The 16‑kilobyte curtain. How Russia’s new data‑capping censorship is throttling Cloudflare

Submitted ⁨⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Pro@programming.dev⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://zona.media/article/2025/06/19/cloudflare

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.

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greenbit@lemmy.zip ⁨21⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
Cloudflare and Russia are both bad, take each other down pls

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CEbbinghaus@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Its an endless arms race. Next will be chunking vpns that chunk requests down to 16kb packets and reassemble on the other end. There is nothing stopping a custom protocol from working around this limitation, in a safe secure manner.

Just a matter of time.

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- Ghoelian@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  You could probably do it with http if the server properly supports the content range headers.
  
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LWD@lemm.ee ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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 512kb.club

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