The article says Cloudflare has tried to geoblock just certain IPs in Italy but what if Cloudflare tells Italy to stuff it and just withdraws from providing services to the country entirely?
I think fine to order blocking in Italy - it's an italian court after all. But if they start doing the sort of global blocks folks have tried with X, then just withdraw services.
You mean fire the government trying to destroy a free and open internet, while they still have the choice to do it. I really wish there was more of this whole sale firing of representatives that betray the interests of their country to support the megacorps
The problem with this is that it contributes more to internet censorship in that country compared to handling and fighting against each individual censorship request.
I'm sure someone in Cloudflare did the math before they went to court and decided their business in Italy was worth saving. If it was, say, the Channel Islands they'd probably just tell them to stuff it.
Just because the end result is the same doesn’t make it an accurate comparison or an insightful comment, especially given your comment was about motivations, not results.
A Brazilian judge named Alexandre de Moraes was going on a power trip, banning content and even people outright from social media. He issued unilateral orders to Twitter/X to perform this state censorship. Twitter/X refused, even though they comply with such orders elsewhere, because the orders were unconstitutional per Brazil’s own constitution. They also went public with the orders despite gag orders from this judge to keep the censorship secret. News outlets like the NYT have labeled de Moraes as a threat to democracy (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/22/world/americas/brazil-ale...), for his long standing crusade against various activists, journalists, and politicians. The judge the issued orders to arrest Twitter’s lawyers in Brazil or something like that, which seemed very aggresive. So this turned into an international fiasco. The judge eventually ordered Brazil’s ISPs to block Twitter/X. That ban lasted for a little bit and then for some unknown reasons (maybe conversations between Twitter/X and the judge?) Twitter/X access was restored but some partial amount (?) of censorship was performed. Along the way Twitter/X also launched an account detailing the kind of censorship that had been forced on them in secret, along with comparisons against Brazilian law (https://x.com/AlexandreFiles/status/1829979981130416479).
