this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
102 points (98.1% liked)

Technology

71717 readers
4671 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
102
The 16‑kilobyte curtain. How Russia’s new data‑capping censorship is throttling Cloudflare (zona.media)
submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
34 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

A new form of state-level internet filtering that restricts data flow is disrupting access to large portions of the global web for Russian citizens. Cloudflare, the world leader in DDoS protection and high-traffic load management, is being targeted by these new data caps, which appear designed to push users toward Russian-controlled services. Meanwhile, the move leaves Russian businesses dangerously exposed.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 29 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

According to technical experts, internet service providers across the country have begun implementing a rule that limits data transfers from sites using Cloudflare to just the first 16 kilobytes. This technique is relatively subtle but effective: very lightweight, basic websites can still load, creating a façade of normal internet function, while modern, media-rich sites are effectively broken.

16 KB per website? What part of the normal internet is that small? What part of the indie web is that small?

e.g. look at the smallest sites on https://512kb.club/

Or is this just 16kb per request, which would make more sense with the following explanation:

Analysts report that similar throttling is also being applied to other major western hosting providers popular with Russian users, including Germany’s Hetzner and the US-headquartered DigitalOcean... [they] are widely used by Russians to host private VPN servers, which allow them to bypass the Kremlin’s ever-widening blocklists.

AFAIK, VPNs maintain a long-standing connection that would definitely use more than 16kb at a time.