If there was one thing clear from the Snowden leaks, it was that the NSA really lamented the rise of encrypted web traffic back in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Wouldn’t it have been very convenient for the NSA to have a TLS termination point covering the majority of the web?
I think Cloudflare is just that, or at least a part of it (PRISM). Cloudflare sits in the US, so they can be legally surveiled/overtaken by the NSA, and it would be a punishable crime for anyone working at Cloudflare and knowing about this to speak up about it (FISA laws).
Worried about DDoS attacks? Most providers include that in their VPS offerings. For instance, Hetzner does. It’s not at Cloudflare’s scale, but you most likely won’t need that level of protection anyway (you need to be a viable target in the first place).
Cloudflare is just obnoxious. I can’t believe how many well-read, technical people use it.
Now, as I think of it, it feels pretty real, this version.
Also:
And everything is free! Or almost everything. How convenient.
This also reminds me of this very unclear and sad story: https://www.wired.com/story/lee-holloway-devastating-decline-brilliant-young-coder/