormfront, so they're not great either.
Both of them suck and this whole thing is amusing to me. Hopefully this will serve to improve CF's behaviour.
It isn't clodflare's job to take down or in any way take a stance on what websites they are providing most likely only DDOS and DNS services for.
That's for example why privacy sites can use them.
It's the police or maybe hosting provider that should decide when/if to take down sites.
If cloudflare were hosting the site I think they have more responsibility.
I feel like if you're protecting a site that has caused as much harm as kf, it might be morally correct to stop doing so.
What was kiwi?
KiwiFarms, a forum dedicated to doxxing and IRL harassing of LGBTQ people, women, and anyone else they didn't like. It ~~was~~ is a breeding ground for Nazis and other Conservative bigots and their ideologies, and they successfully harassed people into moving and hiding (or worse).
Edit: they're still around
For those horrible enough to like this.
Sometimes each other too if my information is correct. So even if you are a bad person and want to harass innocent people, kiwi farms isn't the place to be.
Bad people are bad people towards you too if you give them the chance. Just don't be bad, much better. Don't hate!
Specifically, it started out to track, dox, and harass Chris-Chan (originally just for being a weirdo though they eventually came out as trans and made news in 2021 for being arrested for incest). The nearly two decade old (since 2007) ongoing campaign against them means they are probably the single most documented human being in history.
They don't often target women just for being women, but much like with trans people and furries they also hate a hate-on for crowdfunded youtube personalities and fat acceptance and all of those groups do have their share of women (especially the last one - fat acceptance is primarily about women). They even target fundamentalist Christians and Quiverfull families sometimes (which tend to be very Conservative).
Also, there's no "was" - they still exist are are operating.
What exactly has Cloudflare done to those poor casino thugs, they were only trying to extract more money from gambling addicts?!?
Fuck CloudFlare -- I don't like monopolies or monopolike.
reminder that cloudflare routinely works with white supremacist and other hate sites to protect them and have most recently refused to stop hosting kiwi farms, as they were doxxing and threatening trans people
THIS MESSAGE (MATERIAL) CREATED AND (OR) DISTRIBUTED WITH PURPOSE OF HATE AND (OR) ENCOURAGING HATE.
You forgot to put it.
I heavilt dislike cloudflare, but this is not valid reason to hate them.
They don't "work with white supremacists". They try to self-polish the tremendous power the have, seeking neutrality in most cases.
Context?
cloudflare has a known habit of taking heavy users and forcibly converting companies from a $250/m plan to a $12,000/month plan.
some people would be happy for that to happen to bad entities like an online casino, but really, to cloudflare the business use is irrelevant and it could happen to any of us.
the lesson is to minimize your cloudflare dependencies. if you have to use it, use it in an agile method where you can move to something else quickly should you need to.
whenever websites break, you can see cloudflare, and also online casinos!
I won five grand from an online casino in 2001, and they not only paid me my winnings, they also included an extra $262 in comps for having bet aggregately over a quarter of a million dollars. That money went a long way for my early-20s ass. Paid off a credit card and bought a new mattress for me and my new wife.
When Full Tilt Poker got shut down by the DOJ, though, I was sort of okay with it. There were waaaaay too many action flops for those hands to have been truly randomized.
Gambling ruines lifes. Just because people can get their win does not mean it should be defended in any case. These casinos intentionally make people addicted, causing so much suffering and death.
you can defend casinos as long as you treat it as entertainment and don't bet your entire life savings on it and cry about it
I set my initial bet amount, once that's gone my game is done. on the other side if I double it my game is done
No you cant defend them. If you dont get addicted easily, good for you. They prey on those that do
Why are online casinos bad? I don't understand this pervasive need some people have to force their way of life on others and take away their agency over their own lives. It comes off to me as some kind of superiority complex. "They're too stupid to make their own decisions, I know better what's best for them, I must protect them from themselves".
Sounds more like you just don't know anything about the gambling industry. They run rigged games in predatory ways. They happily let organised crime launder money for a cut. They fight regulations designed to reduce problem gambling.
Nevertheless, nobody here is "forcing their way of life on others and taking away their agency over their own lives". They're just acknowledging that casinos have a long history of being absolute cunts.
Who's "they"? I don't know much about the gambling industry but if it's anything like any other industry then it's not a centralized monolith but many independent business. As long as the founding principles aren't inherently corrupt (and in the case of casinos they aren't. Nobody is forced to play and everyone knows the house has an advantage and in the long term is guaranteed to win. Because of this it doesn't make sense for the house to cheat and risk getting caught, it will win anyway.) there is no reason to think that the majority of the industry engages in criminal activity. This is a massive generalization.
I don't know much about the gambling industry
You can stop there. You don't know much about the gambling industry, defending them was just an opportunity to tell us your opinions on "some people", none of whom are actually here.
Yes, my comment wasn't about online casinos but about the people who think they have a right to tell others how to live their lives. I'm not defending the gambling industry, I think gambling is stupid. I'm defending the right of the people to make their own decisions.
My "defense of the gambling industry" was just me pointing out that as long as something isn't inherently nonconsensual and the terms and conditions are clear there is no reason to forbid other people from doing it just because you disagree with it.
Nobody in this thread has forbidden anyone from doing anything. If you want a soapbox for your irrelevant opinions, start a blog.
They run rigged games in predatory ways.
I don't know what you mean by this. Games have a fixed margin which is usually disclosed or can be computed (exactly like the 0 and 00 in the roulette skews the odds in the house's favor if you want to do just black/red). There are then whole chapters in national regulations about random number generators to ensure the odds are correct and the games are not rigged (i.e., a game certified for 98% should have that outcome). Are games designed to have the house win a 2,5,7,9% margin? Sure, but this is out there in the open, there is nothing to "rig" in the same way having 0 or 00 is not "rigging" a game of roulette.
They happily let organised crime launder money for a cut.
At least in Europe, you get audited quite often and AML regulations are very tight. Laundering money via online gambling companies with their cooperation seems quite unlikely to me (and inefficient, possibly, but I don't know).
They fight regulations designed to reduce problem gambling.
Some do, but not all, and not in all cases. Addicts are bad for business for gambling companies, or at least for some of them, moderate long-term customers are generally better (and require way less effort).
I don't know what you know about gambling, I definitely think that the ethics are questionable, and I left the industry when I could also for those reasons, but the company I worked for was not very bad in this regards. Maybe you worked/had experience with some of the shady ones (like those who operate in illegal markets using a single license from a random tiny country)?
Why are online casinos bad?
How can players be sure they are honest?
I must protect them from themselves.
People should be protected from scammers with fake (always lose) casinos.
How can players be sure they are honest?
At the bottom of each gambling sites usually there are the banners for the license(s) the company holds. Complying with licenses (e.g., Maltese) ensures that the due paperwork (i.e., proving that Casino games are functioning according to their certification) is taken care of. So yes, national gambling authorities usually are the ones who protect people from scammers.
"functioning according to their certification" doesn't prove to me that they aren't shaving the odds or injecting sneaky code into the process. I have to trust in the technical ability of the regulators.
Also, I could write "regulated by the Maltese" on the bottom of any website, it doesn't make it true.
They can't add sneaky code to the process (without getting caught). For sensitive game code every single change needs to be tracked and reviewed by the authority. You get audited at least once a year, and then all the changes are reviewed. Authorities outsource the job for the technical reviews to specialized companies.
Also, what's the point? The games already provide a margin to the host, why risking to go out of business for such an irrelevant gain (a few more %)? Add to this that usually casino games writers do just that, write games and sell those to N casinos. So the incentive for the casino games writers are even smaller.
Finally, yes you can write "license X", but you can cross-check that information from the regulator itself, you don't need to trust just the line on the site. The point is you as a customer can choose a trustworthy site, ideally one who is licensed in countries where regulations are quite tight (in Europe I would say Denmark), before putting your money somewhere.
At some point you need to trust "someone", that's how the whole world works. The gambling authorities are no different than the authorities that enforce the safety certifications for electrict equipment, or cars, or whatever.
If your concern is that you would lose money on casino games because the site rigged it, it's a relatively silly concern. You will lose because the casino games are designed to make you lose in the long term, on average.