drop Loomio (it's CloudFlared) and reconsider Framadate.org
loomio.org is jailed in the privacy-hostile walled-garden of CloudFlare. This makes Loomio unsuitable for privacy advocates.
Problem with CloudFlare
CloudFlare is a vigilante extremist organization who takes the decentralized web and centralizes it under one corporate power that controls the worlds largest walled-garden. A very large portion of the web (10%+) that was once freely open to all is now controlled and monitored by one central authority who decides for everyone who can see what web content. This does serious damage to net neutrality, privacy, and has immediate serious consequences:
- Cloudflare has a policy to block all Tor users by default. It's a crude, reckless and unsophisticated (but cheap) way to create the illusion of security. Collateral damage is high. Privacy takes a global hit because Cloudflare has decided what best suits their business to the detriment of everyone else.
- The damage to anonymity helps spy orgs conduct illegal surveillance. The consequential access inequality constitutes a network neutrality abuse. Access equality is central to net neutrality. CloudFlare is a man-in-the-middle who sees all traffic including tunneled HTTPS traffic (and thus passwords!).
- No transparency: as Cloudflare performs a DoS attack on Tor users they obviously do not inform web owners. Web owners are usually unaware that legitimate patrons are being blocked from accessing their site. These businesses are all damaged so that one business can profit.
- Cloudflare shields criminal webmasters by hiding their IP address from the public. A website involved with crime often has other criminal websites on the same IP, but users who try to protect themselves cannot block the IP address of the malicious site.
- Cloudflare makes heavy use of CAPTCHAs which triggers many ethical problems:
- CAPTCHAs put humans to work for machines when it is machines who should be working for humans.
- The CAPTCHAs are often broken.
- The CAPTCHAs often require the user to execute non-free javascript.
- Tor users are driven off of Tor because CloudFlare creates such a hostile environment for them that it becomes impractical to deal with all the CAPTCHAs.
- The CAPTCHAs entail a connection to PRISM corp Google, giving Google Inc. an opportunity to collect data, abuse it, and profit from it. E.g. Google can track which of their logged-in users are visiting the page presenting the CAPTCHA.
- The CAPTCHAs block all robots indiscriminately causing collateral damage to good (non-malicious) robots.
- GUI CAPTCHAs deny service to users of text-based web browsers.
E.g. CloudFlare's GUI CAPTCHA breaks
torsocks lynx 'https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/buffalo_wings/'
. CloudFlare effectively dictates that all Tor users must use a GUI browser and in many cases it must also be javascript capable.
- Cloudflare is potentially injecting javascript spyware into the traffic of their patrons to collect data (this is how cloudflare pays their bills).
- CloudFlare deceives website visitors into believing their connection is secure (HTTPS & browser padlock) when in fact the user is MitMd.
Reconsider Framadate
Framadate was once considered and apparently neglected in favor of Loomio. By comparison, Loomio puts everyone in CloudFlare's privacy-abusing walled-garden where a single centralized corporate authority sees all, while Framadate has a minor software licensing issue that seems like it could be worked out. This needs to be revisited.