It has been very clear that the Trump adminstrations definition of freedom of speech, including JD Vance's, is that you should be free to say whatever the Trump administration wants and nothing else.

They have consistently prosecuted, threatened, deported, withheld money from, and so on people who say things they do not like.

And the answer to that is to point out the hypocrisy (what you're doing), not to take the opposite view, that censorship is important (what so many others are doing when Trump takes a position on anything).

Yes! That is it!

Similar to what Democrats have done to Trump: https://nypost.com/2024/05/12/us-news/fareed-zakaria-doubts-...

Do you really see it as the same scale?

The judiciary and both houses are allowing some incredible things, far beyond anything from the last administration.

This year has been off to a wild start and it’s well into uncharted territory.

And you are falling into the trap of thinking that if a person is busy deconstructing what used to be one of the larger democracies in the world that their other words are going to be taken at face value, which obviously is not going to happen.

We're not discussing Pol Pot's views on cooking either, even though he might have had some valuable insight. Bringing up Vance and Musk in polite conversation to bolster your argument is - especially in the context of Europe, which both men seem to have declared to be enemy #1 before Russia and China - a little tone deaf.

To be fair, he's not bringing them up as intellectual support for his argumentative base – he's bringing them up as support for acts of retaliation. This is mostly about power and we've lost 30% in power vs. the US in just ~12 years because we've fucked up our economy.

Maybe 'the economy' is not the only valid yardstick to compare countries by?

I absolutely and 100% agree! But it's the stick that others will use to force their world view down your throat. So if you want to be not only righteous, but also hold others accountable according to your standards, you need the economic power to do so.

Most of our power loss is from electing a belligerent dumb fuck twice and allowing him to sabotage our international relationships and destroying our remaining credibility.

What power loss? OP is talking about Italian power loss?

I was speaking about Europe as a whole. Economically, we suck. Losing UK didn't help, either, but except for Poland, we've become relatively poorer by an insane amount, compared to the US. Another 10 years on that path and we're half the US.

> we've lost 30% in power vs. the US in just ~12 years because we've fucked up our economy.

I wonder how many Americans would prefer to live in the US that existed 12 years ago versus the US today.

People will say anything online, but when it comes to action very little. I'd rather live in the US now or 12 years ago vs Italy unless someone gave me a tuscan villa with a pool

Virtue signaling at its finest.

I laughed. Im at a the tail end of 3 weeks in Italy, sitting on a train.

Compared to 20 years ago it’s so much cleaner, quicker, more efficient, friendlier.

You must be in a great place as it’s fantastic here.

Oh I've been multiple times, it's beautiful! But vacationing is not living + working, paying bills, dealing with bureaucracy or culture clashes, etc...

> And you are falling into the trap of thinking that if a person is busy deconstructing what used to be one of the larger democracies in the world that their other words are going to be taken at face value, which obviously is not going to happen.

No. I'm identifying this one statement as factual, regardless of the person saying it. Surely then, you would not deny the color of the sun to be yellow just because Pot might have observed it to be that way?

That's besides the point: JD Vance and Musk are precisely the wrong entities to have opinions on stuff like this because they are on the wrong side of that line most of the time. Especially Musk, but Vance has his own ulterior motives to berate the EU on anything so regardless of the outcome it will be tainted.

> JD Vance and Musk are precisely the wrong entities to have opinions on stuff like this because they are on the wrong side of that line most of the time. Especially Musk, but Vance has his own ulterior motives to berate the EU on anything so regardless of the outcome it will be tainted.

People focus on Vance in this issue because they hate him and hate is easy to come by. They ignore that popular Democrats and progressives said the same thing. Hell, even the Atlantic posted a piece about the issue.

People focus on Vance because he's the one referenced in the tweet.

And most of the online world do not like him, so here we are.

If it was someone else, we'd all be cheering because the person is on a different team.

No, I think that's not the reason. Not at all.

>they are on the wrong side of that line most of the time.

To you, yes. Which shows your biases.

you are falling into the trap of ignoring the pandering. cloudflare bro is clearly pandering here and showing that, in the moment, he will say/do whatever to whomever to get what he wants. cloudflare kind of has a history of doing this.

there was zero reason to name drop vance and elon besides appealing to their rabid fans to bolster support.

it's just more hypocrisy.

What other option do they have? It’s either comply with unjust rulings that undermine the free internet (and their business) or make a deal with the devil. Either one is bad but only complying has an immediate negative impact.

If there was any sense that this ruling was just a temporary mistake that will be corrected by pending regulation/legislation, then a third option would be on the table: temporarily comply and wait it out. But all indications are that the EU is hell-bent on making things worse, not better, for the open internet.

Cloudflare, the company that regularly blocks me from legitimately visiting websites because their bot detection software absolutely sucks probably is the biggest effective censor on the planet.