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Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

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Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#361
Regardless of whether the law is absurd or not (I honestly have no idea, but we've seen some crazy stuff lately in the EU), its kinda precious that a CEO only complains about it when his company is fined.

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".

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#362
post #339
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

> Economic growth or lack of thereof is absolutely irrelevant here It absolutely is. Being right (and more so, being righteous) is expensive. When you cannot afford to put your money where your mouth is, everyone knows that sooner or later you cannot or will not follow through on your words. Europe hast lost ~30% of power vs. the US in just ~12 years.

> Europe hast lost ~30% of power vs. the US in just ~12 years.

[citation needed] mostly because I'm curious what kind of metric one uses to measure this.

From an economic standpoint, Europe stagnated behind the US coming out of the pandemic, but now it seems to be the US markets that are lagging Europe in the past year.

Militarily, my perception is that Europe is ramping up, not falling off.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#363

"EU shadow cabal" funny considering that he then mentions running for help to US politicians.

Vance is hardly operating in the shadows. He is a very public figure.

we only see 20% of what happens in the shadow, but yah, I guess its better than 100%

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

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.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#365
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?

I'm a team lead in an American organization that relies heavily on Cloudflare's Project Galileo[1], and I read that post with growing dread. My first thought was that this guy doesn't sound very much like a CEO. Let me rephrase that: He sounds like the kind of unhinged CEO of orgs I try to stay away from (X, for instance).

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.

[1] https://www.cloudflare.com/galileo/

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#366

The appeal to JD Vance is properly craven and validates the view that their business model is effectively a protection racket. 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.

I’m not sure whose business model you’re referring to, Cloudflare or Trump/Vance? Or sounds like the former, but I’m not sure how that appeal “validates the view…”.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#367

So blocking Kiwifarms took.. months of activism and loud complaining. Heraled by Matthew as "this is an extraordinary decision for us to make and, given Cloudflare's role as an Internet infrastructure provider, a dangerous one that we are not comfortable with". However a fine that amounts to ~0.7% of the annual revenue and they threaten to block an entire country?

>activism and loud complaining

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.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#368
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?

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 ke…

> 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

This is a great way of bombing its business in the EU. Just sayin' :)

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#369
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He replies to an Italian user > 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, a…

I think it is a big strategic mistake for him to personally take ownership of this topic and to elevate it on a political level. He openly aligned himself with two people who are extremely unpopular in Europe, while threatening an important EU member state. 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,…

> 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.

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.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#370
post #366

The appeal to JD Vance is properly craven and validates the view that their business model is effectively a protection racket. 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.

I’m not sure whose business model you’re referring to, Cloudflare or Trump/Vance? Or sounds like the former, but I’m not sure how that appeal “validates the view…”.

He's very likely being defensive.
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