From the operators point of view, Cloudflare is cheap and often used when you don't understand that "premium bandwidth" or whatever they call it these days, are just bandwidth you pay way too much for.

From the users point of view, Cloudflare will frequently stop you from accessing things and introduces more single points of failure in the internet infrastructure. But on the good side, they have pretty good edge endpoints so your browsing might be a bit faster, when they allow you to browse.

Same here. I live in Turkey and Cloudflare just block many websites' access from here. I can't access some sites just because I'm from an IP range from Turkey. I can jump onto my VPN, but still, not convenient.

Some websites configure their own rules in CF to block traffic from certain countries.

I don't get the "Access Blocked" often, what I do get is the "We are verifying your browser" page that often just keeps looping there and completely block my access.

I never do. Maybe you or something on your computer or network is the problem?

Usually it's because they live in a different country than what people consider the "Western World" or something like that. When I'm in Europe, I don't see that page very often, unless in Eastern Europe. But if I'm in Asia, Africa or Central/South America, then I encounter that page all the time.

Fwiw, this is an option that many people configure for themselves in cloudflare. Some security people love recommending using IP geo-blocking as a good tactic for hardening systems.

Nope. Just being in some country (in my case Turkey) is perfectly enought to be geoblocked.

If you configured your client to hide enough information, Cloudflare tends to believe you are a threat. VPN users probably have that problem a lot more.

You don't have to hide any information. I don't hide any information and still get blocked because of the country I reside in.

Yeah, but even if you’re in an “acceptable” country you get blocked if you care about privacy. The point is that CF often blocks people.

And so Cloudflare becomes an enemy of privacy?

exactly. I care about privacy, and I do see that page often. Sometimes it helps to send a non-empty useragent string, or to enable javascript. Most of the time I just close the tab.