[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.

[yibg]

Politic is not separate from the population though. Pressure from the population (hopefully) sways political decisions. This is why google news pulling out of countries were public.

[Moldoteck]

how would you not threat? Are you willing to donate $ for cloudflare to operate there with such fines?

[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?