zlacker

>>stargr+(OP)
This link and the two answers within demonstrate something important, broader than the DNS related issue at hand.

Both make implicit assumptions. One assumes the worst of Cloudflare and thinks “what’s the worst reason Cloudflare could have for doing this. How do they profit off this?” And the other assumes that Cloudflare has good intentions.

Neither answer is technically wrong. Both flow logically from their initial assumptions. But it shows how different our conclusions can be depending on where our initial biases lie. For the person who believes the first answer and says “prove to me that Cloudflare isn’t doing something nefarious”, it’s not possible. The analysis is correct and can’t be challenged unless the initial assumption is challenged. And for people who strongly believe that Cloudflare has bad intentions, nothing can be done to change their mind.

In this example it’s Cloudflare but it applies to any person or organisation that we feel strongly about.

>>nindal+K6
The second one is not an assumption, it's Cloudflare's official position. For a person who is against Cloudflare, I feel like this would only serve to reinforce the confirmation bias as there's seemingly no person except a Cloudflare employee willing to step up and defend the action.

So, yes, good observation.

>>chesch+F8
Arguably, no one except a Cloudflare employee could know the reason why they took this decision. A random person speculating “maybe they did this for privacy reasons” doesn’t strike me as better than Cloudflare saying “we did this for privacy reasons”.

And while the second answer is a statement, not an analysis the rest of what I said holds. You will only accept their statement as the truth if you assume good intent of them.

>>nindal+k9
>A random person speculating “maybe they did this for privacy reasons” doesn’t strike me as better than Cloudflare saying “we did this for privacy reasons”.

you are saying the accessor function getX() which returns a value of X but you don't trust it, you think it's giving you crap, should not be treated any differently depending on whether the getX() function even has access to X or has absolutely no such access. (For example if the value of x isn't even on the same network partition as the getX() function you don't trust.)

You're saying if you don't trust it, it doesn't matter if the function itself even has access to X or doesn't.

In one sense that might be true, but in another sense that seems silly. If getX itself has access to X, you can try to determine whether it is giving it to you. if getX doesn't have any access to X, then it doesn't really matter what it's doing, its process is irrelevant.

so to me there's a huge material difference. We can try to judge the process by which getX() returned Cloudflare's motivations. What steps did it perform to return that value? What's the code? etc.

huge difference. that knowledge is somewhere in the company.