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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 m

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 amounts of desinformation, deep fakes, just emotional appeals with the goal of destroying liberal democracy. The US government is actively trying to support them by fighting against any kind of European rules and spreading their part of desinformation. This is not about normal politics, Europe is under siege.

budududuroiu 9mo ago
> In Europe we are under daily attack from Russian accounts that spread massive amounts of desinformation, deep fakes, just emotional appeals with the goal of destroying liberal democracy. The disinformation campaigns have always been there, the reason they're growing roots in the mind of the average European is because the EU is spending it's razor thon political capital on things Chat Control, Digital Omnibus which are wildly unpopular. Isn't it a bit ironic that in order to protect "liberal democracy" you need to reach out for authoritarian suppression?
- StrauXX 9mo ago
  The average person in Europe does neither care about chat control, nor have they heared more about tgan one or two surface-level news articles. Russian propaganda being more and more effective and these actions are not related.
  - budududuroiu 9mo ago
    Russian propaganda is effective because the EU leadership has dropped the ball so hard that the Kremlin looks attractive. People aren't as stupid as you think
- dependsontheq 9mo ago
  Yes we need to restrict the freedom of non citizens to influence our debates. And we need to have rules how digital platforms can influence our internal debates, we had this rules for TV and newspapers. That's not suppression thats's defense.
  - budududuroiu 9mo ago
    How do you restrict the freedom of non-citizens without restricting the freedom of citizens too? My parents and grandparents didn't fight against the Romanian authoritarian regime for reading of confidential communications to come back under a EU banner instead. The EU is more of a threat to itself than Russia is, the only reason the "Russian propaganda" has teeth is because the current bureaucrat class in the EU Council have outlived their Mandate of Heaven
    - tankenmate 9mo ago
      "The EU is more of a threat to itself than Russia is"; it can be easily argued that this is only the case if democracy has little value because in Russia democracy does indeed have little value (let alone life, etc). "Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" So the EU and the EC are big lumbering organisation that make poor decisions; but then people make poor decisions day in day out. But just because you *feel* disaffected doesn't mean the system is inherently wrong (unless of course you believe that politics' primary, if not only, purpose is to make you "feel good(tm)"). It's probably far more accurate to say that wealth inequality is the EU's biggest threat and that "the elites" (which is more than just senior politicians and bureaucrats) don't feel the pain of inequality and so aren't internally motivated to do much about it (culture eats strategy for breakfast, etc etc).
    - whilenot-dev 9mo ago
      For me, it's a matter of authenticity at scale... Let's assume I want every citizen to navigate the web freely while fighting propaganda machines as much as possible, so that means I want an automated system that creates the set difference between these two in real-time, as reliable as possible. To create such a system, and since there shouldn't be any overlap in these two sets, I can effectively put my efforts in half if I put my work in the detection of one such set. The scaling problem, as I see it here, arises from the following: While the set of individual citizens (kind of) has an upper limit, represented by the number of internet users worldwide, the botnet nodes in propaganda machines do not. I can limit the set further, for example if I want to focus on the citizens that are part of my government only, whereas propaganda machines can come from anywhere on the globe. Internet users already need to provide a proof on authentication for quite a lot of services, while botnets generally want to avoid being identified as such. While I'm far from in favor of Chat Control, I can somewhat understand why these initiatives are in motion at all. > The EU is more of a threat to itself than Russia is To put it mildly, this conclusion is non-sequitur at best.
rotarycellphone 9mo ago
[flagged]
- dependsontheq 9mo ago
  an account created 5 minutes ago
  - budududuroiu 9mo ago
    Their point still stands though
    - whilenot-dev 9mo ago
      It isn't even obvious to me which country GP refers to when they write "i already live in one". No reasonable individual would criticize "liberal politicians" and "electronic dictatorship" without making it absolutely clear where they are coming from. This obfuscation seems like a deliberate choice and makes any standing point balancing on crutches.
    - AlexeyBelov 9mo ago
      No. Troll accounts are not a good thing.
  - ErroneousBosh 9mo ago
    HN should put the IP addresses that comments from brand new accounts are posted from right beside the name. I bet you'd be able to plot some pretty interesting maps from that.
    - Bender 9mo ago
      Maybe the first two octets but HN does not block proxies, VPS nodes, servers, etc... The site would have to block such things for new accounts and store the IP used to create the account for that information to be useful assuming residential shady VPN's were not used. I doubt that level of change would occur here given the topic of dark mode comes up often.
CrzyLngPwd 9mo ago
Well, we cry "freedom of speech" when Russia/China/adversary shuts our propaganda-pushing media or tools out. Freedom of speech for me, not for thee, eh? I don't want my politicians deciding what is good or bad on the internet. I'm an adult, and I can decide for myself.
- scrollaway 9mo ago
  > I don't want my politicians deciding what is good or bad on the internet. I'm an adult, and I can decide for myself. The issue isn't whether politicians are deciding what's good or bad. The issue is that, in Europe, foreign actors with explicit ill intent are deciding a ton of the content your neighbours are watching/reading, day in day out, on the internet. AI has made this easier and even more scalable than before. This content is being used to influence or outright decide elections. Elections of more politicians that are "deciding what's good or bad", eh. Such as politicians deciding that Russia is good. What the actual fuck do we do to defend ourselves, pray tell? The whole "let them have critical thinking" doesn't work, we are under active war and citizens who don't know better are specifically targeted. And besides, we are not gonna take lessons from the country that yelled high and mighty for years they're the land of the free, and let itself fall into complete autocracy & dictatorship. In the US, those same citizens are the useful tools repeating state propaganda, two steps removed from "Just Following Orders". And full context: I agree with Matt and support Cloudflare's stance here. But people can quit it with cheap retorts like "Freedom of speech for me, not for thee". It's not that simple.
  - nxm 9mo ago
    into complete autocracy & dictatorship....ummm you mean a democratically elected president & government? Plus these hyperboles don't really resonate anymore as they've been used for every little thing people don't like. It's still a democracy even if you don't like the outcome.
    - scrollaway 9mo ago
      [flagged]
fc417fc802 9mo ago
How is Cloudflare refusing to comply with DNS censorship even remotely related to propaganda campaigns conducted by the geopolitical opponent of your personal choosing? Not only does it seem like you've gone off topic to push a personal agenda, you're presenting a false dichotomy. We could (if we wanted to) wall our networks off along national boundaries while still preserving freedom of speech within our enclave. I don't think that would be a good idea nor do I think the execution of such an initiative would be likely to go smoothly but the example serves to illustrate that there's a huge potential solution space. Personally what I don't understand is why Cloudflare didn't stop offering access to 1.1.1.1 from Italian addresses. At the end of the day picking a direct fight with the government of a jurisdiction you operate in seems extremely unwise. I fail to see the upside for them here. Actually assuming they don't intentionally operate 1.1.1.1 from within Italy how is it CF's problem if Italians access it? Shouldn't this be on the Italian telecoms to filter traffic to this dastardly "illegal" foreign resolver?
- 7bit 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - fc417fc802 9mo ago
    Well, yeah, I suppose that on occasion a view expressed by an American could happen to overlap with the propaganda of any given geopolitical adversary. Similar to the principle of a broken clock being right twice a day. I have to say though, reflexively responding in that manner gives the impression of being quite radicalized. I don't think that's the level of discourse expected on HN.
- Karuhanga 9mo ago
  I think the upside is drawing a line in the sand now before they tighten requests any further and (maybe) not losing the revenue from some genuinely illegal pirating services that use them.
abc123abc123 9mo ago
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 and compare them against each other. Screaming murder because Sergei6778 says that Ukraine is evil is just stupid. Take responsibility for your own reading and mind, and stop using the law as a hamfisted tool to stop free speech. Take the bad with the good, or else there won't be any good left in the future.
- vladvasiliu 9mo ago
  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.
- robinkek 9mo ago
  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.
- saubeidl 9mo ago
  I don't like the risk of the mouth-breather next door reading Russian propaganda, it's not myself I'm concerned about. In a democracy, most people are unfortunately stupid and easily manipulable. We can't let the Russians (or the Americans!) use them as their proxy.
Ikatza 9mo ago
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 dissenting opinions are censored because somebody labels them "disinformation"? Who watches the watchmen? etc. I'd rather live in a society with full freedom of speech and disinformation from State actors than have only 100% accurately vetted news.
- lostlogin 9mo ago
  > 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.
  - jnovek 9mo ago
    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.
- thefounder 9mo ago
  >> If there is disinformation, the solution is to counter it with actual information So what you argue is that we should build good bots to counter the bad bots right? and all this in a "secret" to avoid suspension by the tech companies. This looks like playing stupid games. The disinformation in this era can basically shadow any kind of legitimate "counter-disinformation". To make the game fair we would first need lockdown the internet content on citizen ID authorization so that we can identify if the free speach spread is actually published by a real person or some chinese bot pretending to be a single European mom with 3 kids. This is not something anyone wants so I think the current trade off of court orders to take down content is legitimate and the best approach. Cloudflare, the tech companies and US government likes the absolute free speech like everything else (i.e. free market) as long as it serves their interests. I wouldn't be surprised to see Cloudflare proudly repelling some "chinese propaganda attacks" and frame it like a cyber security win instead of anti-free speech action.
babarock 9mo ago
I think this is moving the goal post. Cloudflare isn't challenging the need to restrict access to some websites, it is challenging who has the right to decide. Quoting the tweet: > We believe Italy, like all countries, has a right to regulate the content on networks inside its borders. But they must do so following the Rule of Law and principles of Due Process. I live in Italy, I'm a citizen. I don't feel any safer having the internet regulated by a bunch of bureaucrats than I do state actors and bots.
- bambax 9mo ago
  Bureaucrats are a problem, but they're eventually accountable to the people. Companies are accountable to shareholders located in another country, who don't give a damn about whatever so long as the money keeps coming. I choose bureaucrats against businessmen anytime.
kevin061 9mo ago
I see lots of disagreements here, but I must say I also soured on free speech. I used to think that free speech was necessary and overall a positive for society. Then I saw the Capitol attack in US. The disinformation spread in England about kids stabbed that led to riots. I see disinformation every day, especially from USA, saying Europe has no freedom, that it's overrun with criminals, and people not only believe it, but vote accordingly. This has to stop. Humans weren't trained to use rationality and reasoning every second of their life. Reason costs a lot of cognitive power so the brain implements a hundred shortcuts. For example: if you see something appear frequently, you assume it to be true. This is good for avoiding poisonous plants, but it's terrible when you go in Twitter and you're spammed with the same lies day and night. It's messing with us. Enough is enough. Free speech with guardrails. You should be able to insult and criticise the Prime Minister. You should not be able to gain a position of power and then go on a crowded stage to claim that vaccines cause autism. This is intolerable. We are attacking the foundations of society. People are not rational actors. Not you, and not me. We are very simple animals.
- vladvasiliu 9mo ago
  I agree that people clearly don't use critical thinking 100% of the time and are easily influenced. But you're basically arguing for not criticizing the status quo. Many social improvements have been attained by "attacking the foundations of society". How would you like living under some absolute monarchy? How do you think gay people would like to live in a church-run society like 500 years ago?
  - tankenmate 9mo ago
    "But you're basically arguing for not criticizing the status quo.", but that wasn't what was argued ("You should be able to insult and criticise the Prime Minister."), but more your interpretation of what was said. You're making a strawman argument.
    - vladvasiliu 9mo ago
      Well, the PM isn't exactly the status quo, I wasn't replying to that. Rather, I was responding to this specific bit, emphasis mine: > You should not be able to gain a position of power and then go on a crowded stage to claim that vaccines cause autism. This is intolerable. We are attacking the foundations of society. Not sure when the strawman is. "The foundations of society", for me, means "the way things are". Which can be vaccines, sure, or any kind of general policy which has been showed to have a positive effect on society, but it can also be all kinds of things taken for granted which aren't necessarily rooted in reason.
photios 9mo ago
[flagged]
- olivermuty 9mo ago
  You’re either very gullible or you are the answer to the question you just asked.
  - mlrtime 9mo ago
    Or, OP may agree there are Russian bots, but they aren't "in the room right now" because they are not a major risk. They are not a major risk vs letting a government agency dictate to Cloudflare to take down a site globally.
- sethops1 9mo ago
  Yes. There are numerous fresh accounts being created to flood this very thread.
kamma4434 9mo ago
That would be a political perspective. But what we are discussing now is some very rich football clubs who have a right to filter anything on the internet because they say so.
Nextgrid 9mo ago
> we are under daily attack from Russian accounts We would go a long way if our communication platforms weren't intentionally amplifying the most controversial voices for the sake of maximizing ad revenue. Back in the day the Russians needed to spend money to buy influence. Now they can just make their propaganda engaging enough and Western companies will happily host it and promote it for free.
- xilaraux 9mo ago
  > Now they can just make their propaganda engaging enough and Western companies will happily host it and promote it for free. Important to distinguish here that all of these companies are not just Western but American.
  - ndsipa_pomu 9mo ago
    I'm sure there's examples of non-US media companies pushing ragebait and similar. e.g. from the UK, there's BBC, Telegraph, Daily Mail, local news sites etc. It's a perverse incentive that in chasing engagement, the ragebait is selected for.
  - RuslanL 9mo ago
    Do we have comparable European companies though?
- throw__away7391 9mo ago
  This is the entire problem. This is possibly the single problem in the modern world. When social media first appeared, "feeds" were based on explicit subscription by the users and ordered chronologically. Later "likes" were added, but this was still based on deliberate user behavior and simple deterministic sorting while the ability to "repost" greatly expanded the reach of individual posts, later algorithms were introduced then the number of signals expanded beyond explicit user input to implicit engagement measures. Each step along this path has taken agency away from individuals. I read articles and comments about people who were fired or suffered other consequences for something they said online, and the responses are righteous indignation--they ought to have known better than to post these things online! How did we get into this fucked up state of affairs? Social media started off as a way to talk to your friends, and over time your friends have been replaced with strangers, what they can say and who gets to say what controlled by centralized authorities, while individuals have been taught to self-censor. It is not only the US companies or Russian bots, every government in the world is itching to get their thumb on the scale here to have a say in what the people are allowed to see, to hear, and to say.
Saline9515 9mo ago
Russian bots and subversive propaganda in general take hold when the quality and diversity of the media decreases, which leads citizens to listen to alternative narratives. The tipping point happened during covid - the authorities were so synced up with the media, and the online censorship became so prevalent that the official narrative felt deeply off, coordinated, and often contradictory. There was no debate in the EU, we had to lock down all of the countries, with no alternative (for instance, protect old people but let younger ones live their lives) possible. Given how Orwellian and borderline crazy average media discourse had become, especially after the vaccine was out, I saw many people start looking elsewhere. My mother was one of them. She had consumed mostly state media her whole life. As she realized how stupid the narrative had become (state media was discussing if it was ok to sell socks in shops, or if doctors should examine unvaccinated customers), she and others like her turned to online media promoting fringe and radical theories. Now, the European bureaucrats, having not learnt their lesson, want to double down and further restrict freedom of speech. The problem is that as long as the local media just repeats the official party line, which often strays away from reality, russian content farms will get new eyeballs.
mattmaroon 9mo ago
The problem with this argument, and why free speech absolutism is the only stance that makes sense, is that someone always has a good reason why you need to throw the bathwater out right now, baby be dammed. The end result is worse than the disinformation.
- ako 9mo ago
  How do you know the end result is worse than disinformation? If the Russian disinformation allow Russia to destroy the freedom and democracy in Europe, and allow Russia to take over, that seems to me to much worse than limiting the publication of lies and slander.
  - mattmaroon 9mo ago
    Because whoever gets to determine what lies and slander are become your new dictators. If the problem is Russian bots, there’s a much easier way to solve it: make Facebook and the platforms that allow them to spread financially liable. You’re unironically arguing that giving up your freedom is a protection against losing your freedom.
    - saubeidl 9mo ago
      Hear me out, but: You can elect a commission of experts to be deciding this. Term limits. Separate independent institution from the government. That's not a dictator. You're just grasping for hyperbole to prop up an ideological point.
      - mattmaroon 9mo ago
        It’s called a jury. We have those. They’re the commission that determines if something is slander.
        saubeidl 9mo ago
        Something doesn't need to be slander to be information warfare. We need something much larger scale and more powerful to fight back the hybrid warfare from Russia and increasingly also the US.
qcnguy 9mo ago
Interesting how now the list has expanded to include Chinese "bots" and "actors". Calling anyone who disagrees with your political beliefs a foreigner is an old and extremely paranoid, nasty rhetorical trick. Very similar to the people who call everything they dislike racism. The polls don't lie and they show that there are hundreds of millions of people all over the west who just flatly disagree with your whole ideology. The unity you imagine would exist if not for shadow accounts doesn't exist, and it's delusional to believe it does. No no. Just accept that you're a totalitarian dictator at heart, embrace the warmth of just being evil publicly, without pretense or obfuscation. "Silence the opposition!" you cry.
ThinkBeat 9mo ago
The west have had various forms for this since before the internet, and certainly have huge efforts similar to what you list above, but have in general been far more productive than bots from the other side.
rayiner 9mo ago
Europeans have compromised “democracy” in an effort to protect “liberal.” And that will unravel the whole thing.
bambax 9mo ago
Not just Russia and China. Musk does Nazi salutes and Grok promotes pedophilia. Trump invades countries and talks about taking over Greenland, which is part of Europe. The US are no less of a threat than Russia. Contrary to widespread belief, Europe has the means to fight those threats. It just chooses not to, for reasons I don't understand.
- randomNumber7 9mo ago
  Most europeans are completely delusional. Look at germany for example (where I'm from). Shutting down nuclear power plants and coal at the same time. More than 50% of people here still tell you this is necessary to save the planet - even though what we save is so little globally, that it does nothing relevant to stop global warming.
762236 9mo ago
That isn't a Russian. It is me, an American. It is convenient for you to dismiss my arguments as Russian so that you can ignore their validity. The same thing happens in the US: people dismiss arguments by saying they are right wing (i.e., from Republicans)
Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
I am not on any social media so I don't even know what the propaganda is that you are talking about but there are ways to really filter out youtube in such a way (by following unbiased media houses) and I haven't seen much propaganda on youtube (I think) > This is not about normal politics, Europe is under siege. I am not European but this seems such an dangerous precedent to set upon. You mention destroying liberal democracy but also the fact that Europe is under siege makes people think of providing war time resolutions to Countries even for small details (and Mind you this ban itself has nothing to do with russia that much, its just the amount of influence football has in italy) To me it feels as if by saying Europe's under siege, it gives more war time resolutions or justificiations for unmoral behaviour. In fact that's what happened right now. This also actively undermines democracy and one can clearly see how. I understand your comment's in good faith and I appreciate it but I am just not even sure how this move of fining Cloudflare for not being in line for their censorship is related to this other instance.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
raxxorraxor 9mo ago
To be honest, I think this argument is FUD as well. There are some Russian accounts and there is disinformation, but this isn't the core of polarization in western democracies and Europe in particualr. And reigning in free speech is even poison in this situation, which is more complex than pointing your finger at bots. In Europe freedom of speech is under threat from its own population, which is more and more driven by fear. This fear might not be unreasonable and has multiple sources, but it remains a bad basis for decision or policy making.
- arrosenberg 9mo ago
  The fear is being heavily stoked by agitprop on social media.
user____name 9mo ago
This kind of "epistemic collapse" via propaganda is an established method of subverting nation states, Russia has been doing it for decades. Democracy relies on having a reasobaly well informed population. The problem today is that it takes ten times more effort to refute bullshit than to spread it. Information hygiene is becoming a very big problem in this anything-goes social media environment. Traditional mass media had journalistic norms and standards, nowadays anyone can claim anything with no quality control. It's the same age old story: there simply is no substitute for good governance, Italy doesn't have it and hasn't had it for decades, and "freedom of speech absolutists" wouldn't know what it looks like in the first place.
torpid 9mo ago
If you cannot tolerate “Russian bots” or “Chinese bots,” then you do not truly stand for free speech. It really is that simple. Free speech, by definition, exists to protect speech that someone finds offensive or objectionable. If everyone only said things that others agreed with, there would be no need for free speech protections at all. In a genuine marketplace of ideas, it is astonishing that anyone would claim the right to censor others, or to strip them of their humanity by dismissing them as mere robots or agents rather than people with sincere views. Yet we are increasingly binding ourselves (and even “authorized” bots) in chains of verified identity, deliberately suppressing anonymity. Imposing a “zero-trust” architecture on society inevitably leads to totalitarianism. The right to express ideas without personal attribution has always been a cornerstone of free speech and a free society. It is now being redefined and demonized as mere “bot activity.” While real bots certainly exist (as they have since the days of spam) many accounts labeled as bots are simply human beings who choose anonymity because they hold controversial opinions they do not wish to have traced back to them. Companies like Cloudflare are among the leaders in this shift by building frameworks ostensibly to monetize AI bot traffic. The consequence, however, is the effective end of online anonymity. When anonymity is forbidden, freedom itself disappears.

budududuroiu 9mo ago

> In Europe we are under daily attack from Russian accounts that spread massive amounts of desinformation, deep fakes, just emotional appeals with the goal of destroying liberal democracy. The disinformation campaigns have always been there, the reason they're growing roots in the mind of the average European is because the EU is spending it's razor thon political capital on things Chat Control, Digital Omnibus which are wildly unpopular. Isn't it a bit ironic that in order to protect "liberal democracy" you need to reach out for authoritarian suppression?

StrauXX 9mo ago
The average person in Europe does neither care about chat control, nor have they heared more about tgan one or two surface-level news articles. Russian propaganda being more and more effective and these actions are not related.
- budududuroiu 9mo ago
  Russian propaganda is effective because the EU leadership has dropped the ball so hard that the Kremlin looks attractive. People aren't as stupid as you think
dependsontheq 9mo ago
Yes we need to restrict the freedom of non citizens to influence our debates. And we need to have rules how digital platforms can influence our internal debates, we had this rules for TV and newspapers. That's not suppression thats's defense.
- budududuroiu 9mo ago
  How do you restrict the freedom of non-citizens without restricting the freedom of citizens too? My parents and grandparents didn't fight against the Romanian authoritarian regime for reading of confidential communications to come back under a EU banner instead. The EU is more of a threat to itself than Russia is, the only reason the "Russian propaganda" has teeth is because the current bureaucrat class in the EU Council have outlived their Mandate of Heaven
  - tankenmate 9mo ago
    "The EU is more of a threat to itself than Russia is"; it can be easily argued that this is only the case if democracy has little value because in Russia democracy does indeed have little value (let alone life, etc). "Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" So the EU and the EC are big lumbering organisation that make poor decisions; but then people make poor decisions day in day out. But just because you *feel* disaffected doesn't mean the system is inherently wrong (unless of course you believe that politics' primary, if not only, purpose is to make you "feel good(tm)"). It's probably far more accurate to say that wealth inequality is the EU's biggest threat and that "the elites" (which is more than just senior politicians and bureaucrats) don't feel the pain of inequality and so aren't internally motivated to do much about it (culture eats strategy for breakfast, etc etc).
  - whilenot-dev 9mo ago
    For me, it's a matter of authenticity at scale... Let's assume I want every citizen to navigate the web freely while fighting propaganda machines as much as possible, so that means I want an automated system that creates the set difference between these two in real-time, as reliable as possible. To create such a system, and since there shouldn't be any overlap in these two sets, I can effectively put my efforts in half if I put my work in the detection of one such set. The scaling problem, as I see it here, arises from the following: While the set of individual citizens (kind of) has an upper limit, represented by the number of internet users worldwide, the botnet nodes in propaganda machines do not. I can limit the set further, for example if I want to focus on the citizens that are part of my government only, whereas propaganda machines can come from anywhere on the globe. Internet users already need to provide a proof on authentication for quite a lot of services, while botnets generally want to avoid being identified as such. While I'm far from in favor of Chat Control, I can somewhat understand why these initiatives are in motion at all. > The EU is more of a threat to itself than Russia is To put it mildly, this conclusion is non-sequitur at best.

rotarycellphone 9mo ago

[flagged]

dependsontheq 9mo ago
an account created 5 minutes ago
- budududuroiu 9mo ago
  Their point still stands though
  - whilenot-dev 9mo ago
    It isn't even obvious to me which country GP refers to when they write "i already live in one". No reasonable individual would criticize "liberal politicians" and "electronic dictatorship" without making it absolutely clear where they are coming from. This obfuscation seems like a deliberate choice and makes any standing point balancing on crutches.
  - AlexeyBelov 9mo ago
    No. Troll accounts are not a good thing.
- ErroneousBosh 9mo ago
  HN should put the IP addresses that comments from brand new accounts are posted from right beside the name. I bet you'd be able to plot some pretty interesting maps from that.
  - Bender 9mo ago
    Maybe the first two octets but HN does not block proxies, VPS nodes, servers, etc... The site would have to block such things for new accounts and store the IP used to create the account for that information to be useful assuming residential shady VPN's were not used. I doubt that level of change would occur here given the topic of dark mode comes up often.

CrzyLngPwd 9mo ago

Well, we cry "freedom of speech" when Russia/China/adversary shuts our propaganda-pushing media or tools out. Freedom of speech for me, not for thee, eh? I don't want my politicians deciding what is good or bad on the internet. I'm an adult, and I can decide for myself.

scrollaway 9mo ago
> I don't want my politicians deciding what is good or bad on the internet. I'm an adult, and I can decide for myself. The issue isn't whether politicians are deciding what's good or bad. The issue is that, in Europe, foreign actors with explicit ill intent are deciding a ton of the content your neighbours are watching/reading, day in day out, on the internet. AI has made this easier and even more scalable than before. This content is being used to influence or outright decide elections. Elections of more politicians that are "deciding what's good or bad", eh. Such as politicians deciding that Russia is good. What the actual fuck do we do to defend ourselves, pray tell? The whole "let them have critical thinking" doesn't work, we are under active war and citizens who don't know better are specifically targeted. And besides, we are not gonna take lessons from the country that yelled high and mighty for years they're the land of the free, and let itself fall into complete autocracy & dictatorship. In the US, those same citizens are the useful tools repeating state propaganda, two steps removed from "Just Following Orders". And full context: I agree with Matt and support Cloudflare's stance here. But people can quit it with cheap retorts like "Freedom of speech for me, not for thee". It's not that simple.
- nxm 9mo ago
  into complete autocracy & dictatorship....ummm you mean a democratically elected president & government? Plus these hyperboles don't really resonate anymore as they've been used for every little thing people don't like. It's still a democracy even if you don't like the outcome.
  - scrollaway 9mo ago
    [flagged]

fc417fc802 9mo ago

How is Cloudflare refusing to comply with DNS censorship even remotely related to propaganda campaigns conducted by the geopolitical opponent of your personal choosing? Not only does it seem like you've gone off topic to push a personal agenda, you're presenting a false dichotomy. We could (if we wanted to) wall our networks off along national boundaries while still preserving freedom of speech within our enclave. I don't think that would be a good idea nor do I think the execution of such an initiative would be likely to go smoothly but the example serves to illustrate that there's a huge potential solution space. Personally what I don't understand is why Cloudflare didn't stop offering access to 1.1.1.1 from Italian addresses. At the end of the day picking a direct fight with the government of a jurisdiction you operate in seems extremely unwise. I fail to see the upside for them here. Actually assuming they don't intentionally operate 1.1.1.1 from within Italy how is it CF's problem if Italians access it? Shouldn't this be on the Italian telecoms to filter traffic to this dastardly "illegal" foreign resolver?

7bit 9mo ago
[flagged]
- fc417fc802 9mo ago
  Well, yeah, I suppose that on occasion a view expressed by an American could happen to overlap with the propaganda of any given geopolitical adversary. Similar to the principle of a broken clock being right twice a day. I have to say though, reflexively responding in that manner gives the impression of being quite radicalized. I don't think that's the level of discourse expected on HN.
Karuhanga 9mo ago
I think the upside is drawing a line in the sand now before they tighten requests any further and (maybe) not losing the revenue from some genuinely illegal pirating services that use them.

abc123abc123 9mo ago

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 and compare them against each other. Screaming murder because Sergei6778 says that Ukraine is evil is just stupid. Take responsibility for your own reading and mind, and stop using the law as a hamfisted tool to stop free speech. Take the bad with the good, or else there won't be any good left in the future.

vladvasiliu 9mo ago
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.
robinkek 9mo ago
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.
saubeidl 9mo ago
I don't like the risk of the mouth-breather next door reading Russian propaganda, it's not myself I'm concerned about. In a democracy, most people are unfortunately stupid and easily manipulable. We can't let the Russians (or the Americans!) use them as their proxy.

Ikatza 9mo ago

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 dissenting opinions are censored because somebody labels them "disinformation"? Who watches the watchmen? etc. I'd rather live in a society with full freedom of speech and disinformation from State actors than have only 100% accurately vetted news.

lostlogin 9mo ago
> 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.
- jnovek 9mo ago
  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.
thefounder 9mo ago
>> If there is disinformation, the solution is to counter it with actual information So what you argue is that we should build good bots to counter the bad bots right? and all this in a "secret" to avoid suspension by the tech companies. This looks like playing stupid games. The disinformation in this era can basically shadow any kind of legitimate "counter-disinformation". To make the game fair we would first need lockdown the internet content on citizen ID authorization so that we can identify if the free speach spread is actually published by a real person or some chinese bot pretending to be a single European mom with 3 kids. This is not something anyone wants so I think the current trade off of court orders to take down content is legitimate and the best approach. Cloudflare, the tech companies and US government likes the absolute free speech like everything else (i.e. free market) as long as it serves their interests. I wouldn't be surprised to see Cloudflare proudly repelling some "chinese propaganda attacks" and frame it like a cyber security win instead of anti-free speech action.

babarock 9mo ago

I think this is moving the goal post. Cloudflare isn't challenging the need to restrict access to some websites, it is challenging who has the right to decide. Quoting the tweet: > We believe Italy, like all countries, has a right to regulate the content on networks inside its borders. But they must do so following the Rule of Law and principles of Due Process. I live in Italy, I'm a citizen. I don't feel any safer having the internet regulated by a bunch of bureaucrats than I do state actors and bots.

bambax 9mo ago
Bureaucrats are a problem, but they're eventually accountable to the people. Companies are accountable to shareholders located in another country, who don't give a damn about whatever so long as the money keeps coming. I choose bureaucrats against businessmen anytime.

kevin061 9mo ago

I see lots of disagreements here, but I must say I also soured on free speech. I used to think that free speech was necessary and overall a positive for society. Then I saw the Capitol attack in US. The disinformation spread in England about kids stabbed that led to riots. I see disinformation every day, especially from USA, saying Europe has no freedom, that it's overrun with criminals, and people not only believe it, but vote accordingly. This has to stop. Humans weren't trained to use rationality and reasoning every second of their life. Reason costs a lot of cognitive power so the brain implements a hundred shortcuts. For example: if you see something appear frequently, you assume it to be true. This is good for avoiding poisonous plants, but it's terrible when you go in Twitter and you're spammed with the same lies day and night. It's messing with us. Enough is enough. Free speech with guardrails. You should be able to insult and criticise the Prime Minister. You should not be able to gain a position of power and then go on a crowded stage to claim that vaccines cause autism. This is intolerable. We are attacking the foundations of society. People are not rational actors. Not you, and not me. We are very simple animals.

vladvasiliu 9mo ago
I agree that people clearly don't use critical thinking 100% of the time and are easily influenced. But you're basically arguing for not criticizing the status quo. Many social improvements have been attained by "attacking the foundations of society". How would you like living under some absolute monarchy? How do you think gay people would like to live in a church-run society like 500 years ago?
- tankenmate 9mo ago
  "But you're basically arguing for not criticizing the status quo.", but that wasn't what was argued ("You should be able to insult and criticise the Prime Minister."), but more your interpretation of what was said. You're making a strawman argument.
  - vladvasiliu 9mo ago
    Well, the PM isn't exactly the status quo, I wasn't replying to that. Rather, I was responding to this specific bit, emphasis mine: > You should not be able to gain a position of power and then go on a crowded stage to claim that vaccines cause autism. This is intolerable. We are attacking the foundations of society. Not sure when the strawman is. "The foundations of society", for me, means "the way things are". Which can be vaccines, sure, or any kind of general policy which has been showed to have a positive effect on society, but it can also be all kinds of things taken for granted which aren't necessarily rooted in reason.

photios 9mo ago

[flagged]

olivermuty 9mo ago
You’re either very gullible or you are the answer to the question you just asked.
- mlrtime 9mo ago
  Or, OP may agree there are Russian bots, but they aren't "in the room right now" because they are not a major risk. They are not a major risk vs letting a government agency dictate to Cloudflare to take down a site globally.
sethops1 9mo ago
Yes. There are numerous fresh accounts being created to flood this very thread.

kamma4434 9mo ago

That would be a political perspective. But what we are discussing now is some very rich football clubs who have a right to filter anything on the internet because they say so.

Nextgrid 9mo ago

> we are under daily attack from Russian accounts We would go a long way if our communication platforms weren't intentionally amplifying the most controversial voices for the sake of maximizing ad revenue. Back in the day the Russians needed to spend money to buy influence. Now they can just make their propaganda engaging enough and Western companies will happily host it and promote it for free.

xilaraux 9mo ago
> Now they can just make their propaganda engaging enough and Western companies will happily host it and promote it for free. Important to distinguish here that all of these companies are not just Western but American.
- ndsipa_pomu 9mo ago
  I'm sure there's examples of non-US media companies pushing ragebait and similar. e.g. from the UK, there's BBC, Telegraph, Daily Mail, local news sites etc. It's a perverse incentive that in chasing engagement, the ragebait is selected for.
- RuslanL 9mo ago
  Do we have comparable European companies though?
throw__away7391 9mo ago
This is the entire problem. This is possibly the single problem in the modern world. When social media first appeared, "feeds" were based on explicit subscription by the users and ordered chronologically. Later "likes" were added, but this was still based on deliberate user behavior and simple deterministic sorting while the ability to "repost" greatly expanded the reach of individual posts, later algorithms were introduced then the number of signals expanded beyond explicit user input to implicit engagement measures. Each step along this path has taken agency away from individuals. I read articles and comments about people who were fired or suffered other consequences for something they said online, and the responses are righteous indignation--they ought to have known better than to post these things online! How did we get into this fucked up state of affairs? Social media started off as a way to talk to your friends, and over time your friends have been replaced with strangers, what they can say and who gets to say what controlled by centralized authorities, while individuals have been taught to self-censor. It is not only the US companies or Russian bots, every government in the world is itching to get their thumb on the scale here to have a say in what the people are allowed to see, to hear, and to say.

Saline9515 9mo ago

Russian bots and subversive propaganda in general take hold when the quality and diversity of the media decreases, which leads citizens to listen to alternative narratives. The tipping point happened during covid - the authorities were so synced up with the media, and the online censorship became so prevalent that the official narrative felt deeply off, coordinated, and often contradictory. There was no debate in the EU, we had to lock down all of the countries, with no alternative (for instance, protect old people but let younger ones live their lives) possible. Given how Orwellian and borderline crazy average media discourse had become, especially after the vaccine was out, I saw many people start looking elsewhere. My mother was one of them. She had consumed mostly state media her whole life. As she realized how stupid the narrative had become (state media was discussing if it was ok to sell socks in shops, or if doctors should examine unvaccinated customers), she and others like her turned to online media promoting fringe and radical theories. Now, the European bureaucrats, having not learnt their lesson, want to double down and further restrict freedom of speech. The problem is that as long as the local media just repeats the official party line, which often strays away from reality, russian content farms will get new eyeballs.

mattmaroon 9mo ago

The problem with this argument, and why free speech absolutism is the only stance that makes sense, is that someone always has a good reason why you need to throw the bathwater out right now, baby be dammed. The end result is worse than the disinformation.

ako 9mo ago
How do you know the end result is worse than disinformation? If the Russian disinformation allow Russia to destroy the freedom and democracy in Europe, and allow Russia to take over, that seems to me to much worse than limiting the publication of lies and slander.
- mattmaroon 9mo ago
  Because whoever gets to determine what lies and slander are become your new dictators. If the problem is Russian bots, there’s a much easier way to solve it: make Facebook and the platforms that allow them to spread financially liable. You’re unironically arguing that giving up your freedom is a protection against losing your freedom.
  - saubeidl 9mo ago
    Hear me out, but: You can elect a commission of experts to be deciding this. Term limits. Separate independent institution from the government. That's not a dictator. You're just grasping for hyperbole to prop up an ideological point.
    - mattmaroon 9mo ago
      It’s called a jury. We have those. They’re the commission that determines if something is slander.
      - saubeidl 9mo ago
        Something doesn't need to be slander to be information warfare. We need something much larger scale and more powerful to fight back the hybrid warfare from Russia and increasingly also the US.

qcnguy 9mo ago

Interesting how now the list has expanded to include Chinese "bots" and "actors". Calling anyone who disagrees with your political beliefs a foreigner is an old and extremely paranoid, nasty rhetorical trick. Very similar to the people who call everything they dislike racism. The polls don't lie and they show that there are hundreds of millions of people all over the west who just flatly disagree with your whole ideology. The unity you imagine would exist if not for shadow accounts doesn't exist, and it's delusional to believe it does. No no. Just accept that you're a totalitarian dictator at heart, embrace the warmth of just being evil publicly, without pretense or obfuscation. "Silence the opposition!" you cry.

ThinkBeat 9mo ago

The west have had various forms for this since before the internet, and certainly have huge efforts similar to what you list above, but have in general been far more productive than bots from the other side.

rayiner 9mo ago

Europeans have compromised “democracy” in an effort to protect “liberal.” And that will unravel the whole thing.

bambax 9mo ago

Not just Russia and China. Musk does Nazi salutes and Grok promotes pedophilia. Trump invades countries and talks about taking over Greenland, which is part of Europe. The US are no less of a threat than Russia. Contrary to widespread belief, Europe has the means to fight those threats. It just chooses not to, for reasons I don't understand.

randomNumber7 9mo ago
Most europeans are completely delusional. Look at germany for example (where I'm from). Shutting down nuclear power plants and coal at the same time. More than 50% of people here still tell you this is necessary to save the planet - even though what we save is so little globally, that it does nothing relevant to stop global warming.

762236 9mo ago

That isn't a Russian. It is me, an American. It is convenient for you to dismiss my arguments as Russian so that you can ignore their validity. The same thing happens in the US: people dismiss arguments by saying they are right wing (i.e., from Republicans)

Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago

I am not on any social media so I don't even know what the propaganda is that you are talking about but there are ways to really filter out youtube in such a way (by following unbiased media houses) and I haven't seen much propaganda on youtube (I think) > This is not about normal politics, Europe is under siege. I am not European but this seems such an dangerous precedent to set upon. You mention destroying liberal democracy but also the fact that Europe is under siege makes people think of providing war time resolutions to Countries even for small details (and Mind you this ban itself has nothing to do with russia that much, its just the amount of influence football has in italy) To me it feels as if by saying Europe's under siege, it gives more war time resolutions or justificiations for unmoral behaviour. In fact that's what happened right now. This also actively undermines democracy and one can clearly see how. I understand your comment's in good faith and I appreciate it but I am just not even sure how this move of fining Cloudflare for not being in line for their censorship is related to this other instance.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

raxxorraxor 9mo ago

To be honest, I think this argument is FUD as well. There are some Russian accounts and there is disinformation, but this isn't the core of polarization in western democracies and Europe in particualr. And reigning in free speech is even poison in this situation, which is more complex than pointing your finger at bots. In Europe freedom of speech is under threat from its own population, which is more and more driven by fear. This fear might not be unreasonable and has multiple sources, but it remains a bad basis for decision or policy making.

arrosenberg 9mo ago
The fear is being heavily stoked by agitprop on social media.

user____name 9mo ago

This kind of "epistemic collapse" via propaganda is an established method of subverting nation states, Russia has been doing it for decades. Democracy relies on having a reasobaly well informed population. The problem today is that it takes ten times more effort to refute bullshit than to spread it. Information hygiene is becoming a very big problem in this anything-goes social media environment. Traditional mass media had journalistic norms and standards, nowadays anyone can claim anything with no quality control. It's the same age old story: there simply is no substitute for good governance, Italy doesn't have it and hasn't had it for decades, and "freedom of speech absolutists" wouldn't know what it looks like in the first place.

torpid 9mo ago

If you cannot tolerate “Russian bots” or “Chinese bots,” then you do not truly stand for free speech. It really is that simple. Free speech, by definition, exists to protect speech that someone finds offensive or objectionable. If everyone only said things that others agreed with, there would be no need for free speech protections at all. In a genuine marketplace of ideas, it is astonishing that anyone would claim the right to censor others, or to strip them of their humanity by dismissing them as mere robots or agents rather than people with sincere views. Yet we are increasingly binding ourselves (and even “authorized” bots) in chains of verified identity, deliberately suppressing anonymity. Imposing a “zero-trust” architecture on society inevitably leads to totalitarianism. The right to express ideas without personal attribution has always been a cornerstone of free speech and a free society. It is now being redefined and demonized as mere “bot activity.” While real bots certainly exist (as they have since the days of spam) many accounts labeled as bots are simply human beings who choose anonymity because they hold controversial opinions they do not wish to have traced back to them. Companies like Cloudflare are among the leaders in this shift by building frameworks ostensibly to monetize AI bot traffic. The consequence, however, is the effective end of online anonymity. When anonymity is forbidden, freedom itself disappears.