https://torrentfreak.com/italy-fines-cloudflare-e14-million-...
https://torrentfreak.com/italy-fines-cloudflare-e14-million-...
Feels like engagement bait for attention seeking. No doubt they'll still keep the Olympics contracts as they are.
'Is praising an adversary on a single issue the same as praising them'. Yes, yes it is
A government agency in Italy which is known nation-wide to complain and fine other institutions for the stupidest and pettiest reasons, fined another institution for a stupid and petty reason. But of course, ignorant people just see this single occurrence and make up conspiracy theories about it. (Really, if you looked at some examples of previous fines and complaints by AGCOM you would laugh your ass off independently of your political stance)
cloudflare have deliberately designed their network so that every IP can serve up every cloudflare website
this means a court order can't block a single cloudflare site without blocking every cloudflare site, causing massive collateral damage
I suspect this is a deliberate business decision: an attempt to raise the "cost" of blocking so high that courts won't attempt to do it at all
and then they make arguments about "it's not technically possible", when it is (farm the target of the orders off to a separate pool of IPs)
and for DNS they could apply a filter based on the source IP country of origin
Prince: please, please, please exercise your empty threat, and withdraw your shitty company's services from Italy
and then you'll watch as Italy then raises it at the EU level, and then you'll have to do the same there too
Not true. Cloudflare can't block only a single web site _by IP address_ but that's pretty common with IPv4, The same is true of Fastly and AWS and I'd be shocked if there's a mass-market CDN out there that has a unique IPv4 address per customer.
They can absolutely block any site they want at the application layer (SNI or Host header or whatever they use, IDK, I'm a network guy).
fortunately you only need to farm out the ones out that are under court orders
> They can absolutely block any site they want at the application layer (SNI or Host header or whatever they use, IDK, I'm a network guy).
these court orders usually work by getting end user ISPs (which are regulated) to block or reroute the IP and/or DNS entry
neither of which can be realistically done due to conscious decisions by cloudflare
I'm not sure if I'm not getting something. It's a for-profit organization vs a government entity. It's not even remotely similar.
He event went as far as personally canceling a Tesla customer's order for criticizing him. That's how petty he is. He has no interest in freedom of speech whatsoever, it's merely a talking point.
Freedom of Speech guarantees the right to speak. Not the right to have no repercussions.
Elon has GREAT interest in Freedom of Speech, it enables him to have far more power than regulating the type of "speech" he showed in cancelling that customer's order.
How is that different from, say, Freedom of Theft guaranteeing the right to steal, but not the right to have no repercussions?
By these definitions, everyone has these “rights”?
Edit: the last reason given was 'impersonation', which I thought was pretty random
When the house is digital (twitter is), why even use spray paint as the analogy?
Pretending to take a principled stand against censorship but then randomly throwing flowers to two of the biggest threats to freedom of expression is deeply hypocritical, and makes it really hard to take his reaction seriously. And let's not forget that really vile AI image that is sure to alienate all Italians against Cloudflare.
‘We considered patenting; we prepared a patent and it was nearly filed. Then I had an interaction with a big, multinational electronics company. I approached a guy at a conference and said, “We’ve got this patent coming up, would you be interested in sponsoring it over the years?” It’s quite expensive to keep a patent alive for 20 years. The guy told me, “We are looking at graphene, and it might have a future in the long term. If after ten years we find it’s really as good as it promises, we will put a hundred patent lawyers on it to write a hundred patents a day, and you will spend the rest of your life, and the gross domestic product of your little island, suing us.” That’s a direct quote.'
So, we absolutely can get stuff done, the Americans just keep buying us up (DeepMind) or stealing it or using initimidation (Graphene) or espionage (of Airbus for benefit of Boeing way back).
We had more before Reddit and Metabook centralised so many.
I think we will be fine thanks
How is he expecting the Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics to influence some representative of media right holders who have fined Cloudflare? Is he assuming that just because all of the listed things are Italian they can just make the fine go away?
> We can’t offer free services in a country that fines us millions unreasonably. Fix your government or lose access to our charity.
On one hand, I agree with you, it's problematic to threaten collective punishment. However, I don't think it's unreasonable to "divest" from a country trying to fine you for behavior outside of said country. It's also important to communicate that clearly, and unfortunately bluntly. Did you have a different expectation or suggestion for what they should do?
I think his hubris makes him overestimate Cloudflare's importance for Europe. Cloudflare is simply not important enough. If it was Microsoft or Apple threatening, then maybe - but those companies are clever enough to leverage lobbying for this.
Now the Cloudflare CEO has set himself up to be at the whims of JD Vance/Trump, while providing a perfect "arrogant US tech company" scapegoat that can be slaugthered by European politics and the media conglomerate that he is threatening.
Europe is too important for USA. I don't think the US administration will like the relationship to go sour at this very point in time just because of this Cloudflare doofus barking around.
Anyways, it is like Facebook CEO and Amazon CEO applauding the Trump inauguration; it is a totally unnecessary political statement which fragments their userbase and introduces a political dimension to any procurement decision involving Cloudflare. It takes people's illusion that Cloudflare is a neutral tech company and replaces it with this guy's twitter ramblings, who is obviously an Elon Musk and JD Vance fanboy.
What we need is an international legal framework for the Internet. And that includes compromises on all sides. China, EU, Russia, US and others have very different understanding on what is right. But hey, I think US politics is America first and cancel all international treaties. Sounds like more problems like this are incoming.
My take was, If you need help from the current State Department, or the current administration, (and I assume they do) it absolutely is a necessary statement. And then, this is them trying very hard to suck up, as is required, without pissing off everyone.
Perhaps I'm wrong, and this is actually a form of honesty, instead of performative theater. In which case I would probably agree with you. It's unfortunate. But I default to the assumption that people aren't children by choice.
When you say "for USA", what do you mean by "USA"?
Are you talking about the general US population? US corporations? Or the person who decides foreign policy direction (i.e., Trump)?
Because Trump recently ordered the snatching of a foreign head of state because he didn't like how the guy danced and allegedly didn't take him seriously.
It sounds like you're just upset the Cloudflare CEO sides with conservatives on this particular issue.
> We can’t offer free services in a country that fines us millions unreasonably.
This is normal and reasonable.
> Fix your government or lose access to our charity.
This is petulant and smug.
My suggestion for what they could have done differently is have a PR team handle the public announcements.
TBF what they did here is probably more effective than my plan, but only because the world is a trash fire.
IMHO this is a time when there are no good players. I support CF’s fight to keep the internet open against encroaching EU regulation while also acknowledging that the US has been a recurring bad actor here. I am not as anti-Cloudflare as some (I have no problem with their pro free speech policies) but I do think centralization of infrastructure is a bad thing, and CF encourages that.
I think this clearly shows the hubris of Cloudflare CEO. Cloudflare is simply not important enough in Europe, and he unnecessarily provided a scapegoat "evil US tech company" for European media and politicians to slaughter. In terms of corporate politics it's not clever for him to attach his name to this issue, why not let legal handle this through EU lobby channels the same way other US tech companies do it in Europe.
[0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/
Don't be fooled. People like Elon aren't pro-free speech. They only want their speech. For example on Elon's X you can call people all kinds of things but calling someone "CIS gendered" is a ban-able offense [1]. Linking to other platforms was also forbidden for a while and in the H1B discussion X shadow banned a bunch of people [2] and I could go on for a while.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2023/07/02/elon-mus... [2] https://www.newsweek.com/laura-loomer-elon-musk-x-twitter-h1...
Do as I say, not as I do.
The only conflict is that Europeans don't want Russian Misinformation and Manipulation from foreign powers onto them. It's no accident that Musks X serves preferentially content from European Far-Right Parties.
The US used the same argument for their TikTok-Ban/Forced Takeover. They also don't make a secret out of their plan to push the far-right to end the EU. They even wrote about this in their new National Security Strategy
Pure Hypocrisy
People always have reasons for wanting to censor speech.
> Pure Hypocrisy
Ironic.
The distinction isn't about "valid" vs "invalid" opinions, as you framed it, it's just about authenticity and coordination. A Russian citizen genuinely expressing pro Kremlin views on their personal account is exercising speech. A state funded operation running hundreds of fake accounts pretending to be American citizens, artificially amplifying divisive content, is something different, it's basically a form of information warfare.
And what I write here isn't theoretical, coordinated influence operations have inflamed ethnic tensions from the Balkans to Myanmar, not to mention Russian-Ukraininan conflict propaganda. These aren't just "opinions we disagree with", they're documented operations with measurable effects on real world violence. I mean this is a form of war, in which some countries want to destroy your society fabric for their advantage.
Every democracy already makes this distinction in other domains. Foreign governments can't donate to political campaigns. Foreign agents must register when lobbying. Do you call them violations of free speech? They're just acknowledgments that coordinated foreign influence is fundamentally different from citizen discourse.
The difficulty of drawing lines doesn't mean no lines exist.
No, I said because it's hard to distinguish, therefore we can not use it as an excuse to enact censorship.
> By that logic, we couldn't prosecute fraud
Fraud is illegal.
> couldn't have espionage laws
Espionage is illegal.
No matter what you do or what you write, enacting "desinformation laws" would require a ministry of truth to decide what is fact and what isn't, a task governments are famously incredibly bad at because they always have vested interests in not telling the truth.
> A state funded operation running hundreds of fake accounts pretending to be American citizens, artificially amplifying divisive content, is something different, it's basically a form of information warfare
And yet it is still speech and not distinguishable from genuine Russians sharing their opinions. It is easy to refute the opinions of many a people by discrediting them to be of the origin of a manufactured propaganda machine. Once you start doing this for foreign people, the next logical step is to continue this strategy for local activists or political opponents.
> And what I write here isn't theoretical, coordinated influence operations have inflamed ethnic tensions from the Balkans to Myanmar, not to mention Russian-Ukraininan conflict propaganda. These aren't just "opinions we disagree with", they're documented operations with measurable effects on real world violence. I mean this is a form of war, in which some countries want to destroy your society fabric for their advantage
I know this to be factual. I'm not denying it's existence at all. I'm making a point here. I don't want the government to hold these tools you propose. Any law enacted and every power given will not only be wielded by a government of parties you support, but also at one point by factions you disagree with entirely.
The "marketplace of ideas" doesn't function when one participant is a state apparatus with unlimited resources pretending to be thousands of organic voices. Your slippery slope argument applies to laws we already have and accept. Lets take US as an example, the Foreign Agents Registration Act has existed since 1938. Foreign campaign contributions are illegal. These laws require distinguishing foreign influence from domestic speech. By your logic, these should have already devolved into tools of domestic political persecution. Have they? Imperfect enforcement, sure. But "the government of a faction I disagree with might someday abuse this" hasn't been a reason to repeal FARA.
Another issue that I have with your argument is that you've identified risks of action but proposed nothing. What's your actual framework here? If coordinated foreign information warfare is real and harmful, and ongoing (which you acknowledge) what should democracies do? I mean if your answer is "nothing, because any tool could theoretically be abused" then you are not offering any policy, right? but basically you are arguing for resignation.
The issue I have with your argument is that you're treating action as a necessary evil enacted by a well meaning government. It isn't.
> I mean we're ceding the information space to whoever is willing to manipulate it most aggressively.
I am well aware that this is a difficult thing to solve. What is it then, that you propose we do?
> These laws require distinguishing foreign influence from domestic speech. By your logic, these should have already devolved into tools of domestic political persecution. Have they?
Yes. YES. The FARA has sometimes been applied asymmetrically, especially against individuals or organizations connected to political opponents, lobbyists and think tanks. It is the perfect example for what I mean. The FARA is broadly defined and with a DOJ under an administration, it is prone to misuse. The DOJ under Trump considered to use it to charge Hunter Biden. The identification of "hostile agents" that you argue is necessary is exactly what I mean when I point to government misuse, as the Trump admin is currently using these exact laws to identify activists and nonprofits as domestic terrorists [1]. We have people in this thread decry the Trump administration for their actions and stances on selectively applying free speech while they at the same time argue for more government power even while it is being abused in this very moment. I am aghast at how this is happening.
> Another issue that I have with your argument is that you've identified risks of action but proposed nothing. What's your actual framework here? If coordinated foreign information warfare is real and harmful, and ongoing (which you acknowledge) what should democracies do?
Do what democracy's are already doing. Issue sanctions that hurt. A large amount of LNG and gas imports in Europe are still traceable to Russia. Invest into digital thinking and digital literacy. But that would require putting your money where your mouth is, instead of arguing for those sweet tools of citizen control. Germany spends below average on education and our pupils suffer. The same is true for US education.
Sorry, but I won't argue for controlling a stupid populace when we fail at teaching at the same time. I will give you an example. The censorship tools already exist, at least in Germany, and they are justified and enacted by politicians that cite "studies" from NGOs like Amadeu Antonio, HateAid, Demokratie leben! or NETTZ. All organizations that receive massive funds from the govt that exist only to deliver "proof" and "reasons" for censorship because of "hate" and "misinformation". Of course, these studies [2] are then cited massively [3] by the media aparatus and ultimately the same politicians that paid to have this information produced [4]. Sometime after, the truth may be reveiled [5], the falsified data exposed, but the damage is done and laws are proposed [6] that enable the government to break and enter into journalist offices and media companies and shutting them down without a court order. All in the name of fighting misinformation and saving democracy.
[1]: https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/how-nspm-7-seeks...
[2]: https://hateaid.org/neue-studie-politisch-engagierte-und-dig...
[3]: https://nachrichten.idw-online.de/2025/01/15/neue-studie-dig...
[4]: https://taz.de/Justizministerin-Lambrecht-ueber-NetzDG/!5689...
[5]: https://www.publicomag.com/2020/07/publico-dossierverfolgter...
So I understand your point but you're essentially arguing that because democracies can abuse power, they should unilaterally disarm against adversaries who face no such constraints. Russia etc have no free speech concerns limiting their operations against us. Doing nothing will allow these adveraries to destroy our democracies from within.That is an endgame of your approach, and I just can't agree with this. So doing nothing because our tools might be misused feels like it guarantees we lose.
I think we can at least agree that the choice isn't only between "government ministry of truth" and "do nothing" and we need a middle ground solution. Transparency requirements (forcing platforms to label state affiliated accounts), requiring disclosure of foreign funding for political ads and influencers, holding platforms accountable for coordinated inauthentic behavior etc etc, these don't require the government to decide what's true. They require disclosure of who is speaking and who is paying. Think of the US influencers paid unknowingly by Russia, or the "patriotic" X accounts that turned out to be foreign run. Those are just the obvious cases already happening. This needs to stop or at least the public needs clear disclosure of funding and origin.
We have homomorphic encryption now. Let's use it in a way that protects privacy but still helps flag foreign influence and helps distinguish between foreign speech and protected domestic speech.
> So I understand your point but you're essentially arguing that because democracies can abuse power,
No, my point is that because democracies are abusing power, right now, we should be against giving them more tools. The US democracy is in an active state of being dismantled because they have lots of shiny legal tools to do it. These very same beginnings can be seen in Europe too, when the EU tries again and again to pass privacy invading internet tracking laws. We are not in favour of Iran building nukes for "defense", and I would wager you won't defend their efforts in the face of critics when they say "hey, we're pretty sure they will abuse it" because it might not happen, even though abuse is clearly already happening.
> Russia etc have no free speech concerns limiting their operations against us. Doing nothing will allow these adveraries to destroy our democracies from within
If democracy is so weak that it needs to be protected from uncomfortable truths and the opinions of its people (read: opinions you or I may not share), then maybe it's not saveable.
> I think we can at least agree that the choice isn't only between "government ministry of truth" and "do nothing" and we need a middle ground solution.
Dead on. The only true weapon to combat misinformation is transparency. But transparency efforts are not what I'm seeing, and they are certainly not what Ursula von der Leyen means when she talks about the Digital Services Act.
I want to circle back to something, because I think there's an irony in your argument that's worth examining. The administration you're worried about abusing power is itself a product of the influence operations. We have documented evidence (not speculation) of Russian operations boosting Trump's candidacy in 2016 and 2024. We have confirmed payments to influencers like Tim Pool and others through Tenet Media, amplification networks on social platforms, coordinated campaigns targeting swing state voters. The Mueller investigation, the Senate Intelligence Committee report, the recent DOJ indictments etc all showing the same thing.
So when you say "look at how Trump is abusing power, this is why we shouldn't give governments these tools", I'd ask: how do you think he got there? The foreign influence you're arguing we should mostly tolerate helped install the government you're now citing as proof we can't trust government.
You're using the consequences of the problem as an argument against addressing the problem.
On your "if democracy can't survive this, maybe it's not saveable" point, I find this fatalistic in a way that doesn't match how you argue about everything else. You clearly do think democracy is worth protecting (that's why you're worried about government overreach, civil liberties etc) So I think yu're not a nihilist. So why adopt an all or nothing frame specifically here? Democracies have always required defensive mechanisms. We have treason laws, foreign agent registration, campaign finance rules etc. So it wasn't about "pure openness vs. authoritarianism", but basically it always been about where to draw lines. Drawing them poorly is a risk. But as I said before refusing to draw them at all isn't principled neutrality, it's just losing by default.
If your defense for going after fraud and espionage is its illegal, are you fine if a country makes censorship legal?
I am all for free speech, but I am not for anonymous speech which is choking the internet. If I am in person speaking with you, I can be fairly certain that you aren't actually a completely different person underneath a rubber mask. I want to at least know that an account I am speaking to is a _person_ and not a robot, although Id probably want country of origin too.
I do not have a good answer for how to achieve that without having a chilling effect on speech, but maybe that's a good thing? I go back and forth on if its better or not to require you to say who you are if you want to say something in public.
In private, go hog wild.
You are all over this thread in god knows how many comments arguing about Germany and world wide censorship whereas this thread - and the fine - is about copyright and Italy. The second they use it for anything else I'll be happy to jump the line but until then they are - for once - using this law as it is intended and it doesn't really matter that there are other unrelated wrongs that you could commit using the same mechanism.
In his free time Ivan comes to HN and poses as a free speech absolutist.
I am not an absolutist, far from it, and I'm pretty sad that you feel the need to resort to personal attacks, even if indirect.
Jokes aside, the Harris campaign openly manipulated Reddit to get their opinions on the top [1]. I was there on election night. The entire site slowed to a crawl. Opinions of people you normally never read gained hundreds to thousands of upvotes. It felt organic for exactly one day.
[1]: https://thefederalist.com/2024/10/29/busted-the-inside-story...
This is a great way of bombing its business in the EU. Just sayin' :)
100% support whatever Cloudflare has to do to win this fight. IMO the timing of something like this in the middle of the Elon + X vs UK censorship fight with the current administration providing support is probably the best case scenario.
People aren't going to want to hear that, but in this case it's probably true.
No, it was explicitly created to receive and study the stream of "garbage traffic" being sent to 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1, which were previously held by APNIC and donated to Cloudflare on this basis. https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-1111/
> APNIC's research group held the IP addresses 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1. While the addresses were valid, so many people had entered them into various random systems that they were continuously overwhelmed by a flood of garbage traffic. APNIC wanted to study this garbage traffic but any time they'd tried to announce the IPs, the flood would overwhelm any conventional network.
> We talked to the APNIC team about how we wanted to create a privacy-first, extremely fast DNS system. They thought it was a laudable goal. We offered Cloudflare's network to receive and study the garbage traffic in exchange for being able to offer a DNS resolver on the memorable IPs. And, with that, 1.1.1.1 was born.
And the ones pushing for these bans are the sport media tycoons: this fight isn't about Anna's Archive, it is about people watching soccer illegally. Because that is where the real money is.
2. Tech donated to Vance (and Trump) under the understanding that they would be a protected class.
3. By tagging Vance publicly and directly, he’s calling a favor.
4. If Vance doesn’t take action, it’s a signal that he’s not worth investing in.
That's a polite way of saying Thiel successfully installed a puppet as the heir apparent to the most powerful position in the world.
I think it's worth noting the quotes around the pro-bono. As outlined by Matthew Prince (Co-founder & CEO, CloudFlare):
> Bandwidth Chicken & Egg: in order to get the unit economics around bandwidth to offer competitive pricing at acceptable margins you need to have scale, but in order to get scale from paying users you need competitive pricing. Free customers early on helped us solve this chicken & egg problem. Today we continue to see that benefit in regions where our diversity of customers helps convince regional telecoms to peer with us locally, continuing to drive down our unit costs of bandwidth.
* https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/a/88685
* Via: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42712433#unv_42712845
It is not charity but a business decision that benefits them.
Of course it benefits them, it's a private enterprise, not a local government providing trash service.
No one also can force them to provide such a service, try to control their global operations which is outside of Italy's jurisdiction, and if they're not making any more they can pack their stuff and leave.
Then I read what you're talking about:
> [...] we are considering the following actions: [...] 2) discontinuing Cloudflare’s Free cyber security services for any Italy-based users; [...]
That's punishing all of Italy's users including those whose job it is to call truth to power (Project Galileo is free for journalists). If my state had a similar spat with Cloudflare would we be in danger of losing the infrastructure we've grown to depend on?
I was complacent and we need to re-think our relationship with them. It's true what they say: there's no such thing as a free lunch.
But as a middle manager of a small nonprofit who makes decisions for my org's web infrastructure I have to make sure our organization's infra doesn't become part of a bargaining chip in a future conflict between a giant company and our government.
Businesses might not care whether he tweets at JD Vance or Taylor Swift, but the risk of having your website shut down because the CEO of your firewall vendor has a psychological breakdown on Twitter is unacceptable.
It is Friday evening in Europe and the fact that Cloudflare leadership and Cloudflare legal team couldn't put out a statement to mitigate this situation within the last 5 hours shows that this guys could run the company into the ground within blink of an eye.
Remember, some weeks ago Cloudflare had an outage because of an extremely stupid engineering mishap, today it is an extremely stupid leadership mishap. How many more strikes should they be granted?
Cloudflare is a business. If the fines for operating are several times the money it can get from Italian users, why should it stay in Italy at all?
It's like when Wikipedia went dark for a day. It punished all users, but the point is to show that politicians are forcing it to do so.
Plenty of activists on the other side of the spectrum note of "greenwashing" and "pinkwashing", nice words about the environment or LGBT+ rights without any noticeable action beyond adding a temporary pride badge to social media accounts in pride month or a picture of a wind turbine on their website.
I'm fringe class bro.
I assume Cloudflare has a great PR team because this feels like a master class in rhetoric. Given how you're expected to solicit help these days.
Rhetoric aside, it'll be interesting to see how the whole thing plays out. Italy seems to have taken out a hammer, and their d.... well, I'm just gonna hope the Internet wins this one.
Did it only annoy you after reading it again?
I might not like it, but I understand it.
Equally, I might be wrong; but this feels to me like the post tries to as subtly as possible communicate that they have problems with the administration (my expectations for anyone who is at all ethical) While still also needing their help. And if I'm wildly incorrect; and cloudflare is actually in love with the administration, then it's still a master class in rhetoric, because they tricked me, which was probably the point?
censor from the Internet any sites a shadowy cabal
of European media elites deemed against their interests
If the US media elites had convinced California to do that, they'd be a "shadowy cabal of [US] media elites", even if there was opposition from the rest of the USA.
Again, don't read too much into if this would actually work in the USA, the EU is not the USA, this isn't that kind of comment.
Indeed, but there may not be. so maybe don't base any strong opinions on that kind of logic.
Consider La Liga in Spain. When football matches are on they have a blank check to block whatever they want wherever they want. Genuinely they take down all of cloudflare and all kinds of shit. I think they were even DNS banning everyone on .tv TLD. Its wild how much legal power they have.
This was brought up on hacker news often.
They also have their apps spy on users microphones and gps to detect where someone might be watching their streams to make sure you aren't doing it in bars. [1]
Italian media is trying to do similar stuff with their piracy shield stuff. [2]
AtomicDig219303 on Reddit when Italy blocked all of google drive.
> Wait, I don't think that your post describes how fucking idiotic this whole thing is. Piracy shield is a system implemented by AGCOM (which as OP said is a governing agency) and basically "gifted" to the fucking mafia that is Serie A (yes, the football/soccer league) to block access to pirated streams of football matches.
[0] https://reclaimthenet.org/laligas-anti-piracy-crackdown-trig...
[1] https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2019/06/12/inenglish/15603...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1mgq41i/italys_pira...
The battlefield has become more complex since 2016, as the old international order is pretty much dead now, so you have competing factions of Atlanticists (US rump admin/UK/FR/DE/Brussels) versus nationalists (US/Israel/Eastern Europe) who both want control of the internet, but through different means and for different reasons. You could also tack on BRICS nations who decided that the best path is to wall themselves off from the open internet.
Each of these factions trying to kill the open internet is doing it for selfish reasons and all are in the wrong for doing so. You’re strangling an international commons for your geopolitical games. Shame on all of you!
> Participants: Republican lawmakers in red states
oh weird, it's the opposite of what you said.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
https://www.deutschland.de/en/topic/politics/the-spd-parties...
And by the way, in the same wikipedia link you posted, there's documentation of Democrats also banning books.
I personally sure want Anna's Archive staying up, but comparing it to nazis burning books is a bit too much IMO
At least we don't ban books from Libraries, because they contain the true history or "wrong thought" and Republicans don't like that
* https://pen.org/banned-books-list-2025/ * https://www.ala.org/news/2025/04/american-library-associatio... * https://cdhe.colorado.gov/banned-book-list
Book bans at department of defense high schools are resulting directly from this administration's executive orders.
* https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/dodea-book-bans
We need to keep fighting for the right to read freely.
Meanwhile, waiting for Cloudflare to walk away from their US government contracts to protest these blatant free speech attacks.
On a more serious note, I'm surprised Cloudflare wants to pull out of Italy. Being a company which terminates TLS connections for Italy must be a gold mine for the NSA.
There's more than a subtle difference betweeen the two.
Yesterday a quasi-judicial body in Italy fined @Cloudflare $17 million for failing to go along with their scheme to censor the Internet. The scheme, which even the EU has called concerning, required us within a mere 30 minutes of notification to fully censor from the Internet any sites a shadowy cabal of European media elites deemed against their interests. No judicial oversight. No due process. No appeal. No transparency. It required us to not just remove customers, but also censor our 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver meaning it risked blacking out any site on the Internet. And it required us not just to censor the content in Italy but globally. In other words, Italy insists a shadowy, European media cabal should be able to dictate what is and is not allowed online.
That, of course, is DISGUSTING and even before yesterday’s fine we had multiple legal challenges pending against the underlying scheme. We, of course, will now fight the unjust fine. Not just because it’s wrong for us but because it is wrong for democratic values.
In addition, we are considering the following actions: 1) discontinuing the millions of dollars in pro bono cyber security services we are providing the upcoming Milano-Cortina Olympics; 2) discontinuing Cloudflare’s Free cyber security services for any Italy-based users; 3) removing all servers from Italian cities; and 4) terminating all plans to build an Italian Cloudflare office or make any investments in the country.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. While there are things I would handle differently than the current U.S. administration, I appreciate @JDVance taking a leadership role in recognizing this type of regulation is a fundamental unfair trade issue that also threatens democratic values. And in this case @ElonMusk is right: #FreeSpeech is critical and under attack from an out-of-touch cabal of very disturbed European policy makers.
I will be in DC first thing next week to discuss this with U.S. administration officials and I’ll be meeting with the IOC in Lausanne shortly after to outline the risk to the Olympic Games if @Cloudflare withdraws our cyber security protection.
In the meantime, we remain happy to discuss this with Italian government officials who, so far, have been unwilling to engage beyond issuing fines. We believe Italy, like all countries, has a right to regulate the content on networks inside its borders. But they must do so following the Rule of Law and principles of Due Process. And Italy certainly has no right to regulate what is and is not allowed on the Internet in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Brazil, India or anywhere outside its borders.
THIS IS AN IMPORTANT FIGHT AND WE WILL WIN!!!
They can only show them their supposed findings to a ministerial judge and tell them "Weeeh weeh, Cloudflare is being mean".
Then the judge will look at the AGCOM analysis, listen to Cloudflare or an EU representative or whoever may raise an objection to those findings, and then, after a loooooong time, enforce or not the fine.
When Bonasera’s daughter is assaulted and the perpetrators released, he goes to Don Corleone. That makes sense. It’s not funny or ironic that he turns to criminals to help with criminals.
You need power to counter power.
The CEO of an American company complaining about the unfair treatment in Europe is more than ridiculous.
The UK has thrown thousands of people in jail for speech on social media, as has Germany. Both of those countries also attempt to censor speech OUTSIDE of their own countries too.
https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
Maybe try to get your information elsewhere than Fox News (based on the Nonsense in all your recent comments)
They are certainly very active in the subject, although judging by the last week, they are not really against it in every case
>The UK has thrown thousands of people in jail for speech on social media
That is just not true, is it. No matter how many times you say it
"Internet freedom declined in the United Kingdom during the coverage period due to a reported increase in criminal charges for online speech"
"A separate report from The Telegraph found that 292 people had been charged for spreading false information and “threatening communications” under the Online Safety Act between when it came into effect in 2023 and February 2025. Some civil liberties groups expressed concern that the laws were being applied broadly and in some cases punished speech protected by international human rights standards (C3)."
Source?
[1] https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-kingdom/freedom-net/...
[2] "Internet freedom declined in the United Kingdom during the coverage period due to a reported increase in criminal charges for online speech"
[3] "A separate report from The Telegraph found that 292 people had been charged for spreading false information and “threatening communications” under the Online Safety Act between when it came into effect in 2023 and February 2025. Some civil liberties groups expressed concern that the laws were being applied broadly and in some cases punished speech protected by international human rights standards (C3)."
Not true… and those that were jailed were convicted for inciting racial hatred and most of them admitted the offence
Attacking other countries without declaring war is a staple of pretty much every US president since WW2, republican or democrat. Carter is the only one who stands out (ironically, despite the fact that he had a good cause to invade Iran).
https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
UK, Italy, Europe, European Union?
Seems hard to differentiate for many, it seems.
"While there are things I would handle differently than the current U.S. administration" and "in this case @ElonMusk is right" are not how you talk about beacons.
the US constitution doesn't apply worldwide
if Petulant Prince doesn't like it: he can leave
You may not owe $CEO better but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
All of this should be clear if you've reviewed https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html recently.
He praised their opinions on free speech. You should be able to differentiate a single opinion objectively from the people holding them.
His idea of free speech does not include critical reporting. The wider US government is trying to shut down the BBC with a lawsuit or has public officials threaten individual journalists to their face, basically nothing is too large or too small.
Horrible stuff. I agree. His statement about free speech in the EU, when removed from him as a person, is still true. Progressive media sources agree [1]. If both aisles, as well as European free speech activists, think something is going horribly wrong in Europe, we should listen.
[1]: https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/germany-insult...
However a fine that amounts to ~0.7% of the annual revenue and they threaten to block an entire country?
On the other hand, if I see you steal from me, I don’t have to do a lot of research. I am a first party to the thing. I can be sure.
It’s the difference between a policeman arriving on the scene of an assault and someone actually assaulting the policeman.
The acting party being the affected party simplifies things because you know you’re not a “confused deputy”.
EDIT: And fwiw, "Why would you continue doing business in Italy?" is not what is being proposed. They are threatening to block 55 million people from ~20% of the world wide web.
Btw, I recently "threatened" Switzerland to withdraw my business from there because the cost of doing business there (complying with their VAT regulation) is higher than my revenue from there (maybe 1-2 licenses a year). The whole Switzerland will not be able to buy my software because of that. I didn't think of posting about it on Twitter though.
They can just not threaten the population of Italy? They are a 2 billion dollar company that has apparently scheduled a meeting with the vice president of the US on short notice? This is going to be resolved politically.
> Btw, I recently "threatened" Switzerland to withdraw my business from there because the cost of doing business there (complying with their VAT regulation) is higher than my revenue from there (maybe 1-2 licenses a year). The whole Switzerland will not be able to buy my software because of that. I didn't think of posting about it on Twitter though.
You have not given "free services" to 20% of the world wide web that you are now using as leverage.
I have my fair share of problems with CF, but I assume here that they're threatening higher latency (i.e. requests from Italian users would have to go to a neighboring country to be routed) rather than blocking.
There is no mention of blocking people in Italy from using sites protected by Cloudflare. From the tweet:
> we are considering the following actions: 1) discontinuing the millions of dollars in pro bono cyber security services we are providing the upcoming Milano-Cortina Olympics; 2) discontinuing Cloudflare’s Free cyber security services for any Italy-based users; 3) removing all servers from Italian cities; and 4) terminating all plans to build an Italian Cloudflare office or make any investments in the country.
Kiwifarms isn't a pirate site. It's just another site that you think is legitimate to censor.
> However a fine that amounts to ~0.7% of the annual revenue and they threaten to block an entire country?
What's going to be next weeks fine? Of course they should block the entire country. Even if they pay the fine (I could imagine there's some way that the EU could force that on pain of forcing them out of Europe), they should block the country.
Shouldn't Italy want lawbreakers to leave?
I'm not sure why would you want to remind the world about that episode. those men lied, stalked, harassed, and threatened a lot of people to get that perfectly legal website exposed to very illegal DDoS attacks.
If somebody wants to read the full document about the fine (in italian) it's here: https://www.agcom.it/sites/default/files/provvedimenti/delib...
Part of this doc states:
``` The rights holders also declared, under their own responsibility, providing certified documentary evidence of the current nature of the unlawful conduct, that the reported domain names and IP addresses were unequivocally intended to infringe the copyright and related rights of the audiovisual works relating to live broadcast sporting events and similar events covered by the reports. ```
So, I'm not sure anybody verified that what the right holders claimed was actually true. While I understand what AGCOM (the italian FCC, more-or-less) is trying to do, it seems that, as usual, a law was created without verifying how the implementation of such law would work in practice (something very common in Italy), and this is the result.
Cloudflare CEO seems irate, and some of his references are not great, but I'd be inclined at thinking he's got at least _some_ reason on his side.
There's a DNS blocklist from media industry applied by German ISPs and I assume Cloudflare was also asked to block these websites, so why didn't I read a story about Cloudflare making a big stir about the German DNS blocking?
The Cloudflare CEO is clearly misinterpreting something that was lost in translation, which is the bureaucrats stating "Cloudflare must prevent access to XY from everywhere". For bureaucrats "everywhere" means "in my jurisdiction". I cannot believe that the Cloudflare CEO is trying to nitpick around a single word that he so clearly misinterprets.
Yes 100% they absolutely do.
It's likely a process thing, Italy has had website bans since forever, but the new regulation applies _without going through a judge_. Some copyright holders can say "this website is infringing" and ISPs, CDNs etc.. are required to shut them down immediately.
A similar system was introduced in Spain, with the same problems, for the same reason (football $$$).
EDIT: to be clear, CF argues that they need to block the DNS globally, and that's unreasonable. The Italian authority argues that they have the skills to do a local block and are just being uncooperative.
they certainly do, they have the source IP and their platform lets them geolocate an ip
Similar to the UK's attempt to try and get noncompliant sites like Imgur and 4chan to block themselves from serving content to UK locations, I think the responsibility for country-wide blocks lies with the country attempting to regulate the space, not CDNs or websites.
I don't doubt that Italy is correct that CF has the technical ability do a local block like they're asking for, but I also don't see how CF is in any way (legally) compelled to do so. Whether or not Italy (or any country) is capable of doing so, or paying contractors for an appropriate solution, isn't CF's problem either.
Either Cloudflare can block pirate sites or ISPs will completely block Cloudflare (as seen in Spain). Which way do you prefer?
By the CUII with no judicial oversight. German organizations like the CCC and free speech activists very much hate that this is a thing.
[1]: https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-cuii-wie-konzerne-heimlich-webse...
Jede DNS-Sperre einer strukturell urheberrechtsverletzenden Webseite (SUW) wird im Rahmen der CUII gerichtlich überprüft.
Das ist freiwillige Selbstverpflichtung der CUII-Mitglieder. Denn eigentlich besteht kein Richtervorbehalt für die Sperransprüche nach § 8 Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz (DDG). Aus diesem Grund sind auch die DNS-Sperren nach dem alten Verhaltenskodex mit behördlicher Beteiligung zulässig gewesen (Siehe Fragen: “Was verändert sich durch den neuen Verhaltenskodex der CUII?” und “Warum gab es zum Juli 2025 - nach jahrelanger Arbeit - einen Systemwechsel in der CUII?”).
old comment: CUII is not a governmental body so what the hell should they need a court order for when doing the thing that their members pay them to do? If your not happy with your internet access provider being a member of CUII, switch your internet access provider. I agree that CUII should publish a list of blocked domains as part of transparent communication and proving that they are doing a good job.
To be fair to Italy, this happens everywhere quite frequently. In my country (the US) we do this all too often.
Yup, this will be weaponized by the MPAA/RIAA
Most Italian authorities like this one are chock full of incompetents, and I'm almost sure they're just caving in to some soccer broadcaster or some crap like that. He might very well be fully correct on the fact of the matter.
Still, the rhetoric of the post is frankly disgusting. No, I'm not taking lessons in democracy from JD Vance, thank you very much. No, I don't think that might makes right and it's unsurprising that those who believe otherwise are so eager to transparently suck up to this administration.
Making public threats in this way is just vice signaling, nice bait.
Because all it takes is men with guns to change what rights you think you have.
If you can't defend yourself against that then you have no rights.
It's just a refusal to accept the philosophical concept of rights. The right to vote doesn't exist because you didn't have to defeat the entire army to vote against their leader, it's just that the leader benevolently decided to let you vote against them. You don't have the right to life, it's just that everyone on the planet with a weapon has coincidentally decided not to murder you, for now. Laws don't actually exist. Any right that appeared to be established against the wishes of the men with guns (i.e. all of them) was actually fake or an inexplicable accident. You can imagine a world that works like this, but it certainly isn't our world. No historical period or even any fictional story I can think of operates like this.
I would say you're wrong. The right to vote does exist because men rose up together and fought leaders that wouldn't let them vote. And, when leaders rise up that take our right to vote and we don't stop them they will prevail.
> it's just that everyone on the planet with a weapon has coincidentally decided not to murder you, for now.
Correct. Start up a big disaster where food goes away for some reason and it comes back.
We have a stable world where we don't kill each other at the moment because in general we all have food, water, shelter, and I would say enough entertainment that fighting each other isn't worth the risk. There is no rule that says this will last forever. Quite often in history there have been stable times, that then fell apart because of greed and malice of leaders.
> If you can't defend yourself against that then you have no rights.
I do not own a gun and I have no fighting skills, so I cannot defend myself against men with guns. Would you agree that I therefore have no rights?
I think that you and the original poster are seeing the situation "you are vulnerable to potentially losing rights in the future", which is true, but conflating that with "you have no rights". It's like telling a rich person "you actually don't have any money" because it's possible they might be robbed someday.
You have the right to vote, if you lose that right, and you don't have a gun after that you have whatever 'rights' that are provided to you by a dictator.
One of the things you're missing here is the idea of herd immunity. While you won't fight for your rights, theoretically someone else will making taking your rights dangerous. Once enough people won't fight for their rights, or enough of the population gathers together to take your rights, you lose your rights.
Or it's an attempt to reconcile the philosophical concept of rights with global politics and observed reality.
Does an Afghan girl have a right to education? A Uyghur Muslim a right to freedom of religion? A Palestinian a right to food? A Hong Kong resident a right to freedom of expression?
It would appear that in these cases, the politicians commanding the loyalty of the men with guns do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must.
Of course, that's not the only reasonable line of thinking. Just because people in distant lands don't have certain rights in practice, I have those rights because I live in a great country with strong institutions and the rule of law.
You see that this view doesn't go very far.
My sister is wheelchair bound with MS. Half the time she can barely see. You can give her all the guns you want and she isn't going be to able to defend herself. I reject your nonsense assertion that because of this she has no rights.
this kind of logic will always lead to everyone losing in the long run. always. there will always be a more powerful bully that steps up to take over. history is very clear on this one.
Descriptively, powerful people have all the rights and weak people have none. This is what we observe in the world. No amount of philosophical thought outweighs actual observations. For example, Donald Trump has (retroactively!) the right to r**e ch*ldren. We know this because he is not suffering consequences for doing that. But Renee Good did not have a right to free speech. We know this because she was executed because of her speech.
You can prescribe whatever fancy academia language you want, but the facts in the real world don't seem to currently support any of it beyond "might makes rights".
Plenty folks of didn't / don't change their minds about what rights they thought they had/have, even in the face of guns. Just look at what's currently going in Iran.
If you're in the US, and believe in your own Constitution, then people have "unalienable Rights" that are "endowed by their Creator", regardless of whether they are recognized by the government or not:
* https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_I...
Your rights are, by their nature inalienable. They are recognized (or not) by individual power structures, granting you freedoms.
Under an authoritarian regime, your freedoms maybe be limited, for example, your right to free speech may be curtailed by men with guns. Killing those men is illegal, but not unethical, exactly because they are infringing your rights.
This all may seem academic to the person with a boot on their throat, but it dictates how outsiders view one's actions.
You are falling into a trap where you can not recognize a true point because it is made by someone you disagree with. I don't condone Vance or the Trump admin. He is right about European governemnt's attacks on free speech.
We're not discussing Pol Pot's views on cooking either, even though he might have had some valuable insight. Bringing up Vance and Musk in polite conversation to bolster your argument is - especially in the context of Europe, which both men seem to have declared to be enemy #1 before Russia and China - a little tone deaf.
No. I'm identifying this one statement as factual, regardless of the person saying it. Surely then, you would not deny the color of the sun to be yellow just because Pot might have observed it to be that way?
People focus on Vance in this issue because they hate him and hate is easy to come by. They ignore that popular Democrats and progressives said the same thing. Hell, even the Atlantic posted a piece about the issue.
there was zero reason to name drop vance and elon besides appealing to their rabid fans to bolster support.
it's just more hypocrisy.
If there was any sense that this ruling was just a temporary mistake that will be corrected by pending regulation/legislation, then a third option would be on the table: temporarily comply and wait it out. But all indications are that the EU is hell-bent on making things worse, not better, for the open internet.
They have consistently prosecuted, threatened, deported, withheld money from, and so on people who say things they do not like.
If the latter, I don't see why CloudFlare is complaining about "global" censorship. The US would simply seize the domains (which they have done so many times before), but I guess Italy doesn't have that power...
Jokes aside, I don't know, the obsession with soccer is extreme in Italy. For people who don't care about soccer like I did, there is so much you have to endure just "because of soccer"
In Spain's case Telefonica (largest telecom, used to be state owned) is private but has a large State participation and the government literally appointed the latest CEO.
Guess who sells the largest football games as part of their expensive TV package?
Guess who asked a judge to order the other telecoms to also block Cloudflare IPs?
EU is pushing for measures against live-event piracy[1], because they frame this as a systemic threat to cultural/economic systems, giving national regulators broad cover to act aggressively.
While football is quite huge in Europe at large, the impact to GDP of these broadcasting rights is sub-1%; however, lobbyists have a disproportionate impact: you have the leagues themselves (LaLiga and Serie A for Spain and Italy respectively), you have the football clubs, and you've got broadcasters. Combined, they swing quite high, even if the actual capital in play is much lower than the total they represent.
Add to this politicians who can frame these measures as "protecting our culture", get kickbacks in the form of free tickets to high profile games, see rapid action because blocks are immediately felt and very visible, and incentives for increased funding from regulatory agencies because "we need the budget to create the systems to coordinate this", and you can see how the whole system can push this way, even if it is a largely blunt instrument with massive collateral damage.
[1] - https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=intcom%3...
https://www.comsuregroup.com/news/a-red-card-for-dirty-money...
The kind of hooligans who love beating up the hooligans from the other team are also perfect from beating up the hooligans from the opposing drug cartel.
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/llglrd/2019...
> To some extent, judges are subordinated to a cabinet minister, and in most instances this is a minister of justice of either the federation or of one of the states. In Germany, the administration of justice, including the personnel matters of judges, is viewed as a function of the executive branch of government, even though it is carried out at the court level by the president of a court, and for the lower courts, there is an intermediate level of supervision through the president of a higher court. Ultimately, a cabinet minister is the top of this administrative structure. The supervision of judges includes appointment, promotion and discipline. Despite this involvement of the executive branch in the administration of justice, it appears that the independence of the German judiciary in making decisions from the bench is guaranteed through constitutional principles, statutory remedies, and institutional traditions that have been observed in the past fifty years. At times, however, the tensions inherent in this organizational framework become noticeable and allegations of undue executive influence are made.
2. parent comment is wrong, CCUI is requiring court action by their members before they act.
3. I rather have companies competing under market pressure to find solutions to topics like copyright infringement than the German state (once again) creating massive surveillance laws and technical infrastructure for their enforcement in -house.
They're not really... let's say, 'on the ball' for understanding how the internet works. It's a bit of a running joke in Italy that their decisions are often anachronistic or completely misunderstanding of the actual technology behind the scenes.
And for the most part they just deliberate, they have no direct judicial authority. They ask an administrative judge to operate on their decisions, which brings us to some of the favourite sentences for any italian lawyer: the... "Ricorso al TAR". ("appeal to the Regional Administrative Court", which is a polite way to say "You messed up, badly and repeatedly, and now we have to spend an eternity trying to sort this out in a court room").
A poorly written regulation from 2003 basically lumped together all gaming machines in a public setting with gambling, resulting in extremely onerous source code and server auditing requirements for any arcade cabinet connected to the internet (the law even goes as far as to specify that the code shall be delivered on CD-ROMs and compile on specific outdated Windows versions) as well as other certification burdens for new offline games and conversions of existing machines. Every Italian arcade has remained more or less frozen in time ever since, with the occasional addition of games modded to state on the title screen that they are a completely different cabinet (such as the infamous "Dance Dance Revolution NAOMI Universal") in an attempt to get around the certification requirements.
There's also impedance mismatch between using the headset controllers and the physical ones in the game. Ideally, I should be able to use my own fightstick in an augmented reality configuration.
This is everywhere.
The reason is you DONT want a law to be too detailed with tech mumbo jombo. If too detailed, it will get outdated. See that USA crypto wars ban in the 90s.
[1] (Polish) https://isap.sejm.gov.pl/isap.nsf/DocDetails.xsp?id=WDU20240...
To replicate the rant: Cloudflare on the otherhand blocks me regularly from using the Internet using a privacy aware browser because I fail to pass their bot checks so that I can enter their CDN based replica of a real internet.
The US doesn't have the kind of website blocking laws that many European countries have.
It’s a mess technically: it mandates ISPs and DNS providers to block IPs/domains within 30 minutes of a report, with zero judicial oversight. It’s infamous locally for false positives—it has previously taken down Google Drive nodes and random legitimate CDNs just because they shared an IP with a pirate stream.
The NUCLEAR threat regarding the 2026 Winter Olympics (Milano-Cortina) is the real leverage here. He’s bypassing the regulator and putting a gun to the government’s head regarding national prestige and infrastructure security.
My personal take idea likely outcome: Cloudflare wins.
EU Law: The order almost certainly violates the Digital Services Act (DSA) regarding general monitoring obligations and country-of-origin principles. Realpolitik: The Italian government can't risk the Olympics infrastructure getting DDoS'd into oblivion because AGCOM picked a fight they can't win. They will likely settle for a standard, court-ordered geo-block down the road, but the idea of Cloudflare integrating with a broken 30-minute takedown API is dead on arrival.
Kind of wild that a private company has that kind of power, both in terms of being one of the few that can offer this service and they can make threats at this level.
Many governments simply don’t have the skill and political will to invest in these kinds of capabilities, which puts them at the mercy of private actors that do. Not saying this is good or bad, just trying to describe it as I see it.
Paying a contractor $x million? Yeah no problem, projects are projects, they cost what they cost. Does that $x million pay for 5x fewer people than it would in construction or road repair? We don't know, we don't care, this is the best bid we got for the requirements, and in line with what similar IT projects cost us before.
Paying a junior employee $100k? "We can't do that, the agency director has worked here for 40 years, and he doesn't make that much."
Variants of this story exist in practically every single country. You can make it work with lower salaries through patriotism, but software engineers in general are one of the less patriotic professions out there, so this isn't too easy to do.
I'm pretty sure if you tried that here (Canada) it would do the latter.
Would our politicians pass a law this unfortunate... I hope not... but I don't really have that much faith in them. The current government probably wouldn't, but governments change.
Referencing the Trump administration - the people going around threatening, deporting, arresting, taking money from, etc people as a consequence for speech they don't like - as the standard for free speech makes this far from a principled stand by cloudflare. They took their moral high ground and sunk it. This isn't about speech for them, just money.
Also kind of wild that it’s a private US company pushing their current political views on another sovereign state. Cloudflare as a political tool of leverage is a level of dystopia we really should try not to unlock.
a private US company pushing their current political views on another sovereign state
> Italy’s communications regulator AGCOM imposed a record-breaking €14.2 million fine on Cloudflare after the company failed to implement the required piracy blocking measures. Cloudflare argued that filtering its global 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver would be "impossible" without hurting overall performance. AGCOM disagreed, noting that Cloudflare is not necessarily a neutral intermediary either. [...]
https://torrentfreak.com/italy-fines-cloudflare-e14-million-...
My risk acceptance is not big enough to have all Cloudflare-secured websites in my country to go offline just because someone from my country has a Twitter fight with a member of the US administration or with the Cloudflare leadership.
yeah it's great isn't it
now all anyone has to do to discredit cloudflare is point to their CEO's pro-elon posts
the AI slop picture at the bottom really sells it too
AGCOM is an institutional apparatus, they operate separately, but not independently, from whatever leftwing or rightwing government in charge for the most part (past Berlusconian interests aside) and everything they do is entirely subject to not getting out of the guidelines imposed by the EU, no matter what they want anyone else to believe.
Frankly the best course of action for Cloudflare would be getting in touch with the Board of European Regulation pointing them out that AGCOM is, probably for the hundreth time I guess, overstepping their authority. And they should stop right there, otherwise they're the ones that will be actually fined.
Hell, I think AGCOM will probably rescind the fine for the sole reason they found out someone who's taking them seriously for the first time.
Also that paragraph is very critical as far as praise goes.
Why not? There are real people out there who wish us harm, are we supposed to just take it?
First off, the immediate appeal to Vance and Musk is embarrassing. I believe he knows he's technically in the wrong for not abiding to the law, so gathering the sympathy of the "freedom fighters" of the web is all he can do. But the funniest part about this tweet are the "threats" he makes towards Italy.
> In addition, we are considering the following actions: > ... > discontinuing Cloudflare’s Free cyber security services for any Italy-based users
He phrases it to be as if the free tier is a favor Cloudflare does to the world, as if it's not obviously a loss-leader designed to get more people into the Cloudflare ecosystem.
> Removing all servers from Italian cities
This is my favorite by far. Does he think that this will start a popular uprising? My take is that when Italian customers notice their ping going up by 10x because all their traffic is now routed through France, they will switch to BunnyCDN, Fastly or any of the dozens of CDNs that do have servers in Italy.
In this political climate, Cloudflare siding with the current administration's general line of "we're Americans, our economy is strong so we're above international law" sends a message I don't think they fully understand. I hope this ends up as being a push for independent European cloud.
rather than pleading to their feudal masters on twitter and threatening to throw their toys out of the pram
Which, to me, seems like a clearly worse outcome? I hate the feudal masters more than most on HN, if that somehow matters for the credibility of my own opinion.
Unfortunately, the EU is not nearly coordinated for such a thing. And even if they were, regulation is not what will make it happen. EU is in a crisis of financial (VISA, AmEx) and software services (AWS, MS, Google) being almost entirely provided by USA. They are not going to dig themselves out of the hole by regulation.
For contrast, USA is (largely) dependent on China, Korea, and Taiwan for chips. But they decided to attack the problem by investing several hundred billion dollars to develop their domestic microchip manufacturing infrastructure [1]. This appears to be paying dividends already as TSMC is already producing chips in Arizona, and estimated 30% of all production of 2nm and better to be produced in USA by 2030.
It seems to me that this is the way nations take control of their problems. Unfortunately EU seems incapable.
There will come a time when the EU is also buying their chips from USA and then they'll wonder how that happened.
Incapable of being a nation I guess
Well done my friend. :-) I'm already moving websites off cloudflare. bye!
P.S: I believe piracy shield is a s*t idea naturally.
It can be both. I run many open source websites behind cloudflare.
It's the same as github. All the free hosting and free CIs and free issues/discussion forums, and free code review for open source repos (90% of all open source projects?) happens to be a a loss leader as well.
Both are still a huge free contribution to the world. They don't have to do it. They could just have zero free anything.
The only people that say that haven't run a site on the open internet in the last decade plus. It's such an ignorant takes it's hard to take anything you say seriously.
This isn't international law though. It's an authoritarian move by the Italian government. "Technically" and "legally", you're correct that Cloudflare is wrong for not building infrastructure to help Italy censor the web from Italians, but sometimes you should break the law if you disagree with it strongly enough.
Please don't take this the wrong way, but I find it interesting that no where in your comment did you try to justify the behaviour other than to say "it's the law". But that is the problem. Why is it the law? Do you think the law is justified?
> My take is that when Italian customers notice their ping going up by 10x because all their traffic is now routed through France, they will switch to BunnyCDN, Fastly or any of the dozens of CDNs that do have servers in Italy.
Completely agree with you there. Seems like a pretty stupid move to be honest. If I were CEO of Cloudflare I'd probably just shut my mouth and censor the internet.
Berlusconi owned football teams, Lotito owns Lazio and is actually in the party Forza Italia, one of the parties in the ruling coalition
unfortunately this preamble doesn’t add the weight you assume it should. what has being italian got to do with having an opinion on this? this and all the other “italian here” takes below. fwiw unless eastdakota is being intentionally malicious, he, with the cloudflare legal team, understands the situation and its implications for cloudflare better than any random italian.
“Italian here” as in “I am not a random person with no skin in the game / I live in the country and presumably am more well informed on the policy he is talking about.
If there was a post about a law in nyc, I think it would be helpful to hear takes from New Yorkers.
I really think Europe should adopt a Chinese approach to copyright, but I don't expect US to like it at all - they started it all after all with DMCA etc.
Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.
In which vein, anyone familiar with The Peering Playbook will recognise the kind of annoying hardball Prince thinks he is playing, but I doubt it works on nation states.
While that is true, the datacenters hosting those servers are going to lose a massive amount of monthly income by not having those servers colocated anymore.
And just out of curiosity, how many small/medium websites would have the in house know-how to switch to a different CDN? Cloudflare fronts your site, giving you an 'automatic' CDN, where most others require changes to your site to work with.
International law??
Italian law you mean.
Why should 1.1.1.1 block a site because some Italian wanted it blocked? Sod off.
Also I am Swedish, so EU here too. Sick of this whiny victim attitude.
Note the "general line". You know, bombing boats in international waters, abducting awful dictators and "running" the country sidelining the opposition, threatening to take over an autonomous territory of Denmark, meddling with German and British politics and generally behaving very much like fascists and a wannabe dictator.
It's a very unhinged, very Trumpy response. The repeated use of "cabal" and hyperbole is, as you say, embarrassing.
It's useful to know this is the official voice, tone, and attitude of CloudFlare. Now I know not to recommend it to my company. The owners would not be happy to do business with an organization that has its politics and alignment so close to the surface.
A group of people who were elected by nobody, should, without any accountability or due process, be able to ban any website they don't like from the internet? And not just for Italians but globally?
Even if you think this is a great thing for Italians (I have no idea why anyone would think that), you expect the whole world to surrender to this absurd demand? Categorical imperative???
Also read the start of the comment. See this?
> as much as I think Piracy Shield shouldn't exist
Free speech loses when people answer to critics of a speech limiting law that they should just follow it.
Yeah lemme just keep burning money to provide a service in a single country.
Is there some idea that CF is a public utility?
Or an idea that CF should just comply with a 30 minutes zero questions asked API infamous for egregious false positives?
That CEO should stop posting but that just sounds like a business decision
"In its memoirs, Cloudflare also states that its services: “do not give rise to the transmission of content on the websites of service users; [...] do not allow Cloudflare to know, control, or modify in any way the content of the websites, which always remains available on a third-party web server regardless of its services.”"
:)))
> In addition, we are considering the following actions: > ... > discontinuing Cloudflare’s Free cyber security services for any Italy-based users
Will move our startup from Cloudflare.
I have noticed a trend post-2020 of a higher level of emotionality and impulsive thinking among government and business leaders in the United States. Hopefully thermostatic opinion engages and this trend reverses.
Would this mean Italian websites would be free from Cloudflare "bot protection" or whatever marketing name is used for those annoying "Checking your internet connection..." interstitials
Unfortunately, no. Europe is not fine and won't be fine anytime soon. CloudFlare's situation is one of the cases.
We can live without cloudflare
Europe was fine until it got disrupted by Russia and the US. But that has nothing to do with this topic here. This is just a company not following a local law. Nothing special in the law (it is shitty like any IP law) or the case here.
Why I actually use American DNS etc, it is at least open by default often. EU loves to censor and hide.
BTW, before I read this Xweet I was a Cloudflare fan.
The CEO of a US tech company asking the Vice President for help with censorship caused you to immediately flip you opinion? And not only flip your opinion, but practically embrace complete censorship of the internet if that means Cloudflare leaving Europe?
..yikes.
EU: Skinless bureaucrats salivate: "Ooh, must copy that fragility machine!"
(snark aside -- either say _why_ you disagree, or just don't engage at all if you think it's a troll.)
Kinda a bad thing to be associated with
As for the rest of the threats: please do. Europe needs less, not more dependencies on USD and US companies. We'll figure it out, or not.
It’s not clear which way the decisions will go in reality. Past experience suggests that tech companies eventually accommodate local laws, trading complexity of explaining this to customers for complexity of implementing targeted blocking tools.
The US is a sick, sick country. Nowhere else does anyone have the misplaced confidence to act this insanely stupid.
Choose your poison, I guess.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Sandwich
The sales are 'made' in the US despite the customer and the "sales team" in the country.
What's equally disgusting is that one corporation has managed to put itself in the position to dictate these things instead. Cloudflare has literally been running a denial of service on congress.gov (any many other important domains) for at least 3 years if you aren't running latest chrome or latest firefox or similar.
Like a broken clock, he's not wrong. But it's the pot calling the kettle black.
Recall the unsavoury episode with taviso, when they lobbied the FTC to investigate him after he helped clean up their mess during Cloudbleed. They always pivot to aggression when challenged.
Do you call your government if you get a fine in a foreign country?
Unless it’s life threatening I doubt that.
That's exactly the type of thing the Executive Branch is supposed to deal with.
If you run to the US executive to assert US understanding of law onto other countries you are geopolitical important, however, as a tool for the US national interest not as a true international company. A true international company would serve their customers in their legal systems. Fight the laws there, try to make them better, but don't strongarm them with other country forces. They are a sovereign country.
It is however the business of governments to foster harmonized (globalized) markets. But the US has killed so many regulations and collaborations in the last year, that there is little hope that this will improve any time soon. They do not want globalization anymore but American first. Reactions of other countries will be higher fines, more regulation and higher entry barriers.
And when you want help to improve your terms of trade, you can petition your government to assist.
> It is however the business of governments to foster harmonized (globalized) markets.
It is the business of governments to further the interests and wishes of their people.
> But the US has killed so many regulations and collaborations in the last year, that there is little hope that this will improve any time soon.
Is Italy's actions here fostering "harmonized (globalized) markets", I wonder?
> They do not want globalization anymore but American first.
If globalization is what Americans want, then that is what their government should be accommodating. If it's not, then the government should not.
Even if "the experts" think something is right or wrong, even if some economic factor or other might objectively improve with a particular policy, it should be up to the people to decide. Self-determination is one of the most fundamental human rights there is, too often ignored by the ruling class.
FYI Cloudflare didn't actually do that: https://x.com/eastdakota/status/1566160152684011520
(Disclosure: I work at Cloudflare but have no personal involvement with this.)
I'm certain it is also quite reassuring for any paying Cloudflare customer that the company strategy is driven by the CEO Twitter rants; That if by some reason doesn't want to play ball with local laws (as draconian as they may be) and the company is fined, his public reaction is threatening to leave the country. Its not the first time he does this, and certainly it won't be the last. This communication style gets old fast, and IMO this actually hurts the company - I'm a free tier user and would never subscribe any paid products. I think their tech is amazing, they surely have great engineers, but I don't feel comfortable financing a company that thinks it is above the law.
The icing on the cake is the plea for a free internet; You know what a free internet looks like? A network that doesn't make half its content inaccessible because someone in a major company did a mistake on a SQL query. Or a network that isn't controlled by a company that basically just said "we're tight with the US government, so f** your laws".
So I don't think it's fair to characterize it as he "only complains about it when his company is fined".
> In the meantime, we remain happy to discuss this with Italian government officials who, so far, have been unwilling to engage beyond issuing fines.
which, although his rant really pisses me off, further proves your point.
I've never liked arguments like this, because laws are often complex, unreasonable, and unjust, and all of us (both individuals and companies) routinely use our best judgment to decide which laws to flout and which to follow, and when, where, and why to do so.
And sure, some laws and most likely this one, are stupid. I always take GDPR as an example. Annoying as fuck, but a good regulation. Well written, well executed and hits its goal.
However, disrespecting and being tone deaf in communication is wrong, ignoring the intent (Italian based legal control of IP violations) is wrong and treating the Internet as a legal free space (or only accept US perspective) is wrong. Italy is a sovereign state and the Internet is operating there and on its citizens. It has all right and duty to do so. We have to respect that.
You can't be a hacker without having any Question Authority backbone or will. You don't have to be full onboard but very few nations seem capable of behaving at all reasonably when it comes to technology. And few even have the chance to do right: American corporate empire has insisted countries adopt particularly brutal ip laws for decades, and made trade contingent upon it.
The Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace & Doctorow's recent talk on the EU needing their own break for Cyberspace & IP Independence are both important revealing materials here. https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46420951 https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence
1. Challenge the law in court
3. Influence the law via political means
3. Try to sway public opinion so 2. may be easier
4. Give in and play ball
5. Exit the country entirely
Of all the companies to make that claim about in 2026, Cloudflare would not be very high on the list I would think... Also, hopefully you're not paying for any genAI services and making that statement?
It doesn't matter if, like this issue, it has absolutely nothing to do with free speech; if you position yourself as a defender of the "open internet", "open source", "free thinking" or "innovation" you get every dingleberry that hangs off Musk to come and defend you.
Of course it's about football/calcio. I love Italy and almost everything related to Italy (I'm a Juventus fan to boot), but in this the Italian officials are way out of their element and behind the times.
tldr you don’t get angry discussing with institutions because it makes you look like an amateur.
I was reading through this and at first I saw Italy as the bad guys, demanding ridiculous asks. The moment the "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes." nonsense appeared, followed right after by callouts to Vance and Musk, and threats that he's going to stomp his little feet to the administration...good god, this is pathetic. He looks like a clown. A snivelling, whiny, entitled clown.
lol, ban Cloudflare from Europe. Honestly, at this point all American companies should be banned everywhere but the US, as every American oligarch like this guy does this "We're American gosh darnit!" bit while this administration talks about annexing allies. Disgusting, deplorable behaviour.
It's fine to defend your profits but don't pretend you defend anything else.
You have the power.
For sure I won't use it for new projects.
> While there are things I would handle differently than the current U.S. administration, I appreciate @JDVance taking a leadership role in recognizing this type of regulation is a fundamental unfair trade issue [...]
You may or may not agree, it hardly seems MAGA though.
(in details: the action was carried out by the Central Directorate for Scientific Police and Cybersecurity within the Department of Public Security, Ministry of the Interior).
The domain resolves (by many DNS, 1.1.1.1 included) to Cloudflare IPs :)
The worst part: because this has been issued by Agcom, it is also likely that this is not caused by the current government. Agcom is a bunch of bureaucrats that do not report to anyone other than themselves.
Eastdakota is right in saying that the rule of law is being disregarded. As a lawyer, and as someone that has been studying Italian institutions for decades, the problem is real and is only getting worse.
I don't even care about the details of the law, what is he aiming to achieve here by disrespecting their government as a foreigner and accusing them of "censorship". Makes wish they'd fine him just for that tweet alone. You do what a country tells you to do as a foreigner, or you leave.
These people want immigrants in their own country who obey their own laws to be treated like animals and deported to countries they've never even heard of before, yet they don't think they're obliged to follow the laws of other countries.
Isn't this guy an HN user too @eastdakota (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=eastdakota), or am I mistaken? I'd love to hear his response to this thread, just as a fly-on-the-wall.
I suppose you're right. You're still allowed to criticize the government's decisions though! This is certainly true in Italy, which has quite reasonable laws with regards to freedom of speech.
> what is he aiming to achieve here by disrespecting their government
Western government instituitions are hardly sacred. Again, people are allowed to criticize them, or disrespect them event if they so desire. What he's trying to achieve is a more just and reasonable application of the law, as it's quite clear if you'll care to carefully read the tweet instead of raging at his supposed disrespect for the Italian government.
Imagine if I were to complain about HN rules and how the moderators are tyrants. That's what @eastdakota is doing. It's one thing to say that when you're posting else where, but not here. he's not having to following italian laws because he's an italian, he's having to do so, so that he can be afforded the privileges of doing business there.
Does anyone else find it difficult to discern truth in this era where everyone seems to want to pray in your emotions. My gut is that he’s angry for the right reasons, but it’s hard for me to trust anyone who tries to use the words “shadowy cabal” in a serious context.
lets be real, they are definitely europeans but they don't live IN europe. iykyk
1. Order comes to block address 69.69.69.69 within 30 minutes
2. Quickly switch Trenitalia to 69.69.69.69. Which is fine, because CloudFlare probably doesn't promise you any specific IP address, so they can assign them from the pool as they please.
3. Block 69.69.69.69.
4. In the whole country everyone who tries to buy a train ticket or check the schedule sees "train service doesn't work because football, please try again after the match", effectively paralyzing public transport.
5. Average Giuseppe learns about the ridiculousness of the situation and gets upset.
6. The government suddenly has to explain to the people what happened. They cannot pin the blame on CloudFlare (as per current fine), so the only remaining scapegoat is the football association.
7. The entire bus stands up clapping.
Just like it's mentioned in Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu, some organizations are designed to extract resources from masses. Italian loves soccer and some big shots managed to get the TV rights for a per-pay service, and that's why they're pushing for so hard. Otherwise I don't think Italian courts would go after people selling pirated DVDs on the streets of Milan.
Then goes on to thank JD Vance, and crow about Elon "I censor anyone who offends my ego" Musk as being right on Free Speech being in danger.
Also the "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes." which sounds synonymous with FAFO which this admin is using to mean "if you resist us, we will hurt you"
If he had just said that Cloudflare is unwilling to comply with these terms and is leaving the Italian market as such, that would be one thing, but this reads like he just ordered his MAGA hat and is going to suck up to the current admin to get them to pressure another country.
Lets add the hypocrisy here too, since he says that countries shouldn't regulate outside their borders, and is then running to Uncle Same for support
> "I will be in DC first thing next week to discuss this with U.S. administration officials...
> We believe Italy, like all countries, has a right to regulate the content on networks inside its borders. But they must do so following the Rule of Law and principles of Due Process. And Italy certainly has no right to regulate what is and is not allowed on the Internet in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Brazil, India or anywhere outside its borders.
Thank companies that transferred their national revenue via shady tax evation tricks into other countries so that their national revenue was nearly zero.
Most large scam groups now have their own ASNs and IP registrations, so CF just forwards them the report and tells you to contact fiberscam.co.za or whatever fake company the scam group has created. They are not cut out for this workaround and yet the largest scam groups have been using it since 2023.
I don't think they are currently doing any statistical analysis, one provider has just 3 /24s and hosts thousands of scam shops, hundreds of reports to CF and nothing done, they won't consider blocking the ASNs even when you show them a report that 98% of the IPs they own serve scam shops.
At this point I consider CF willfully negligent.
as far as i can tell, it's really not about politics or surveillance... it's really just about football streaming, and they push the 30 minute thing because it's important for them to stop it during the match.
it's stupid; but it's even more stupid to do draconian censorship for... football streaming.
The reality is more nuanced than either party presents: Italy is enforcing an aggressive copyright protection regime with documented implementation flaws, while Prince is strategically reframing an anti-piracy dispute as a censorship issue and overstating US administration support for his position.
the tweet starts off pretty strong, which I didn't care for but I understand. this phrase however feels wrong. i guess i don't understand Italy, but isn't this like saying the SEC or FCC is quasi-judicial?
> In other words, Italy insists a shadowy, European media cabal should be able to dictate what is and is not allowed online.
ah, unlike when CF themselves decides unilaterally, not even as part of a cabal, what should and should not be allowed online. got it.
skilled•11h ago