free software resistance

 the cost of computing freedom is eternal vigilance

### how-clownflare-breaks-the-internet-archive *originally posted:* aug 2025 i loathe clownflare with a passion. i often avoid sites that even use it. im aware that nekoweb uses it. thats certainly not my choice. its definitely complicated though, i doubt nekoweb could offer the $1 / month tier they do if they shouldered the bandwidth they would have without the damned thing. i see clownflare as something that breaks the web- right now its breaking the internet archive. but i mean the archive will be okay i guess, its only breaking the archive for nekoweb users. i understand the point of course, some people probably think clownflare prevents the web from breaking. it all depends on your opinion of what "broken" means. nekoweb has very limited options for discovering other websites- that might change in the future, and if it does that might help everything im going to critique in this post. i should tell you that i dont consider myself a critic of nekoweb- i would sooner think of myself as a fan. im no fan of clownflare, im pretty unhappy with the internet archive too, of these three things i would say that nekoweb is the thing im the least critical of. you dont have to take my word for it, but i see a lot of potential and have a lot of hope for nekoweb. and you dont have to tell me its brand new- i mean, they managed to soldier through any number of setbacks, and i think the result is pretty impressive. one thing i adore about nekoweb that i havent mentioned is that "nice" links are optional. i think nice links are a pretty cool idea! the way neocities implemented them pisses me off. i never would have enabled them, and enabling nice links by default breaks SO MANY THINGS (including the internet archive) but as long as theyre optional and you can choose how your site works, they are a pretty brilliant feature. so making them optional? so much admiration for nekoweb on that one. i dont have mine turned on because of the problems it would cause for my website. if you decide to use them from day one, or on a site with fewer than 500 or 1000 pages, then theyre not as much of a problem. if any. thus most people wont consider them a problem, with good reason. there are lots of little things like that which i love about nekoweb. so how is clownflare breaking the archive? clownflare starts by breaking websites for a lot of things people would LIKE to do. lets not say they always SHOULD do these things, but they definitely have reasons to WANT to do these things, and this is not limited to things that are actually bad or immoral or unethical, but theyre things that site administrators may not always want to allow. i consider clownflare an overkill solution to such problems, though i understand that the options may be limited. i prefer to think that better options exist, although the "best" alternatives i can think of dont necessarily change much of what this post is about. to get around MANY of the problems clownflare causes- and not just on nekoweb, ive seen people do this sort of thing for years- people will check to see if a website uses clownflare and if it does, theyll just use the internet archive as way around the problem. on nekoweb this is obviously happening A LOT, because the internet archive is basically ALWAYS slow (typically hours) in archiving a page if its from nekoweb, and if you post the same exact content to neocities you wont have this problem. why doesnt neocities have this problem? it either doesnt use clownflare, or it uses it in a way that minimises or eliminates these issues. thus people arent CONSTANTLY using the archive as a way around that, and the internet archive isnt breaking for neocities. now lets pause for a moment, as theres definitely an issue here that i would LIKE to blame on clownflare, but this is actually about the internet archive: THE INTERNET ARCHIVE SHOULD really BE ABLE TO HANDLE NEKOWEB. nekoweb is actually pretty small. the fact that ia is breaking from it is a strong testament to how limited (artificially, or in actuality) the resources of the internet archive have become. the internet archive either isnt scaling well anymore, or they just stopped caring. in my personal experience, the internet archive isnt even honest. theyve been bullshitting people for years about anything related to this, and ive come to view their error messages as half truths and their offer to communicate over info@ to be an invitation to gaslighting and corporate-grade bullshit. whoever runs info@ is one of my least favourite people in tech- no respect! i mean its been that way for years, and i would never give money to the archive. but i will say, as has been my opinion for years- archive team is the most honest gateway you can get to whats happening with the interent archive. they know WAY more about it than i do. and they wrote (years ago) that "its time to archive the internet archive". its too centralised, too much a single point of failure, and MUCH too unreliable to fulfil its mission. and it hasnt gotten better in years, quite the contrary. but if there was any transparency instead of this sad maliciously incompetent p.r. bullshit they seem to be running year after year, people would have a better idea what the future was and if they could help. instead, the archive keeps grifting. now, if anyone knows better- i invite them to inform the public why this is wrong. i dont have any axe to grind with the truth, im just pissed off that these people make such grandiose claims, fail so often and so much, and keep the public out of the loop. then they always want more money. back to nekoweb- the error message theyre showing when you try to archive a page from nekoweb, maybe youve seen it- ive never seen that message for ANY other domain. theyre struggling with nekoweb, or theyre pretending to struggle. but theyre at least telling you that nekoweb is too much for them. whether youre sceptical or not, thats an unusual response from them. if nekoweb wasnt using clownflare, im confident that people would be putting less strain on the archive. im aware that the strain might well be on nekoweb instead, which is why i mentioned the unlikely feasibility of the $1 tier if they allowed that strain. i think regardless, the internet archive SHOULD be able to handle this. but whether thats true or not, i dont trust the archive due to a lack of transparency, im not really surprised theyre having this problem. im a little surprised at the level of difficulty theyre having (or claiming). this problem is at least partially caused by clownflare, and the way it prevents access to the domain. this is true whether it OUGHT to prevent access or not. and of course, the problem likely wouldnt exist if the "desire path" of network access wasnt so strong due to the present design of nekoweb. i dont blame nekoweb for the state of things- the site is developing at a reasonable rate imo, and blaming the users misses at least the point im intending to make. => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path but whoever is to blame, this is where we are. these are the factors i see as being relevant. and its possible this speculation is off or inaccurate in some ways. i wont rule out the possibility that im entirely wrong. with that said, the internet was NEVER meant to work this way at all. these are kludges on kludges, which prevent the internet from working the way it was intended to. a lot of it comes down to lack of scaling, and its difficult- not impossible of course- to blame small parties for how they cope with that. the lack of scaling, in the broader sense really comes down to what it costs businesses, organisations, as well as users to run websites. all these kludges are in service (or disservice) of their costs. are those costs often artificial? do they come down to profit and greed? of course they do. weve been milked so hard by isps and likely cuts to infrastructure, that all these factors are actually byproducts of capitalism. the internet wasnt built on capitalism- in fact, the united states government went to at&t and asked them to upgrade their networks- which the government would have helped them do. at&t refused the offer, so the american side of the internet (when it was arpanet) was built on socialism, not capitalism. in the 90s, the internet opened up for commercial business and the web grew substantially. but businesses limit the ability of the networks to scale, and everyone suffers. => https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/04/congress-dont-let-isp-lobbyists-sabotage-fiber-all (thats just the latest example i know of, in a long tradition of corporations sabotaging public infrastructure upgrades for the sake of monopolies). the internet archive SHOULD be able to do so much better than this. imo it wont even help if you throw more money at it, since the way the thing runs and is managed doesnt really make positive change possible- we need a NEW internet archive, which is more decentralised. but you can ask archive team about that. as for clownflare, it shouldnt even exist. as for nekoweb, i wish it the very best and continue to hope for improvements- at a reasonable pace! and i think theyre doing just fine in that regard. but is this one of the mildly painful aspects of trying to use nekoweb? it is for now at least. but i want to be clear, i doubt nekoweb is really to blame. license: 0-clause bsd ``` # 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 # # Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any # purpose with or without fee is hereby granted. # # THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES # WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF # MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR # ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES # WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN # ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF # OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. ``` => https://freesoftwareresistance.neocities.org