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Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

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Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#771

Post by vladvasiliu »

abc123abc123 wrote: post #751
dependsontheq wrote: post #706

Let's be a bit more honest here, I think the Italian law is badly defined, but I also think the american perspective is wrong. We (all tech people everywhere me included) argued for a lot of time for free speech on the internet, but the result currently is that we built a system that is free speech for Russian and Chinese bots and actors. In Europe we are under daily attack from Russian accounts that spread massive a…

WTF? How are you attacked by russian accounts? This childish notion of thinking that only "true" thoughts are allowed under free speech, and the rest must be eradicated needs to die. If you don't like the risk of russian accounts, don't follow them, and follow accounts that you like. It's as easy as that. You have news, government news sites, journalists, newspapers, it's never been easier to find sources to trust an…

While I agree with your sentiment, it's more and more clear to me that reality doesn't reflect it. Many people are extremely easily influenced by easy to digest soundbites.

I'm often baffled by the level of superficial and binary thinking even in "intellectuals" (as in people who hold degrees and you'd expect to have at least a modicum of critical thinking). More often than not it seems based on emotions.

Now have these people spend most of their waking hours doomscrolling some echo chamber on tiktok, and I can see why some may be worried about the influence of some "bad actor".

Given this, and the highly polarized political scene (and I'm in Europe!), I have to say I'm quite worried as to how things will unfold. Hell, there's no need for Sergei and his friends! Just the local politicians' popularity contest is enough.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#772

Post by photios »

dependsontheq wrote: post #706

Let's be a bit more honest here, I think the Italian law is badly defined, but I also think the american perspective is wrong. We (all tech people everywhere me included) argued for a lot of time for free speech on the internet, but the result currently is that we built a system that is free speech for Russian and Chinese bots and actors. In Europe we are under daily attack from Russian accounts that spread massive a…

[flagged]

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#773

Post by fc417fc802 »

oytis wrote: post #492
Alupis wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do when the fine is more than double your annual revenue in the foreign nation, has international and geopolitical implications, impacts many other US businesses, could harm foreign relations, and will harm regular US citizens. That's exactly the type of thing the Executive Branch is supposed to deal with.

Executive branch is supposed to deal with other countries' laws and courts? Does it also hold for European executive branches and American laws? I don't want to even imagine a world that works like this.

> Does it also hold for European executive branches and American laws?

Yes, if a US law is overreaching and directly impacting people in the EU. That is literally how the world works in practice so I'm not sure what to tell you.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#774

Post by luke5441 »

jacquesm wrote: post #528
Sol- wrote: post #394

His tone and sucking up to his authoritarian government will probably only serve to negatively polarize Europe against Cloudflare, even if he might have a point of the substance itself.

Indeed. There was a much better way to make this point.

I don't get how such idiotic people get into those kinds of positions.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#775

Post by luke5441 »

stickfigure wrote: post #249
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #194

Cloudflare CEO threatens to pull out of Italy and to stop offering free "cybersecurity" to its residents Would this mean Italian websites would be free from Cloudflare "bot protection" or whatever marketing name is used for those annoying "Checking your internet connection..." interstitials

Sure, at least the ones that survive DDoS attacks will be.

They can use an European alternative like bunny.net. It's cheaper anyway.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#776

Post by lostlogin »

NamlchakKhandro wrote: post #180
qsort wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Italian. I think everybody sucks here? Most Italian authorities like this one are chock full of incompetents, and I'm almost sure they're just caving in to some soccer broadcaster or some crap like that. He might very well be fully correct on the fact of the matter. Still, the rhetoric of the post is frankly disgusting. No, I'm not taking lessons in democracy from JD Vance, thank you very much. No, I don't think…

But might does make rights. Because all it takes is men with guns to change what rights you think you have. If you can't defend yourself against that then you have no rights.

How are all those guns helping in the US right now, as it turns authoritarian?

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#777

Post by robinkek »

abc123abc123 wrote: post #751
dependsontheq wrote: post #706

Let's be a bit more honest here, I think the Italian law is badly defined, but I also think the american perspective is wrong. We (all tech people everywhere me included) argued for a lot of time for free speech on the internet, but the result currently is that we built a system that is free speech for Russian and Chinese bots and actors. In Europe we are under daily attack from Russian accounts that spread massive a…

WTF? How are you attacked by russian accounts? This childish notion of thinking that only "true" thoughts are allowed under free speech, and the rest must be eradicated needs to die. If you don't like the risk of russian accounts, don't follow them, and follow accounts that you like. It's as easy as that. You have news, government news sites, journalists, newspapers, it's never been easier to find sources to trust an…

We don't have freedom of speech for its own sake because of some inherent good. We have it because it's a useful tool to get other peoples perspectives and allows us come to more realistic conclusions where most feel included. People paid by the chinese or russian government are in complete opposition to that spirit.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#778

Post by jnovek »

lostlogin wrote: post #770
Ikatza wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom of speech is binary, there aren't any acceptable degrees of it: either you have it, or you don't. If there is disinformation, the solution is to counter it with actual information, to give the people better tools to identify it (like X's community notes), and to educate the general population so they will have better critical thinking. Restricting freedom of speech is never a solution. How long until dissenti…

> Freedom of speech is binary, there aren't any acceptable degrees of it: either you have it, or you don't. That seems to be the American definition. We don’t all have binary systems for our views and politics, and some of our democracies are doing better than than US despite our apparent lack of free speech.

It’s not even the American definition. We have many exceptions, particularly using speech to cause violence or physical harm in various ways. I’m also confused by American free speech absolutists because that’s not a thing here and essentially never has been.

Of course this is all hypothetical at the moment, as the current administration doesn’t seem to care much for the law.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#779

Post by olivermuty »

photios wrote: post #772
dependsontheq wrote: post #706

Let's be a bit more honest here, I think the Italian law is badly defined, but I also think the american perspective is wrong. We (all tech people everywhere me included) argued for a lot of time for free speech on the internet, but the result currently is that we built a system that is free speech for Russian and Chinese bots and actors. In Europe we are under daily attack from Russian accounts that spread massive a…

[flagged]

You’re either very gullible or you are the answer to the question you just asked.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#780

Post by mrkramer »

Cloudflare is not for the open internet; they can you kick you out of their service if they don't like you whenever they want, which is fine and legal for that matter or they freaking can have an outage and have your service shut down that way. It's a lose, lose situation. Stay out of Cloudflare, there is nothing good about them.
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