Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 1001 posts

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#441

Post by Dylan16807 »

tacker2000 wrote: post #77
t8sr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the tweet twice and I don’t see any mention of free speech. What he’s describing, when you look past the rhetoric, sounds ridiculous: a single medium sized country is demanding power to institute global blocks of content on the internet? If that’s an accurate description, that’s deeply concerning for the long term viability of the internet.

He is mentioning Vance and Musk as beacons of democracy and free speech.

Did you and I read different tweets?

"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.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#442

Post by g947o »

gkoz wrote: post #120

A person praising Vance and Musk obviously doesn't value due process, judicial oversight and ultimately decency.

The "free speech" argument worked in his favor this time, so... Let's see if he still uses this card the next time something inconvenient comes up.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#443

Post by NewJazz »

grayhatter wrote: post #156
bflesch wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> it is a totally unnecessary political statement which fragments their userbase and introduces a political dimension to any procurement decision involving Cloudflare. 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 every…

Then why bring up Musk, who is perhaps more reviled than even Vance?

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#444

Post by NewJazz »

tekacs wrote: post #378
Foxboron wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They're threatening to remove servers from Italy. They're explicitly NOT threatening to block Italians from being able to access sites through Cloudflare. 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.

Also Italy would see (very slightly) lower GDP because data centers would have less demand from CF.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#445

Post by troyvit »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #439
troyvit wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: [...]…

He has a point about why they would they offer a country services, when the country fines them more than their entire revenue in the said jurisdiction.

I agree, and I'm really split about a lot of this, because screw this ~blackmail~ extortion AGCOM was trying to pull. The only thing I'd say is that a country is more than a department, and these actions will hurt others who had no influence on AGCOM's decisions far more than it'll hurt AGCOM directly. Maybe it will create pressure against AGCOM and force them to back down.

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.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#446

Post by NewJazz »

deadbabe wrote: post #46
Arbortheus wrote: post #12

I agree with the CEO, while also feeling a bit nauseous at the MAGA Musk suck-up at the end - I suppose this is the game you have to play with this current administration.

It really doesn’t matter what administration is in charge, at a certain level you have to curry favor with whatever administration is in power and hold your true motives close to your chest. People seem to think what people say in public is perfect knowledge of their true intentions. No. What they say is what they want someone to hear them say. There is nothing to gain by saying what you really feel, no one can prove…

Yeah well nobody glazed Biden or Kamala's dicks that hard.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#447

Post by croes »

idopmstuff wrote: post #433
pop_calc wrote: post #325

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 mean I dislike JD Vance as much as the next guy, but I don't see how it's unreasonable to appeal to the federal government for assistance in dealing with international legal issues. That's very much in the government's remit.

Lawyers are for legal issues.

Do you call your government if you get a fine in a foreign country?

Unless it’s life threatening I doubt that.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#448

Post by troyvit »

Illniyar wrote: post #388
aforwardslash wrote: post #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…

He did mention that they were fighting the law before they were fined and they plan to challenge the fine in court. He has also been vocal about other similar legislation before they were enacted or the company got fined (not sure about this specific one though). So I don't think it's fair to characterize it as he "only complains about it when his company is fined".

He also said this:

> 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.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#449

Post by nathanlied »

t0mas88 wrote: post #416
wmf wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about copyright. Seizing domain names (registered outside Italy of course) can't be done in 30 minutes which is what the football overlords want.

What is it with Southern Europe and the football overlords? Spain is blocking half the internet, Italy is fighting Cloudflare. What's up? Are football leagues big political donors?

Football is extremely popular, and football clubs (and their owners) are quite influential (socially and politically). But it's a little bigger than that.

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...

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#450

Post by bflesch »

pamcake wrote: post #437
iamnothere wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Good point.
Post reply on HN