Govs are migrating to Matrix in a misguided attempt at tech sovereignty (amid [cough] Cloudflare [cough]) (www.theregister.com)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by activistPnk@slrpnk.net to c/BoycottUnitedStates@europe.pub

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/33983108

Obviously it’s not smart to switch to a Cloudflare-plagued network like that of Matrix if your goal is to escape US tech giants. For strictly internal use on self-hosted instances, sure. But as soon as a matrix room becomes open public Cloudflare rears its ugly head.

Zulip and SimpleX are probably better options. Certainly IRC is a better option so long as the channel has no Matrix gateway. SimpleX is also free of Cloudflare.

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[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

This was about self-hosted instances, for the most part.

[-] activistPnk@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 months ago

Cloudflare is not a host. It’s a reverse proxy and governments use it.

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Ah, strictly internal, I read the post text wrong.

If you require something that couldn't be used over CloudFlare, that cedes a whole lot of power to what they choose to support, though. It's kind of a weird bar to place; any networking could, in theory, be run by proxy.

[-] activistPnk@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

If you require something that couldn’t be used over CloudFlare, that cedes a whole lot of power to what they choose to support

Power is excessively unreasonably ceded when Cloudflare is in the loop. To avoid CF is to put power back where it belongs. Cloudflare-incompatible tech ensures CF does not wield inappropriate power.

any networking could, in theory, be run by proxy.

Indeed, and this frustrates sigsec. Connecting to someone requires trusting them not to do something stupid like hand their keys to a giant centralised corporate overlord. At least avoiding Cloudflare is low-hanging fruit. It’s usually easy to detect when CF is in the loop, apart from a few rare shenanigans where CF uses some IPs that are not in CF’s ASN records.

this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026

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