Given the recent threats from Cloudflare against Italy and siding with Vance, Musk and co., this is definitely not a far-fetched reality. Big Tech has demonstrated which side they are going with.
I wasn't referring to the state censorship request, but rather to the 'flocking' to self-proclaimed champions of free speech in the current Trump administrations as a cry for help.
I personally find that the fact that a private company compels a list of IPs and domains that they want blocked to get blocked more alarming than that.
When Spain blocks CF (it does this regularly), it breaks all CF sites. Of course, the actual problem here is organised crime. Spain and Italy do this because the mafia owns them.
> When Spain blocks CF (it does this regularly), it breaks all CF sites. Of course, the actual problem here is organised crime. Spain and Italy do this because the mafia owns them.
Mafia has a vested interest in broadcast rights of football matches in Spain?
Spain blocks Cloudflare because the football league La Liga has a court order that allows them to point to IP ranges that are hosting/fronting live streams of football matches, and get ISPs to block access to those ranges.
If the sports league is influential enough to have a standing court order to be able to unilaterally block IP ranges for the entire country, I'd imagine that organized crime might take an interest. I have no idea if it's the case but when something already seems to have an outsized influence it wouldn't be crazy to imagine that others interested in that power would also take an interest.
Moreover, I think the point of the parent comment is that they're blocking quite a bit more than just football games. It sounds like the claim is that the blocking is willfully broad because of other influences, not necessarily the the purported more narrow intent is necessarily from those influences.
More than mafia, ex-francoists oligarchs. And these could be stomped down tomorrow from CF by cancelling all the tangent services for those, even for Spanish banks and related industries (tourist and construction avoiding both attacks and serious disbalancing harms). The Ibex 35 would near collapse overnight and Tebas being kicked out from their own people.
Not OP but, oh common. This entire thing IS political. Big Tech IS in bed with the authoritarian US apparatus, they have been very transparent about it. What are you expecting to gain from your message? Pedantry points?
OP, not a bot. CF definitely chose to be political in the message, so regardless of what Italy did or who is right and wrong, posting that message is just a message that reliance on CF can just be a bad idea long-term.
There were strong signals from the CF CEO that they align with the Trump administration.
They threatened to pull the plug on all Italian customers.
This is relevant to this conversation: CF recently acted in a way that makes some people think it might cut its services to people for political reasons.
I don't find your comment particularly well articulated or continaing anything besides name calling (the "bot farming"). Can you articulate your opinion on the matter?