What other option do they have? It’s either comply with unjust rulings that undermine the free internet (and their business) or make a deal with the devil. Either one is bad but only complying has an immediate negative impact.
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.
Cloudflare, the company that regularly blocks me from legitimately visiting websites because their bot detection software absolutely sucks probably is the biggest effective censor on the planet.
He is partially right. The Atlanticist faction in both the US and Europe has been working to get the internet under control since 2016. This project started as a backlash to the Trump election and moved into high gear with COVID and Ukraine. This faction has a sincere belief that the prior openness of the internet is a threat to the international order, as it prevents authorities from shaping civilian perceptions and behavior.
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.
Go ahead and downvote, you know I’m right which is why you won’t offer even a single comment in response.
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!
This is taking place in a larger geopolitical context. He is applying whatever pressure that Cloudflare can apply on its own (not much), and he mentions Vance as a way to call for US administration help at a time when the US is entering an open economic conflict with Europe. Tech and speech regulation is a central feature of that conflict.
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.
Wasn't 1.1.1.1 explicitly created to help people in countries with government internet restrictions to get around them?
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.
> Wasn't 1.1.1.1 explicitly created to help people in countries with government internet restrictions to get around them?
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.
By these quotes, it was created to serve "a privacy-first, extremely fast DNS system", and the service of help in studying the garbage traffic was offered in exchange for gaining controll of the address(es).
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
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.
I'm not saying it is. I think there's a pretty broad agreement that those sites are bad, and less of them is good.
It's much less obvious that we want private corporations (or governments) picking and choosing which sites are good or bad. And from Cloudflare's position, a policy of "we don't police content" is more defensible than "we don't police content, except of this one in particular". These definitely aren't the only two horrible, racist websites Cloudflare has hosted.
IIRC (and take this memory with a grain of salt), one thing that angered eastdakota about Stormfront was that they kept saying something like "Cloudflare hasn't kicked us off, so they're okay with us" or something like that. And obviously that doesn't hold water, unless Cloudflare has chosen to kick of some sites, it lends some credence to the remaining ones.
I'm undecided where I stand on it. I'd like them to take actions like this in a principled way. (And I'm happy to accept that there's no clear line to draw, nor that it can be enforced with 100% accuracy, but if you're drawing a line, do it thoughtfully and broadcast it so you know ahead of time if you're in their gray area.)
"Tech and speech regulation is a central feature of that conflict"
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
>They also don't make a secret out of their plan to push the far-right to end the EU.
How is the "far right" gonna end "the EU"? When my GF walks alone at night through the parks she's never EVER afraid of the mythical far right for her safety, but the other people the far left won't let us talk about without being called a label and being cancelled from MSM for having common sense opinions.
So if the EU were to find its end, it will be 100% at the hand of its own making, from years of corruption and financial mismanagement, from years of pushing unpopular open borders far left policies that nobody was asked it they agree with them or not. That's what will end the EU. Not Musk, not X, not Putin, not Trump, but the EU bureaucrats and their unpopular policies who then use boogiemen like X and "russian misinformation" and "far right" as scapegoats to deflect from their failures like this:
Corruption being exposed on X? Must be Russian misinformation. Illegal migrant crime exposed on X. Must be far right misinformation. Epstein Files? Democrat hoax. Etc but you get the point.
Politicians hate accountability and media channels they can't control like X that risk exposing their mistakes and corruption. They want full control of media to tell you what's acceptable to think, since the internet and social media made traditional state controlled media obsolete. They don't want control of social media and user ID verification to "protect the children", they want it to protect themselves from criticism and accountability from you.
It's not Elon's or Trump's or Putin's or the far right's fault the healthcare in my country has been on a decline for 10+ years. It's not their fault wages are stagnating but property prices are skyrocketing which is what most voters care about. That's the fault of the ECB fiscal policies. It's not their fault public safety is down and crime is up. That's the fault of EU border control and irresponsible migration policies. Etc. you get the point.
So it's disingenuous at best and bad faith at worst, to ignore these long going systemic issues the EU has self inflicted on its voters, and just blame the far right for the backlash it has inevitably lead to.
You're making it sound way more dramatic than it is [1]. And yes X is a far right echo chamber that twists the narrative so that the extreme right get the most support out of it. X is the biggest help for foreign power to sow discord among us [2]
I'm unsure why you're spinning a discussion about foreign interference in the EU into a discussion about Republicans vs. Democrats.
To the EU, it doesn't matter much if it's the Republicans or the Democrats doing it. What matters is that the USA is trying to interfere with the EU's political landscape.
It would be bad if they pushed the extreme left, too. They just happen to be pushing the extreme right.
Edit: Realized I should have checked before typing up a response. This is an 18 day old account pushing lies and propaganda. Were wasting our time on bots again
> ...that lead to brainwashing of Charlie Kirk's shooter.
Oh, you have evidence of his political views now? Last I saw members of the admin were declaring them an antifa trans super soldier until it came out that he was a mormon from a conservative family which muddied the water and suddenly they didn't want to talk about it anymore.
If you want to make a claim about far left echo chambers you should reference a group like the Zizians.
> It's funny you say this when the BBC in the example from your first point was caught cutting and splicing Trump's Jan-6 speech to make a fake statement he never said[1] and is now facing defamation. Biased and coopted legacy media institutions like the BBC are the enemy here and why X is growing everywhere.
Ah the video from the speech that was edit to make it seem like he called for violence on J6 instead of the full length speech, where he called for violence on J6.
I'm sure you understand the fact that an alliance of countries is not held together by the absence of serial killers hiding in parks at night, yeah? Europe has rather famous historical knowledge of what the far right can do, and how it can destroy a country, and it has nothing to do with parks at night.
>Europe has rather famous historical knowledge of what the far right can do, and how it can destroy a country
Since you brought up European history, let me ask you where the far right came from in WW2 Europe. Did they just suddenly come out of nowhere and manage to take over a continent just like that without having majority popular support amongst the population? Or was it an organic growth gaining political support feeding off the backlash to failed policies of previous administrations in Europe?
Because history is repeating itself right now and you're either not seeing it because you don't know the answer to the historial question above, or you are ignoring it because you don't like it and you hope the solution lies in draconical measures against far right parties as if that will magically to turn all those displeased citizens to stop supporting far right, and not making it worse by radicalizing them even further leading to more extremism which is what is actually gonna happen.
You're basically creating a self fulfilling prophecy with this attitude of putting all the blame and focus of state failures on the far right.
> and it has nothing to do with parks at night
It 100% has everything to do with that. Because if you import millions of potentially dangerous and culturally incompatible people from dangerous low trust societies into (formerly) safe European high trust societies, against the will of the majority of your voters making them now feel unsafe in their own countries, and you refuse to backtrack on your unpopular policies, then voting far right is the only peaceful and democratic option the voters have to express their displeasure with your policies.
And you can only ignore, ban and suppress the demands of the far right parties for so long, until they become the majority of the voter base, and then you're fucked and the prophecy you were trying to stop fulfills itself, the far right takes power and uses all the political weapons you built to suppress them against you. Just like 80 years ago.
Like I said before, people are doomed to have history repeats itself on themselves because people never learn, or they learn the wrong lessons due to ideological biases giving themselves a false sense of moral superiority over the others they disagree with.
You see this societal failure on HN as well, with my comments here getting flagged even though they didn't break any rules and haven't been factually proven wrong via debate, yet people will reject and try to silence them them without arguments or debate, same as they reject the other views that don't conform to their bubble.
There is a big difference between right to free speech by citizens of a certain country vs. someone working in the military propaganda unit of a foreign country who artificially amplifies their opinion thousandfold while masquerading as a citizen of the victim country with ultimate goal to harm the victim country.
You are focusing on identity and intent, e.g you are defending the restriction of speech based on who is speaking and why. Knowing the difference between an opinion of an origin you consider valid and one you consider invalid is difficult enough that one can abuse that justification to censor "real" speech by citizens.
Ivan from St. Petersburg calls himself "Heinz Müller" and creates a Telegram group that reports about immigrant crime in my neighborhood, trying to fool elderly citizens with lack of social media experience into believing his fake news stories. It's a proven approach and Ivan's main job. If Ivan would've been born in another country, he simply would've tried to scam elderly citizens, but because he was born in russia he works for the propaganda unit so he doesn't get sent to a meat assault on the frontlines.
In his free time Ivan comes to HN and poses as a free speech absolutist.
Well you see, <my side>'s swarm intelligence is organic and honest and people from <other side> are bots.
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.
If the plan is to sow division, it would be really weird to always only try to play one side. If I was trying to stir division, I would make sure to play all sides for maximum effect. But apparently other commentators here think only one side is being played and its always the same one.
So you are basically arguing that it's hard to distinguish, therefore we shouldn't try. By that logic, we couldn't prosecute fraud because it's sometimes hard to distinguish from aggressive marketing, or couldn't have espionage laws because it's hard to distinguish from journalism.
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.
> So you are basically arguing that it's hard to distinguish, therefore we shouldn't try
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.
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.
I am hurt when I think I am hearing words from a fellow citizen that are their own opinion, when instead it is a foreign actor pushing a narrative for their state.
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.
> I am hurt when I think I am hearing words from a fellow citizen that are their own opinion, when instead it is a foreign actor pushing a narrative for their state.
No you are not.
> I am all for free speech, but I am not for anonymous speech which is choking the internet
Then you are not for free speech. Have you ever considered from your point of view that anonymity is incredibly valuable to people who live under an oppressive regime, like Iran or Russia?
> 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 too, want many things. That does not give me the right to unveil people who wish to be anonymous. It's pretty wild that this is an opinion on hacker news, of all sites.
The issue I have with your argument is that you're treating inaction as neutral. It isn't. Choosing not to act against coordinated foreign influence operations is itself a choice with consequences. If a hostile state can freely run thousands of fake accounts to inflame divisions, amplify extremism, and erode trust in institutions (and we deliberately tie our hands) then we're not preserving some pristine free speech environment. I mean we're ceding the information space to whoever is willing to manipulate it most aggressively.
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 inaction as neutral.
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.
Sanctions haven't stopped Russian influence operations, they've continued under the heaviest sanctions regime in history.
I agree that digital literacy is genuinely important, but lets not kid ourselves that we can suddenly make it work tomorrow, it's basically a generational project. Meanwhile, influence operations are happening now, at scale, with measurable effects. So what I mean is that "invest in education" approach is correct but insufficient as a response to an active, ongoing campaign. It's like responding to a house fire by saying we should invest in fire safety education. Your home will burn down while you do this.
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.
Ha! What sanctions? We are not sanctioning like we truly mean it.
> 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 don't think transparency alone will be enough. We may need to treat foreign speech differently from domestic speech (my last sentence from previous comment), with different protections (prioritizing domestic speech) because you simply cannot control the firehose of propaganda coming from the rest of the world. And don't get me wrong, this isn't about silencing foreign opinions. What I mean is we need to recognize that a citizen expressing a view and a state apparatus manufacturing thousands of fake citizens expressing that view are fundamentally different things, deserving different treatment. We already make this distinction in campaign finance, lobbying, broadcasting etc. So I think extending it to the information space isn't a radical departure, it's basically catching up to the modern world.
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.
The good players are the US on this front. I say this as a European. Europe at large is in a dark place in terms of freedom of speech, the press, and other issues like immigration. And the US might eventually have to be the ones to apply force to hold our leaders accountable, ironic as that is given history.
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.
I may have missed something but Akamai seem to be living proof that it's possible to operate that kind of business at scale from the US without vice signalling or publicly sucking up to fascist authoritarians.
CF is a US company, the EU has the right to make their own - misguided - laws. And CF has the option to simply stop doing business with Italy, or comply with the law. This stupid grandstanding is just a thinly veiled attempt at blackmail which I'm sure will very much impress the legislators and the judges of the country to which it is addressed. /s
In case people can’t/don’t want to read something on X, here is the statement:
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.
It's not "quasi-judicial". They have no judicial authority, at all, despite how they present themselves.
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.
If you are ok with the low quality, you could use a radio to transmit fast scan TV to a nearby receiver. Use a repeater if you need to get some real distance.
FPV drones often use this and could be a good source of parts. Or encode the feed and send through a small portable ham radio if you want a challenge. https://irrational.net/2014/03/02/digital-atv/
So is Wikipedia, the internet in general, the library, Home Depot, a rental vehicle, or a basic working knowledge of chemistry. What’s the point in stating the obvious?
You may also see stores revert to the 20th century model of having the mafia serve as private security. One reason they were so successful in some areas is that they were less corrupt and more responsive than the police.
The bad thing about mafia enforcement is you don’t get civil rights. Oh, and if the mob boss wants a favor then you’re going to have to oblige, even if it puts you at risk.
If police and DAs don’t take their jobs seriously, this is what they are inviting back into society.
It’s unreliable and difficult. The most recent failure (made the news) was the laughable attempt to link the J6 bomber to a random police officer. Gait analysis belongs in the movies or maybe in some one-off national security investigation where nothing else is available.
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.
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