cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/56719476
Italy fined Cloudflare 14.2 million euros for refusing to block access to pirate sites on its 1.1.1.1 DNS service, the country’s communications regulatory agency, AGCOM, announced yesterday. Cloudflare said it will fight the penalty and threatened to remove all of its servers from Italian cities.
Blocking cloudflare is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. Unless they start blocking IPs like the great firewall of china blocking any DNS is kinda pointless. Unless maybe if the domain’s primary name servers are cloudflare but I can’t seeing any site doing nefarious things using cloudflare. Run your own DNS resolver on a VPS somewhere besides Italy.
My worry is the internet starts getting terribly segmented and not interconnected. That would be more of an issue.
Don’t praise Cloudflare or Italy; both are part of the problem.
Corps are getting bigger than countries and starting to flex. Scary shit.
Jennifer Government and Snow Crash here we come. Except we don’t get any of the cool shit fictional cyber-dystopias do.
I mention it to my friends and family every chance I get. I try to explain that the digital walls they’re building aren’t going to keep us safe but I’m always met with tired indifference.
…until they can’t access some site or service. Then it’s panic.
Yeah the worst fucking part is that theyre indifferent. They dont promote these measures, they just dont care. If they did, a discussion could be had at least.
about as safe as when in prison
Based. Censorship no bueno
What about censoring neo Nazis? What about banning Trump from Twitter?
What about censoring neo Nazis?
ineffective, disastrous, & still no bueno. better to educate & discredit their weak reasoning.
That’s moderation. When there’s a law against it, that’s censorship.
Frankly a couple of countries have passed laws against Nazi speech and paraphernalia, and after the Nazis plunged the world into the biggest war of all time and murdered 12 million people for their racist ideology, I’m cool with that. If that’s the bar: I can live with it. Murder 12 million, your little club no longer gets to meet.
There have always been rational limits on speech.
A lot of people don’t seem to remember Alex Jones getting banned from YouTube in 2018. While rightwing, ultra-MAGA’s were already a thing, they were relatively small compared today. Alex Jones was the first high profile ban from social media and it was like tossing gasoline onto a small bush fire.
You have to remember that Trump did not win the first time because he had an army of fanatics. A lot of other factors were at play; from people still upset about the DNC’s snubbing of Bernie, to people who weren’t fully paying attention (remember, politics used to be boring), to people who voted for Trump simply “for the lols” (don’t discount this last group, any historical account that doesn’t factor in how important internet memes were to getting that man elected is being willfully ignorant) . Die-hard MAGA’s were relatively rare, and usually a source of ridicule.
Until their spokespeople started getting banned from places. It seems so small by today’s standards. People get banned and deplatformed all the time. But Alex Jones was the first real incident, and people saw it as a massive attack on free speech. To his relatively small number of followers, the man had his free speech rights violated by the left-wing news cabal for daring to speak the TRUTH™. Suddenly, all their bullshit was justified.
I’ve always been pretty far-left but I got a deep chill when that happened. I remember remarking to my friends that banning political speech, no matter how full of shit, would only cause problems in the long run, and so it has. Precedent was broken, and the right took it as a declaration of war. I truly believe things would not have gotten nearly as insane as they are had Google not decided to ban him. He deserved it, but they opened a door that couldn’t be shut again; and following this was a couple years of high-profile bans of rightwing figureheads and safe-spaces, all cumulating to the shut down of /r/theDonald in 2020. And the infection, which had been contained to a few small corners of the internet, suddenly exploded.
I truly believe things would not have gotten nearly as insane as they are had Google not decided to ban him.
Popular culture became complacent by over-relying on censorship instead of openly educating, criticizing, and discrediting idiots as was effectively done before with deference to free speech values.
banning political speech, no matter how full of shit, would only cause problems in the long run, and so it has.
I really cannot follow the argument. In Germany, we have a law making it illegal to deny the holocaust. People will say that seven million jews never died, and the police will investigate them, they are taken to court and put into prison if necessary.
Nothing bad ever came from this. We simply get to put one specific kind of asshole into prison if they spread lies to sow hatred.
Nothing bad ever came from this.
Except everything bad that came from it? That’s some serious selective attention.
My fellow countrymen generally seem to struggle with the concept of narrow and focused laws.
Everything is always all or nothing, and it makes nuance a problem to talk about.
DNS is not Twitter. Blocking DNS is the equivalent of blocking off the street to the pub. Getting banned from XYZ service is the equivalent of starting shit at the pub and getting thrown out.
They should be able to talk all they want. Right up unto the steps of the gallows.
What government entity does Twitter represent?
To the people that don’t get it. Censorship is when the government oppresses or modifies speech.
What the user above is talking about is when social media companies like Twitter banned Donald Trump and neo-nazi accounts.
Social media companies are private entities that you have a contract with where they provide you with service and you agree to abide by specific terms of that service. Hate speech and promotion of violence are things that you have agreed to not do on their services. If you do those things, then you agreed that your account could be terminated. That is what happened to Trump and the neo-nazi accounts (but I repeat myself).
I can agree that social media companies have too much power over public interaction and media consumption but I also agree that a person or organization should not be forced to host and broadcast messages that they disagree with.
Ironically, this standing legal interpretation is due to a right-wing lawsuit widely celebrated on the religious right about a cake baker who didn’t want to make wedding cakes for a gay wedding. The ruling is what affirmed the ability of private entities to regulate speech on their platforms.
Complaining about being banned from a public platform and also celebrating the victory of the cake baker is a situation where their side wants to have their cake and eat it too.
People seems to be fine with corporate censorship, but government censorship is somehow a no-no. I don’t get it. Corporate censorship is still censorship, but it’s now worse. Because you have now given up democratic control of what to censor, and let the tech billionaires have free reign over it. Twitter could ban Trump today, and promote fascism tomorrow and you’d have no say. (oh waiiit, that actually happened?!?!). If you think twitter banning Trump in 2021 is a good thing, why won’t you want the power to vote to ban Trump?
I could be wrong, I am open to change my mind, but please give me a good counter-argument.
Corporate censorship is not illegal. If you come to my house spouting Nazi rhetoric I have ever right to call you out on it and kick you out of my house.
There are laws deliberately protecting the people’s right to free speech that is not infringed by the government.
Now if you want to talk about how we should remove companies/corps rights as entities, we can have the conversation.
Trump was banned from Twitter and it was a good thing because it was them enforcing their TOS/EULA rules in a reasonable manner that doesn’t play favorites. Because the average person like you or me couldn’t say a lot of what Trump said on the platform and not get banned.
That doesn’t mean Twitter is a good company. There are no good companies. Corporations are not your friend. But they also aren’t government entities and they shouldn’t be. So if the state wants to sponsor the internet as a utility it can create its own cloudflare-like service for the purpose of DNS blocking and block whatever it wants. But cloudflare isn’t a state sponsored utility. It’s a corp. It has every right (whether you agree it should have rights or not) to not operate in countries it doesn’t want to operate in.
Your thinking is so calcified by the specific laws of the united states of America it is frustrating. Laws are written by mere mortals like you and me. When those bunch of dudes wrote the Constitution more than two hundred years ago, they couldn’t have imagined the internet in theirs wildest dreams. And that’s without pointing out that the reason they valued absolute freedom of speech so much can be largely attributed to the historical backdrop at the time.
A long time has passed, something better is possible. It’s time to think again from first principles.
If platforms aren’t allowed to moderate their platforms discussion will devolve into the same shit-tier content that Lemmy is so famous for.
Corporations have rights. Quite literally. They are legal entities. We aren’t required to use their services. They aren’t required to provide said services.
"In the UK, Article 10 of the 1998 Human Rights Act protects our right to freedom of expression: Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
In this case public authority is the government.
Governments have an obligation to prohibit hate speech and incitement. These are dangerous. Restrictions can also be justified if they protect specific public interest or the rights and reputations of others. People imposing the restrictions (whether they are governments, employers or anyone else) must be able to demonstrate the need for them, and they must be proportionate.
The choice for Cloudflare or any company that operates in the jurisdiction of the government enacting the law is to obey the law or not do business in that governments jurisdiction. It seems like that’s exactly what Cloudflare is suggesting they will do if the government tries to force them to adhere to said law. That’s their right as a company.
I’m not saying cloudflare is a good company. My argument isn’t that pulling out of the country is a good idea.
My main concern and the reason that I responded to your comment in the first place was because you tried to make this about freedom of speech, and as it pertains to this discussion I’m not really sure what your argument is except that your idea of free speech is predicated on the idea that the freedom of the people and their speech should in some way negate the freedom of the company.
The threat of legal action on Cloudflare’s part seems to be to do with the fine that the government is trying to force on them for refusing to agree to obey the newly enacted law. It’s normal for corporations to fight civil penalties like this.
Your argument doesn’t seem to be that it costs tax dollars (it does), or that it’s unfair because you or I wouldn’t have the same opportunity due to monetary limitations to legally fight the government. Or even that if you or I didn’t agree with the law we couldn’t just up sticks and leave the country. Your argument seems to be that somehow, by standing up for the rights they do have, this company is somehow blocking free speech? I’m asking because I still am not sure I understand.
Amazing this is so downvoted.
It is literally impossible to discuss free speech online, and has been for decades, due to a tsunami of americans thinking their specific law is the only position possible and flooding all debate with smug explanations of how it actually works, actually.
I’m not arguing against free speech here. Granted I also didn’t downvote these comments.
The main problem is that the original comment and subsequent comments don’t explain what the alternative is. It isn’t just the US that has such laws (as I tried to demonstrate by posting an alternative law from the UK.
The thing is, generally the rights of an individual generally stop where the rights of another individual start and vice versa.
The original comment doesn’t even explain what part of either the ruling by the country in question or the threat of legal action on the part of Cloudflare they disagree with, nor did they explain how that is in any way related to free speech.
There exist whole countries that have internet that doesn’t use Cloudflare’s services. Cloudflare is a big player in the DNS space but they aren’t the end all be all of the internet.
If the concern is that Cloudflare’s threat to leave the country will amount to censoring free speech because websites won’t be available due to the lack of Cloudflare services, that’s a problem with the infrastructure of the country in question and their ability to provide DNS blocking as a service (forcing them to rely on a business that is provides said services in exchange for money).
That same money can be used to stand up a Cloudflare alternative.
Reliance on tech corporations is not an excuse to claim free speech is being detrimentally affected by censorship.
Even if it was, the least the original commenter could have done was offered alternative solutions.
It’s not somehow a no-no. It’s literally banned by the Constitution
When that site has 20+ felonies including pedophilia, yes
And who is going to ban Trump from Twitter?
He uses his own social media?
Yeah, he has his own Mastodon instance. I was trying to make a different point, though.
People couldn’t even agree to keep Trump away from government, even though that’s a no-brainer. If you react by trying to build a consensus that some people should be banned from social media, you may get that consensus. But it won’t be Trump who is banned. That is a no-brainer, too.
It’s shockingly fascist thinking, actually.
Censorship is, at best, a band-aid. And they can always find ways around it. The best solution isn’t to block them from view temporarily, but to teach people to evaluate what they say with empathy and critical thinking.
That is, of course, difficult to accomplish. But then again, there’s no easy solutions, only easy excuses.
The “you don’t need to censor fascists, bigots, racists, etc., you just have to be louder than them” idea hadn’t worked. The world had decades to make it work but didn’t succeed. It is ideologically pure, I’ll give you that. Really nice if you can drive those bad people out without dirtying your own hands with censorship. But I have lost confidence that that approach can ever work.
At no point did I mention volume, I implied education. I actually find just yelling louder to be worse than censorship, as all it does is increase the level of tension and push people towards extremes. Which helps no one.
I also didn’t mean to imply that we shouldn’t use band-aids at all, just that it’s a simple treatment, not a cure. Blocking certain speech and rhetoric can help to a degree… but not if it’s the only thing you do.
The problem with current strategies is that no one wants to go beyond that first step. Whether it’s censorship, or shouting.
You can’t educate people over Twitter. 😂
Banning groups like that only amplifies their “persecuted” persona. It’s best to spend on education and destroying their credibility, which is how we dealt with fucking idiots before we got complacent.
Are they becoming less shitty or is this accidentally doing the right thing?
They did as sort of positive thing while praising Elon and Vance, despite both their visions of “free speech” as being “free speech for what I like and not you”
So a hearty fuck Cloudflare, fuck American tech for one again operating in a country and refusing to follow their laws, and fuck the entire billionaire apparatus who are so deep in the circle jerk they don’t know how to come up for air and not act like fascists for 10 seconds.
the Italian law is overly broad here, but that doesn’t excuse this behaviour.
fuck American tech for one again operating in a country and refusing to follow their laws
Fuck government overreach. And fuck anyone defending it.
There’s no way this was Cloudflare taking a stand for liberty and free speech. They are simply choosing to obey one less regulation. Less for them to do. Less to be accountable for. Less to special-case for one country.
These corporations hate being regulated - it could be by a direct popular ballot, not politicians, and they would still resist. Let’s not mistake corporate obstructionism for libertarianism.
You fight government overreach by civil disobedience, not by corporatist overreach in the same manner.
If you give a free pass to corporations disobeying laws just because you personally dislike those laws, soon you’ll find all regulations are pointless because no corporation follows them…
Also, there’s no such thing as “governmental overreach” in a well working system that is FOR the people and BY the people. You elect the representatives, you have a say in what laws get passed. I do agree that we could do with a refresher because the current forms of representative democracy are breaking thanks to (primarily right wing) political false marketing with no repercussions, and nowadays we do have a way to have people give direct input on laws and regulations before they get passed, but that doesn’t negate the fact that the government isn’t supposed to be some shady ruler class but rather a form of communal governance.
there’s no such thing as “governmental overreach” in a well working system that is FOR the people and BY the people
Nope: two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.
Coercive power can be turned against the individual democratically. A system that gives government the power necessary to protect individual liberty but also denies it authority to abuse liberties is necessary.
civil disobedience, not by corporatist overreach
“corporatist overreach” can be civil disobedience & legal challenges.
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
I’m with you on these stupid laws too.
Government overreach (or corruption and enablement of oligarchs) is the responsibility of the citizens.
and the citizens are doing?
Literally fuck-all.
Nah, fuck Italy on this one. Capitalists demanding censorship to protect their profits are never right.
I am Italian and I find Piracy Shield an abomination.
That said, the consequence after the government enacts this should be to see at least all the technically informed people protesting vehemently if not violently.
Instead no, sofa is just too comfortable and pay is too high (including the one they get from public contracts), so let’s instead applaud the Elon-yapping corpo that decides this is the one rule to challenge, but not the next one that is to their advantage.
the Italian law is overly broad here, but that doesn’t excuse this behaviour.
This behavior = Going to court.
They’re arguing that applying filters would degrade performance for everyone. So… to me that kinda sounds like accidentally doing the right thing.
Seems fairly plausible that they cant change 1.1.1.1 behaviour per country.
At least, not readonably. Dns is the one place where people spend a lot of effort saving microseconds (and less) on each look up.
Cf has always been taking the “freedom of speech absolutist” approach.
they probably know that if they start censoring then some portion of users will stop using their DNS because it would prevent them from going to the websites they want to visit
As a European, I’ve really come around to a more American view of Free Speech.
Over the last few years, we get more and more laws requiring more and more surveillance and censorship to protect copyright, stop hate speech, enforce GDPR, … We’re building up this infrastructure and the population thinks it’s fine. The courts go along and ask for more.
What is going to happen when a European Trump comes to power? You think it’s terrible that Big Tech goes along with Trump? That Must bought Twitter? We ain’t seen nothing yet.
Yeah I don’t get that. How did free speech help when the Nazis humiliated jews publicly in the 1930s? How does it help now that the US president says that Somalis are trash people? Nick Fuentes saying the “organized Jewry in America” being a problem?
It seems obvious that I want the state to prevent hate speech, especially against minorities.
How did free speech help when the Nazis humiliated jews publicly in the 1930s?
How did it help taking “jew-baiters” like Julius Streicher to court during the Weimar Republic? Obviously it didn’t.
It seems obvious that I want the state to prevent hate speech, especially against minorities.
You want the state to act against hate speech coming from the elected head of state. What about that seems like a good plan?
You can’t convince people that Trump is a bad guy, and so you want the state to go after the bad guys. Maybe you can convince people that the state should smash bad guys. It’s not hard. But Trump is in charge of the state and not you. He’ll decide who’s a bad guy.
just to be clear, it seems like you are referring to the claimed american view of free speech, not the reality
Are there examples of censorship or prior restraint you’d like to highlight?
the white house encouraging witch hunts is a good one
It is real. There is a lot of hypocrisy, particularly among the right. But the difference between Europe and the US is stark.
Compare the criticism of the DMCA or Google’s Content ID to this affair. It’s on completely different levels.
The US has no limits which is fucking stupid, meanwhile Canada has limits on hate speech while still being far more free than the US speech wise.
limits on hate speech
which is bullshit: not being merely offended is not a fundamental liberty, no imminent risk of damage to an interest a person has a basic right to results from merely expressing an opinion.
such laws are readily abused
- German repression of political expression: live police suppressing pro-Palestinian protests as anti-semitic, raids & arrests over calling a politician pimmel, internet patrols penalizing vitriol, insults, & satirical images of politicians showing fake quotes
- UK repression of political expression: designate Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, arrest pro-Palestinian protesters, arrest someone over a social media post backing Palestine Action
& ineffective at preventing the ideas & ideologies they oppose from taking root & gaining power. the advocates of repressive policies are only mildly inconvenienced or continue undeterred underground. the German AfD isn’t struggling. far-right parties like Reform UK keep going. so, they fail to keep anyone in check while also undermining basic freedoms.
ability to justify truth & correctness is far more important than attempting to coerce conformity to correctness through dogma, taboo, & censorship. weak ability to justify makes people incompetent defenders & weak believers of correctness. individuals hone justifications & acquire competence to deliberate effectively through practice of vigorous & open deliberation with adversarial positions. censorship, even of incorrect belief, robs both those whose speech is suppressed and their audience of open deliberation they need to justify their beliefs and actions competently & effectively.
only cowards fear words.
I’m all in on no limits for free speech. The government’s job is to provide services, not determine and police morality. And hate speech does not have a concrete definition, so it’s a moving target (the government could define talking shit about Republicans as hate speech and make it illegal, for example). I don’t like Nazis or racism or homophobia, but i like the idea that you are legally allowed to say nazi, racist or homophobic shit and I can hear it and choose to shun you.
I’m glad Canada is there for you with their rules if that makes sense to you. Not everybody has to agree with no limits on free speech – plenty of places to live with mostly free-ish speech laws.
Any DNS beginning filtering anything gets removed from my Adguard Home. I will do my filtering myself. Ads and nazi websites like *.il, or whitehouse.gov for example do not load in my network.
Whats wrong with *il? Its just domain, like com
That belongs to a terrorist organization. No thanks.
Love to see America taking up this free speech fight again. EU has gotten out of control.
Ah yes, USA - the country with the most strict anti-piracy laws, also responsible for forcing them onto the EU. I’m sure it’ll happily defend piracy from supposed attacks on free speech.
The Ameri-cunt of the Fascist States of America has spoken, we better all listen to him or else…
Wait’ll you find out that over half the states in the US have age gating laws on the internet.
The US government knows they can’t turn off the Internet for everyone like they did in Iran.
This is how they will cut off individuals from the Internet
You can take your notion of ‘free speech’ and your tech companies and shove’em.
lmao
So then the Italian court orders its local ISPs to blackhole 1.1.1.1 (which would be stupid easy). Which will end up pushing people to VPNs but still satisfy the court order.
Gaslighting article after CEO of Cloudflare started harassing Italian organizations and people https://xcancel.com/eastdakota/status/2009654937303896492 . Probably sponsored. I expect at least 10 more. Looking at brainwashing today is such a joy. I expect people start defending their favorite company and this asshole.
Can you explain more? It sounds like you think it’s acceptable for the owners of an Italian sports league to have this power over the Internet?
Explain what ? That I can read and understand ? I am saying that it’s not ok for CEO of company to cancel services in whole country after receiving spam email. It’s not ok to call politicians to support online aggression actions against foreign country and at the same time wash mouth with freedom. But well I know you who praise him. Good luck and keep destroying internet.
In addition, 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.
It seems like you are misunderstanding the situation. I’m asking you to explain why you support Italian media executives having the power to censor the Internet.
Are you sane ?
I like to think so. You?
This tweet is fine. Italy is wrong on this matter.
I’m Italian and I agree. Censorship is shit.
