Cloudflare Reveals How Bots and Governments Reshaped the Internet in 2025

Cloudflare's sixth annual Year in Review report describes an internet increasingly shaped by two forces: automated traffic and government intervention, as global connectivity grew 19% year over year in 2025.

Google's web crawler now dominates automated traffic, dwarfing other AI and indexing bots to become the single largest source of bot activity on the web. Nearly half of all major internet disruptions globally were linked to government actions, and civil society and non-profit organizations became the most attacked sector for the first time.

Post-quantum encryption crossed a significant threshold, now protecting 52% of human internet traffic observed by Cloudflare. The company also recorded more than 25 record-breaking DDoS attacks throughout the year.

For me it's what we learned about Twitter

[rsilvergun]

For a brief period of time Twitter was revealing the IP address locations of users and virtually every right wing influencer was located in Russia or Pakistan with a smattering of them in India.

Surprisingly I don't think they were very many out of China.

These were accounts pretending to be Americans to incite Americans into right-wing politics.

And there were a *lot* of them.

I don't think I would give up internet anonymity for the sake of shutting down those accounts. And besides it would onl

"how bots and governments reshaped the internet"

[Tschaine]

And yet somehow the comment that I'm replying to was deemed off-topic.

Re:

[sinij]

For a brief period of time Twitter was revealing the IP address locations of users and virtually every right wing influencer was located in Russia or Pakistan with a smattering of them in India.

Why did you exclude Palestine supporters from that list?

Re:

[sinij]

No, you just want to create a fake narrative that conservative influencers are inorganic. When I point out that X showing country of origin also exposed leftist fakery, which is counter-narrative to the point you were trying to make, you got upset and started spewing nonsense. Do better next time.

Must be fun in your bubble

[rsilvergun]

You've got Google you could leave your bubble anytime you want. You could for example use Google to find multiple news stories and lots of direct evidence of exactly what I described. You could find lots more direct evidence of right wing media being inorganic and billionaire backed too if you care to leave your bubble.

But golly gosh gee isn't it comfortable there?

I mean until it's not. The other thing the internet outside your bubble is full of is people who are just fucked eight ways from Sunday b

Re:

[sinij]

I am old enough to remember exactly what your politics look like in practice, it has been 30ish years since Soviet Block collapsed, long enough for some people to be ignorant of it. You, on other hand, is old enough to know better. So what is your excuse?

Vladimir Putin is running America

[rsilvergun]

You don't fear the Soviets you love them. The Soviets are the friend of the right wing because the Soviets weren't Communists they were oligarchs and right wingers and you love them.

That's why you can have Daddy Trump fucking kids and doing whatever the fuck Putin says and just loving every moment of it.

The US Republican party is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the KGB and Soviet Russia under a different brand name. You're not fooling anyone. Go back to worshiping your kiddy fucker.

Re:

[sabbede]

Why do you keep pretending that any ties between Putin and Trump haven't been debunked? Exactly one campaign tried to collude with Russia to change the outcome of the 2016 election, and it was Hillary's in the form of the Steele Dossier.

There are so many things you could complain about or criticize Trump for, yet you continue to focus on the debunked and baseless. Why?

How many of your shill accounts

[rsilvergun]

Did it take to get that nonsense modded up to +4.

It's impossible to have conversations with the right wing because the right wing never does anything in good faith. The second you do anything in good faith on the right wing you stop being on the right wing.

The right wing is about obedience. You obey the people above you on the chain and you get obedience from the people below you. That's why it appeals to so many people. For some they are cowards that want order and want to feel like somebody is in c

Re:

[sinij]

If you actually believe any of what you just posted, I am concerned for your mental health.

Re:

[sabbede]

American educators and education policymakers are overwhelmingly left-wing. So, why has the left stopped teaching kids to think critically if not to protect their own "sacred cows"? And if there's a problem with education, whose policies must be at fault? Thus, whose policies will not be able to correct the problem?

https://www.efinstitute.org/wp... [efinstitute.org]

Government will not be able to resist

[oldgraybeard]

the Control and Propaganda capabilities. There will come a time when the old TV joke about all these channels and noting worth watching. Will apply to an Internet of walled gardens, buried in slop.

Re: Government will not be able to resist

[Big Hairy Gorilla]

We're already there.
To paraphrase..
57 billion channels.. and still nothing on.

Actually, we were there a few years ago. I keep telling people, just learn guitar.

Government doesn't worry me

[rsilvergun]

Oligarchs and billionaires do.

Getting worried about government is like getting worried about a hammer. I'm not worried about the hammer I'm worried about the psychopath bashing my head in with it.

What's funny is the same people who tell me gun control is bad also tell me that we should ban hammers.

For the depressingly large number of people who don't get the analogy see, government is the hammer here and conservatives demand we eliminate government without understanding that is both impossible a

Hahahahahahaha

[SlashbotAgent]

Nearly half of all major internet disruptions globally were linked to government actions

LOL! Good one.

I guess that they discarded all the "incidental" outages directly caused by Cloudflare themselves.

Re:

[Tschaine]

+1, Insightful

52% of traffic using PQC

[RUs1729]

That I find extremely hard to believe.