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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-Cortin

• Hikikomori 9mo ago
  Was with him in the first part, then wtf. Vance and the others dont stand for free speech either, it's only their own speech that matters and they'll proudly ban anything else.
• everfrustrated 9mo ago
  It seems the panel that fined him is politically appointed so seems reasonable to reach for politics to attempt to fight/resolve it.
  • oaiey 9mo ago
    The panel is backed by a law. Respect the law. Italy has a judicial system and in cases like this, probably some EU court could be also called. US politicians can reach out to EU/Italian politics to harmonize trade... But wait, do not we kill trade deals. They are so unfair (aka. compromises)
• wmf 9mo ago
  Politics tends to work that way.
• grayhatter 9mo ago
  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, and unfortunately bluntly. Did you have a different expectation or suggestion for what they should do?
  • bflesch 9mo ago
    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, then maybe - but those companies are clever enough to leverage lobbying for this. Now the Cloudflare CEO has set himself up to be at the whims of JD Vance/Trump, while providing a perfect "arrogant US tech company" scapegoat that can be slaugthered by European politics and the media conglomerate that he is 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. Anyways, it is like Facebook CEO and Amazon CEO applauding the Trump inauguration; it is a totally unnecessary political statement which fragments their userbase and introduces a political dimension to any procurement decision involving Cloudflare. It takes people's illusion that Cloudflare is a neutral tech company and replaces it with this guy's twitter ramblings, who is obviously an Elon Musk and JD Vance fanboy.
    • tacker2000 9mo ago
      I agree, he seems to be ranting and escalating unnecessarily.
      • jules 9mo ago
        The are fining his company 213% of yearly Italian revenue. He is not the one escalating.
        • oaiey 9mo ago
          He took a risk in ignoring a law instead of exiting the market. They did not escalate, they applied the law. What we need is an international legal framework for the Internet. And that includes compromises on all sides. China, EU, Russia, US and others have very different understanding on what is right. But hey, I think US politics is America first and cancel all international treaties. Sounds like more problems like this are incoming.
• iamnothere 9mo ago
  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 keep the internet open against encroaching EU regulation while also acknowledging that the US has been a recurring bad actor here. I am not as anti-Cloudflare as some (I have no problem with their pro free speech policies) but I do think centralization of infrastructure is a bad thing, and CF encourages that.
  • bflesch 9mo ago
    "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." I think this clearly shows the hubris of Cloudflare CEO. Cloudflare is simply not important enough in Europe, and he unnecessarily provided a scapegoat "evil US tech company" for European media and politicians to slaughter. In terms of corporate politics it's not clever for him to attach his name to this issue, why not let legal handle this through EU lobby channels the same way other US tech companies do it in Europe.
    • sroussey 9mo ago
      Cloudflare should just block Italy altogether.
      • anthk 9mo ago
        Add Spain with LaLiga on top too. Inb4 "the CF CEO it's a right winger", so it's the Soccer -LaLiga- CEO.
    • foxglacier 9mo ago
      His hubris isn't news. Remember when he woke up in the middle of the night and blocked some website because he personally didn't like it?
• fph 9mo ago
  It is not unrealistic at all. The Olympics are run by politicians, essentially, since they appoint the committees, make the investments, build the infrastructure. And the ones pushing for these bans are the sport media tycoons: this fight isn't about Anna's Archive, it is about people watching soccer illegally. Because that is where the real money is.
  • oaiey 9mo ago
    Yeah correct. I hate this so much in this topic. I hate the disrespect for the law in this topic here but he is right here. The Olympics, soccer and all the other sports (but also other billionaires businesses) have to be put back in their place. How is FIFA able to prevent me from drinking my favourite beer in the city center of my favourite town just because world cup is on town.
    • fph 9mo ago
      Another legitimate complaint is how much police force is deployed each week in and around stadiums. The public pays the costs for security, big soccer gets the profits.
• x0x0 9mo ago
  Cloudflare really is all in on "we happily host pirate sites and tada, they're not in your country so we'll do nothing about it at all."
• satellite2 9mo ago
  Exactly, his whole tirade felt extraordinarily far fetched, sketchy if not outright racist.
• tyre 9mo ago
  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.
  • OkayPhysicist 9mo ago
    > 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.
    • pelorat 9mo ago
      The USA was always on the path on becoming a corpocracy, not a democracy. Musk/Thiel and their puppet JD Vance has cemented it.
• throw0101d 9mo ago
  > 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 https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/a/88685 * Via: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42712433#unv_42712845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42712433#unv_42712845 It is not charity but a business decision that benefits them.
  • itopaloglu83 9mo ago
    > It is not charity but a business decision that benefits them. Of course it benefits them, it's a private enterprise, not a local government providing trash service. No one also can force them to provide such a service, try to control their global operations which is outside of Italy's jurisdiction, and if they're not making any more they can pack their stuff and leave.
• troyvit 9mo ago
  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/ https://www.cloudflare.com/galileo/
  • tokioyoyo 9mo ago
    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.
    • troyvit 9mo ago
      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.
      • HDThoreaun 9mo ago
        Cloudflare has very limited leverage here. Punishing the entire country for the actions of their elected government in hope of protest is about as good as they can do other than hoping Trump does something crazy. Every italian citizen has some say over their governments actions, even if they dont support them.
• resonious 9mo ago
  Is there some more context then the original post? All I see is CF CEO saying that Vance agrees with the idea that these laws are bad.