this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2026
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190
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince talks about Italy fines while praising JD Vance and Elon Musk (xcancel.com)
submitted 3 weeks ago by desertdruid@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/technology@lemmy.world
29 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Found this today on hackernews and I think it is time for me to look for alternatives to cloudflare if their CEO will decide to cut a whole country over fines

all 31 comments
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[–] AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works 74 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Let me explain you what are those fines for:

In Italy, soccer is so powerful that commands the government. They can legally block batches of IP adresses just because one of them could be streaming a soccer game.

It means if your IP is in the batch (even if you are innocent but just happens to share server with that pirate) you are cut from internet. No appeal, the IP is dead and your only choice is get a new one.

It's so dumb that they even blocked google once because of it. Cloudshare is fighting that, and I can assure you everyone in Italy, except the usual assholes licking the politician boots are beyond pissed with the so called "piracy shield".

[–] ILikeTraaaains@lemmy.world 10 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I did not experience it personally, but in Spain LaLiga is forcing ISPs to do the same and lots of websites get fucked in the process.

[–] AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 weeks ago

Can confirm, friends there are extremely happy with how they are handling it. Seems everyone loves having half of the internet down whenever there's a play beacuse they block cloudflare as a whole.

[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 63 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Thank you for linking via xcancel.com rather than to that service directly. Wish more posters would do this.

[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 47 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Cloudflare has caused too much of the internet to be centralized under their whims. There need to be more alternatives for DDoS protection; I don't use any at all for my self-hosted site, but if I ever do, it won't be Cloudflare.

[–] amateurcrastinator@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

What are the alternatives?

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 6 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Akamai, Fastly, and the other big cloud providers each have their own solution. There don't seem to be many large CDN's in the EU, though

[–] Rekall_Incorporated@piefed.social 25 points 3 weeks ago

You can't trust any American oligarchs or large American companies.

The "shadowy cabal" rhetoric is funny considering how there is zero real judicial overcite if US technology companies due to corruption in all three branches of the government.

[–] boatswain@infosec.pub 22 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It reads to me like they're being responsible and not bowing to censorship; seems very similar to PornHub's approach to age verification laws. What would be a better course of action here, in your view?

[–] desertdruid@lemmy.blahaj.zone 25 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

not sucking Trump's administration while denouncing censorship only when your company is affected (oh yeah and all that on Elon's Twitter)

I wouldn't compare this to pornhub, pornhub is not responsible for hosting one of the biggest DNS resolvers

[–] boatswain@infosec.pub 9 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

So your argument is that one of the biggest DNS resolvers should just bow to censorship imposed by a single nation? I'm not really getting what you think they should be doing about Italy's demand. Are you saying they should just pay the fines and keep doing business there?

[–] RickyRigatoni@retrolemmy.com 17 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

That's not even close to what they said. Are you even actually reading anything?

[–] boatswain@infosec.pub 8 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I am, yeah. Like I say, I'm just not understanding what they're suggesting Cloudflare should be doing differently in this case, other than not invoking Vance and Musk (which granted is pretty gross to do).

[–] wholookshere@piefed.blahaj.zone 10 points 3 weeks ago

I think it's the contradiction of trying to fight censor ship while also praising the US government, who is in a stream of heavy censorship. just look at that 60 min episode.

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I think the point is that cloudflare is doing the right thing in this specific case, and the CEO is a douchebag anyway.

[–] boatswain@infosec.pub 4 points 3 weeks ago

Gotcha, that makes sense to me; cheers.

[–] deltaspawn0040@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 weeks ago

They're saying they should do what they're doing just without the sucking up to fascists part.

[–] deathbird@mander.xyz 2 points 3 weeks ago

So it's not about what they're actually doing but what they said about the US administration?

I got to tell you man, the next 3 years you are going to hear a lot of unjustified praise for Trump, because nobody wants to be on the bad side of that madman and the US courts have basically decided that the POTUS is King of America for 4 years at a time. The US just kidnapped the head of state of a foreign nation because he danced. The US will probably invade Greenland soon unless someone calls Trump a very special and beautiful boy who doesn't need a big slab of ice in the Arctic. Cuba and Chile are in big trouble too unless Little Marco gets tired of gargling the old man's jizz.

All that said, Italy is wrong, Cloudflare is correct in this case, and the reason to avoid Cloudflare is not because they're dick riding the Big Orange, but because you should have been avoiding Cloudflare anyway because they over- centralize internet infrastructure.

[–] fodor@lemmy.zip 19 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Good. Cloudflare is a tool for censorship and spying. Let them leave countries, so that international companies will be forced to stop using them. Interesting how quick that would happen, guaranteed.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 20 points 3 weeks ago

Technically they're being fined for not complying with Italy's demand for censorship. So he's not entirely in the wrong here.

But then he praised Vance and Musk...

[–] portnull@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 3 weeks ago

It just reads like "look we basically run and own most of the internet so you can't just boss us around. Because if you do everything breaks because everything is us."

I hate it.

[–] deathbird@mander.xyz 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It looks like Italy has been making onerous censorship demands, and Cloudflare has been fined for refusing to comply. That seems like a W for Cloudflare to me.

[–] desertdruid@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 2 weeks ago

cool a W for a corpo sucking a state vs another state, like this was a sports match or something

[–] pemask@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Why am I looking at a WWII-era-like propaganda image, where a corporation is personified and glorified while its destractors are shown as contorted inhumans? Reminds me of my german history classes.

[–] desertdruid@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 weeks ago

thanks for understand the point of this post, this is just a weird propaganda masking as "free speech absolutism"

[–] SomeRandomNoob@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 2 weeks ago

Cloudflare does not stand for free internet. They stand for US controlled internet.

[–] rainbowbunny@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Is Anubis an alternative to Cloudflare?

[–] dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 weeks ago

To one feature of cloudflare, maybe.