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.
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.
about as safe as when in prison
Based. Censorship no bueno
What about censoring neo Nazis? What about banning Trump from Twitter?
They should be able to talk all they want. Right up unto the steps of the gallows.
When that site has 20+ felonies including pedophilia, yes
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.
It’s not somehow a no-no. It’s literally banned by the Constitution
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.
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.
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.
And who is going to ban Trump from Twitter?
He uses his own social media?
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.
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.
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.
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?
Nah, fuck Italy on this one. Capitalists demanding censorship to protect their profits are never right.
the Italian law is overly broad here, but that doesn’t excuse this behaviour.
This behavior = Going to court.
Cf has always been taking the “freedom of speech absolutist” approach.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This tweet is fine. Italy is wrong on this matter.
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 ?
