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Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

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Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#351

Post by nkmnz »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #283
bflesch wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also wonder why he felt emboldened to escalate like this. Maybe he thinks Italy is so small it can be slapped around by a rage post on Twitter? 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?

> There's a DNS blocklist from media industry applied by German ISPs By the CUII with no judicial oversight. German organizations like the CCC and free speech activists very much hate that this is a thing.

Posting it a hundred times doesn't make your claim more correct. If your rights are infringed, you can always go to court. If you think you being blocked from accessing certain information is an infringement of Art. 2 Abs. 1 GG ("Every person shall have the right to free development of his personality [...]"), you can drag this to The Federal Constitutional Court.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#352

Post by ExpertAdvisor01 »

Foxboron wrote: post #318
ExpertAdvisor01 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the fine amounts to over 200% of Italy-sourced revenue ($17 million fine vs. $8 million in revenue in 2024). Why would you continue doing business in Italy?

They are a conglomerate and per Matthews words "an internet infrastructure provider". Why does the local revenue matter when they are serving a global market? 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.

If they do not want to comply with introducing censorship, then withdrawing from Italy is the only other option. Italian citizens and residents are unfortunately collateral damage.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#353

Post by wrxd »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #320
wrxd wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What market share would they have without offering the free tier? Much lower than what they have now, and that would make for a more decentralised and resilient internet

> and that would make for a more decentralised and resilient internet 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.

I’m not advocating for having no protections at all. Without Cloudflare giving away protection for free it’s entirely possible that we would have multiple smaller provider offering protection at a fair price so maybe only a smaller fraction of the internet goes offline next time Cloudflare pushes a bad configuration

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#354

Post by OkayPhysicist »

tyre wrote: post #281
bflesch wrote: post #11

Not a good look on that guy to list his "pro-bono" services and threaten to pull them while asking JD Vance for his help. 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?

1. Vance built a lot of support in Silicon Valley. 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.

> Vance built a lot of support in Silicon Valley.

That's a polite way of saying Thiel successfully installed a puppet as the heir apparent to the most powerful position in the world.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#355

Post by ExpertAdvisor01 »

betaby wrote: post #347
ExpertAdvisor01 wrote: post #300

I don’t understand why they are tying the fine amount to global revenue rather than Italian revenue. Any Italian here who can explain it ?

It's pretty common in fact for certain countries, see for example https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-fines-google-20-de...

Where does it mention Global Revenue ? It's just a symbolical fine

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#356

Post by UqWBcuFx6NV4r »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #19
adrr wrote: post #4

Elon Musk the bastion of free speech who famously banned a twitter account that posted publicly available information.

If someone says they believe in free speech, they have to let me spraypaint anything I want on their house. Otherwise they're a hypocrite.

Intellectually dishonest analogy but I’m sure you already know this.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#357

Post by throw0101d »

bflesch wrote: post #11

Not a good look on that guy to list his "pro-bono" services and threaten to pull them while asking JD Vance for his help. 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?

> Not a good look on that guy to list his "pro-bono" services and threaten to pull them while asking JD Vance for his help.

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.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#359

Post by nkmnz »

cubefox wrote: post #74
bflesch wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also wonder why he felt emboldened to escalate like this. Maybe he thinks Italy is so small it can be slapped around by a rage post on Twitter? 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?

If the German filters only apply to ISPs in Germany, they have no effect on users in foreign countries. Moreover, Cloudflare is obviously not an ISP.

I'm pretty sure Cloudflare is an ISP according to German law ("Diensteanbieter" according to DDG). You might confuse "ISP" with the terminology of "Access Provider" according to the (now defunct) §8 TMG.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#360

Post by joe463369 »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #282
oytis wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western Europe is not an authoritarian dystopia by any measure. Economic growth or lack of thereof is absolutely irrelevant here

> Western Europe is not an authoritarian dystopia by any measure People are locked up in the Germany and the UK because they criticize the government, its politicians or their policies. I live in Germany.

I live in the UK. This has not happened here
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