[Foxboron]

So blocking Kiwifarms took.. months of activism and loud complaining. Heraled by Matthew as "this is an extraordinary decision for us to make and, given Cloudflare's role as an Internet infrastructure provider, a dangerous one that we are not comfortable with".

However a fine that amounts to ~0.7% of the annual revenue and they threaten to block an entire country?

[ExpertAdvisor01]

Actually, the fine amounts to over 200% of Italy-sourced revenue ($17 million fine vs. $8 million in revenue in 2024). Why would you continue doing business in Italy?

[Foxboron]

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.

[tekacs]

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.

[NewJazz]

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

[NorwegianDude]

How freaking expensive do you think infrastructure is? It's not that expensive, and certainly not anywhere close to the point where it would make a noticeable impact on GDP.

[NewJazz]

Every little bit counts. At cloudflares scale it could be the difference between a DC having to close up shop or not.

[bhelkey]

> 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.

There is no mention of blocking people in Italy from using sites protected by Cloudflare. From the tweet:

> we are considering the following actions: 1) discontinuing the millions of dollars in pro bono cyber security services we are providing the upcoming Milano-Cortina Olympics; 2) discontinuing Cloudflare’s Free cyber security services for any Italy-based users; 3) removing all servers from Italian cities; and 4) terminating all plans to build an Italian Cloudflare office or make any investments in the country.

[ExpertAdvisor01]

If they do not want to comply with introducing censorship, then withdrawing from Italy is the only other option. Italian citizens and residents are unfortunately collateral damage.

[ExpertAdvisor01]

Because they only violated the "law" in a local market (Italy) .

[Foxboron]

And the correct response to that is to write up a threat towards the entire population of a country?

[bluecalm]

What else could they do? The government represent the country. If their business model is not welcome there then they withdraw. It's very fair to say "if you insist on those rules I choose not to play". They owe Italy nothing.

Btw, I recently "threatened" Switzerland to withdraw my business from there because the cost of doing business there (complying with their VAT regulation) is higher than my revenue from there (maybe 1-2 licenses a year). The whole Switzerland will not be able to buy my software because of that. I didn't think of posting about it on Twitter though.

[Foxboron]

> What else could they do? The government represent the country. If their business model is not welcome there then they withdraw. It's very fair to say "if you insist on those rules I choose not to play".

They can just not threaten the population of Italy? They are a 2 billion dollar company that has apparently scheduled a meeting with the vice president of the US on short notice? This is going to be resolved politically.

> Btw, I recently "threatened" Switzerland to withdraw my business from there because the cost of doing business there (complying with their VAT regulation) is higher than my revenue from there (maybe 1-2 licenses a year). The whole Switzerland will not be able to buy my software because of that. I didn't think of posting about it on Twitter though.

You have not given "free services" to 20% of the world wide web that you are now using as leverage.

[StrLght]

It absolutely is. Why should people receive a free service while their democratically elected officials enact laws that enable them to target global revenue in their fines?

[Aeolun]

Not the whole population. Only those using cloudflare to protect their websites?

[Hamuko]

How much revenue did Kiwifarms bring in?

[renewiltord]

Yeah that makes sense to me. If you come up to me and say “you have to arrest that guy; he’s stealing from me” I have to do a lot of research to make sure that everything is correct.

On the other hand, if I see you steal from me, I don’t have to do a lot of research. I am a first party to the thing. I can be sure.

It’s the difference between a policeman arriving on the scene of an assault and someone actually assaulting the policeman.

The acting party being the affected party simplifies things because you know you’re not a “confused deputy”.

[Illniyar]

He isn't threatening to block Italy, just to remove cloudflare's business from there. Anyone living and surfing from Italy would not be blocked by cloudflare from accessing any service provided by cloudflare.

[simianparrot]

How do you not understand the difference..?

[pessimizer]

> So blocking Kiwifarms took.. months of activism and loud complaining.

Kiwifarms isn't a pirate site. It's just another site that you think is legitimate to censor.

> However a fine that amounts to ~0.7% of the annual revenue and they threaten to block an entire country?

What's going to be next weeks fine? Of course they should block the entire country. Even if they pay the fine (I could imagine there's some way that the EU could force that on pain of forcing them out of Europe), they should block the country.

Shouldn't Italy want lawbreakers to leave?

[Alex2037]

>activism and loud complaining

I'm not sure why would you want to remind the world about that episode. those men lied, stalked, harassed, and threatened a lot of people to get that perfectly legal website exposed to very illegal DDoS attacks.