More reasons to push for moving away from Cloudflare, Tailscale, etc. and depending on them for anything critical as individuals and nation states.
Of course, as the comments show, some will defend it as “free speech” or “taking a stand”, but this is just flouting the sovereignty of the nation. Imagine the day they use Google Workspace over your head, and your nation remains as helpless and friendless as other victims of American Imperialism are.
Hopefully the larger public sees this, and votes for leaders willing to face the hardships of transition away from the US. It is very unfortunate to see Tech oligarchs and their enablers (US citizens) thinking they are invulnerable and getting away with it.
Current Italian leadership will fold soon though. I hope they prove me wrong.
(To be clear, I think the initial demand is ridiculous. But I also think this should not be something an infrastructure provider threatens countries with, and calls the free services it gives to keep goodwill and have the influence it is trying to leverage right now as “charity” when they are clearly marketing costs for a company that needs trust from nations to operate effectively.)
@koocmit > In addition, we are considering the following actions: […] 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.
Punishing an entire country for the actions of it's government again. Why does the US government love doing that?
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.
Just so you know, Italy is engaging in a scheme to essentially censor the internet without due process. Please try to give some nuance to the situation here.
Cloudflare has always been quite agnostic to a fault (See their initial reaction to deplatforming Kiwifarms and the Daily Stormer) but something that they do value is anti-censorship generally speaking because of their role as an intermediary. This Italian law is frankly draconian and goes against a lot of people on this forum believe in.
How would you feel if a European ISP or hosting provider would need to exit the Italian market because of these sort of laws? Broadly speaking, how would you feel if Proton leaves Switzerland because of mass surveillance measures? Or with the UK forcing Apple to decrypt users with Advanced Data Protection Enabled?
Opposition to a censorship law and withdrawing services does not equate to supporting imperialism or terrorism. The same exact arguments you made here has been used by countless countries in the name of “Digital Sovereignty”.
I explicitly said I think the situation is ridiculous and Italy should improve. But the CEO wrote a very inflammatory message that attacks European sovereignty. This merits a discussion, and discussions will happen regardless of if this forum allows it.
Exempting tech overreach just because it is in favor of what I like is a slippery slope.
Cloudflare also is not some bastion of free speech and truth, look kiwi farms and assorted debates.
I would normally, bad timing as its getting late here and not interested in the internet debate where we discuss negative impacts on freedoms and censorship where governments don’t know how to moderate or punish entities they deem problematic.
Good luck to others who debate this. I’m unsubscribing from this thread.
Just to turn things back on topic, I think there is a funny trend of US tech companies crawling back to the current administration whether there is an enforcement operation in the Europe.
Sometimes this can be used for good things like resisting the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act or chat control, but often for bad in cases where tariffs are levied in exchange for deregulation. I believe that tactic was used to weaken a lot of the GDPR’s protections.
It’s really a mixed bag here, but I want to emphasize that there is never a black and white problem in this space. Obviously, Cloudflare withdrawing is rather disastrous from a security perspective, but there is a lot of nuance here to be discussed. For example, would JD Vance actually step in and broker a deal between these two parties? Why is the Trump administration so laser focused on Big Tech’s freedom of speech abroad but less so for actual individuals in the US?
I’m more concerned over the role the US government is taking over this spat ironically enough. Threats are threats, but realistically Italy is in a pickle here. Anti-piracy is not worth annoying an ally so there’s that.
What we can agree that almost no governments out there are genuinely concerned about privacy and security from a user perspective. While your data may be protected in the EU, you probably will encounter invasive legislation like age verification and chat control. Your data, on the other hand, will be harvested in the US but ironically you have less censorship. That is until we adopt a age verification mandate ourselves of course
The current US administration has taken up the mantle of defending “world peace”, which apparently includes helping tech companies evade responsibility and fines. A very worrying trend as you point out.
I will just reframe since I guess my rhetoric muddled the primary message. I prefer democratically elected “authoritarians” over unelected tech bros. I do not think tech companies should have the power to threaten those who hold the sovereign mandate of the people.
If the issue is widespread piracy laws that require censorship, go via the Italian route for lobbying and getting legislation passed instead of insulting the democracy. And let’s start with DMCA that plagues all US trade deals if we want so much free speech.
The other concern I have is, why is there no political appetite for US alternatives in Europe? China has an industry that helps it survive anything US throws, India is thriving despite highest tariffs, while EU joins nations like Vietnam and Cambodia in kow towing. France alone seems to be pushing for independence, if only because it wants to profit by pushing its own industries to the forefront, it is still better than the US.
Very confusing times we live in.
I can vote out EU politicians, I cannot vote out the US president. It does not even matter if EU politicians have my interest or privacy at heart, they are at the least directly accountable to me.
Thanks for engaging with the assumption of good faith and letting the post up.
More of how crazy this is: the order fining us notes that Cloudflare had just under $8 million in Italy-based revenue in 2024. But the scheme allows “up to 2% of GLOBAL REVENUE” for damages. Using global revenue is further example of the extra-judicial overreach. #absurd
I’m surprised they only get $8 million from Italy. I wonder what their revenue breakdown by country even is lol
This makes it sound like American companies are just subsidizing the EU’s cheap access to Cloudflare, and maybe Cloudflare withdrawing from Italy/EU would be a good thing for EU competitors.
Hopefully they leave. I am not sure how local companies are supposed to compete with American corporations using global revenue to kill competition while decrying global revenue based fines and competition/anti trust rulings.
The biggest problem is that it is impossible to even discuss this without issues since people receiving kickbacks and paychecks due to their global status will defend them, including Europeans. But the average European would be better off not relying on foreign technology.
If huawei is a threat, so are all American megacorps running the internet.
The funniest bit for me is commentators defending Cloudflare asking US intervention against Italian laws in Italy, while US is prosecuting another head of state for violation of US law by abducting them. Just shows how ingrained the American Exceptionalism ideology is in the minds of people.
And European companies engaging in mass censorship at the behest of our authoritarian governments would be better? You don’t have to like Cloudflare, but trying to convince us they are the bad guys for quite literally defending against censorship is laughable.
Is me saying I like cake mean I hate pastry? I do not get why you think I think either is okay. I just think one of them is existential threat, and the other we can figure out among ourselves.
If you think Cloudflare were consistent about being anti-censorship, I have a bridge to sell to you.
It is very naive to depend on external tech oligarchs to solve social issues within the Union.
It is also very rich to call European administration authoritarian when US is literally 1984. The party has declared the evidence of the eye to be false and the population has complied. But that is all tangential to this discussion.
Ultimately, I do discern a difference between my family and complete strangers trying to but into how my house runs. Hope this does not make me “authoritarian” too.
Funnily enough, they did not pull the plug. This threat is just temper tantrum. Apple complied by disabling it for UK, just like they complied with China. It is just a facade of bravery in public imagination that affords them protection like this.
I would appreciate if you could make it clear what you are referring to, I don’t understand the analogy.
I never said that, what I said was:
You don’t have to like Cloudflare, but trying to convince us they are the bad guys for quite literally defending against censorship is laughable.
i.e. just because someone is a bad person doesn’t mean they can’t still do a good thing, and you can still recognise that good thing for what it is.
Again, I never said this. What you are suggesting is giving a power that should not exist from one corrupt group to another. You are never going to win the argument for increased sovereignty with the justification that the evil American tech companies are keeping our poor authoritarian governments from censoring us and infringing on our right to free speech.
No, it isn’t? How does either have anything to do with the other? The fact that European governments are extremely authoritarian does not say or have anything to do with the condition of the US government.
Again, one being authoritarian says nothing about whether the other is or is not. Either way, both are strangers, and neither has your best interests at heart. In this case, though, Cloudflare did a good thing, so take the win.
Yes, this was my point and I agree for the record (since I got 2 likes and you got 2 lol)
I think this would force EU citizens to fight their governments themselves instead of letting Cloudflare do it for them, which would create a healthier society in the long-run probably.
Likewise, for me as an American it becomes harder to criticize Cloudflare and the current US administration when they are both also actively fighting evil censorship in the EU and elsewhere. If everyone stuck in their own lanes then I could just be mad at Cloudflare and Trump 100% of the time for what they’re doing in the US, instead of having to say “damn these evil guys did make a good point about some other evil guys elsewhere in the world”
Apple didn’t comply, the UK wanted them to silently backdoor their encryption. What Apple did instead is publicly disable ADP, leaving all the same categories of services still E2EE under standard data protection. This isn’t even close to complying.
I’m not sure what you mean by China, ADP is available in China, in fact it’s available everywhere in the worldexcept the UK.
lol)