We would go a long way if our communication platforms weren't intentionally amplifying the most controversial voices for the sake of maximizing ad revenue.
Back in the day the Russians needed to spend money to buy influence. Now they can just make their propaganda engaging enough and Western companies will happily host it and promote it for free.
Important to distinguish here that all of these companies are not just Western but American.
It's a perverse incentive that in chasing engagement, the ragebait is selected for.
I read articles and comments about people who were fired or suffered other consequences for something they said online, and the responses are righteous indignation--they ought to have known better than to post these things online! How did we get into this fucked up state of affairs? Social media started off as a way to talk to your friends, and over time your friends have been replaced with strangers, what they can say and who gets to say what controlled by centralized authorities, while individuals have been taught to self-censor.
It is not only the US companies or Russian bots, every government in the world is itching to get their thumb on the scale here to have a say in what the people are allowed to see, to hear, and to say.
As an example, watch a really good documentary on something, I would consider it best
But it might have less views than some AI slop video perhaps even generated in a minute
Another aspect relevant to the propaganda discussion is that I think modern algorithms have decided that ragebait is the best form of engagement and this is why propaganda might spread fast and how social media might actually actively help the foreign nation
I would argue that this is one of the reasons social media actively harms but its that profit over all for social media seems genuinely harmful. We need more focus on bluesky and mastodon and other alternatives as well to establish a network effect there but also that I would argue that prosecuting social media / large tech companies should have such a case where something can be prosecuted criminally for a class law suit case so that these social medias can stay better in shape than being deranged
But the issue to me feels like I am already protesting Italian even fining because in this case to me it feels like abusing the vagueness of the law and other factors so I am sure that if we give govts more power they might have the ability to abuse it as well for some lobbying powers (in this case it seems to be football)
Everything boils down to what the genuine incentives of the govts are I guess. I mean some are trying to do somethings but I guess all of this is just really tricky and the answer is in a series of changes and not a single one. There is nuance to this like every other discussion
Since that didn't seem to work I'm kinda out of ideas as well
Many people have had "heroin" in the form of morphine in the hospital. They don’t turn into morphine-seekers.
Addiction and pleasure seeking is more complex than having a taste and then being hooked forever. Of course many people can't get out of this Skinner Box type of mindset.
There's many ways for something to be better than another thing, though, and a lot of stuff is winning because it's best at "engagement" even if it's really bad in many other ways.
Spot on. By this metric, we should shift all agricultural and pharmaceutical production to heroin.
Freedom of speech for me, not for thee, eh?
I don't want my politicians deciding what is good or bad on the internet. I'm an adult, and I can decide for myself.
Since the US is turning away from Europe's interests, it's just logical that American platforms will be restricted in one way or another. I don't see any way around it.
That "cyring" must have been awfully quiet, I didn't hear anything at least.
- BBC, 2018: Russia: Google removes Putin critic's ads from YouTube https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45471519
- BBC, 2021: How Russia tries to censor Western social media https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-59687496
- BBC, 2021: Russia slows down Twitter over 'banned content' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-56344304
- BBC, 2021: Russia threatens YouTube ban for deleting RT channels https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58737433
- BBC, 2021: Russia threatens to slow down Google over banned content https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57241779
- Reuters, 2022: Russia blocks access to BBC and Voice of America websites https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/russia-restricts-access-bbc-russian-service-radio-liberty-ria-2022-03-04/
- The Guardian, 2022: Russia blocks access to Facebook and Twitter https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/04/russia-completely-blocks-access-to-facebook-and-twitter
- BBC, 2022: Russia restricts social media access https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-60533083
- BBC, 2022: Russia confirms Meta's designation as extremist https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-63218095
- BBC, 2024: Data shows YouTube 'practically blocked' in Russia - https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/product/b0003111
- BBC, 2024: Russia's 2024 digital crackdown reshapes social media landscape - https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/product/b0003arzaThis decision further restricts access to free and independent information and expands the already severe media censorship in Russia. The banned European media work according to journalistic principles and standards. They give factual information, also to Russian audiences, including on Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.
In contrast, the Russian disinformation and propaganda outlets, against which the EU has introduced restrictive measures, do not represent a free and independent media. Their broadcasting activities in the EU have been suspended because these outlets are under the control of the Russian authorities and they are instrumental in supporting the war of aggression against Ukraine.
Respect for the freedom of expression and media is a core value for the EU. It will continue supporting availability of factual information also to audiences in Russia."[0]
Funny, eh?
[0] https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/russia-statement-high-repres...
They involve overwhelming the channels.
The play is to influence at m scale, millions of individual choices, just like yours.
Your position is no longer the entirety of the defense we need for free speech online.
The issue isn't whether politicians are deciding what's good or bad.
The issue is that, in Europe, foreign actors with explicit ill intent are deciding a ton of the content your neighbours are watching/reading, day in day out, on the internet. AI has made this easier and even more scalable than before. This content is being used to influence or outright decide elections. Elections of more politicians that are "deciding what's good or bad", eh. Such as politicians deciding that Russia is good.
What the actual fuck do we do to defend ourselves, pray tell? The whole "let them have critical thinking" doesn't work, we are under active war and citizens who don't know better are specifically targeted. And besides, we are not gonna take lessons from the country that yelled high and mighty for years they're the land of the free, and let itself fall into complete autocracy & dictatorship. In the US, those same citizens are the useful tools repeating state propaganda, two steps removed from "Just Following Orders".
And full context: I agree with Matt and support Cloudflare's stance here. But people can quit it with cheap retorts like "Freedom of speech for me, not for thee". It's not that simple.
- Sitting president controls all branches of the government including the supreme court
- State-controlled TV media and propaganda channels through state-controlled social media
- US rubbing shoulders with other autocrats & dictators, and now part of the UN voting block with north korea / syria / eritrea / russia / etc
- President threatening members of the opposing parties of arrest under treason charges
- USA kidnapped another country's leader, because of their oil (ZERO pretense)
- USA currently threatening to seize land from a sovereign EU nation with pro-MAGAs justifying it at every step
- Did you already forget that your sitting president attempted a coup or what?
I just picked some obvious ones, but the list is long. Devin Stone made a good video about it a month ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn-rkKIMNAs)
Hyperbole? Gimme a break. The rest of the world is watching and knows you're deep in it now. Just because it was not immediately a dictatorship in his first term doesn't mean it hasn't progressed and gotten worse ever since - You're still living in 2015.
And how did it go from a democracy to a dictatorship? Because he convinced the people to give up their rights in response to a perceived threat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung
Goebbels himself remarked how stupid the institutions were for granting them freedom of speech:
> When our enemies say: well, we gave you the freedom of opinion back then- yeah, you gave it to us, that's in no way evidence that we should return the favor! Your stupidity shall not be contagious! That you granted it to us is evidence of how dumb you are!
-- Joseph Goebbels, 1935
That's a really misleading way to say it. Because they took charge of the entire structure aimed at stopping propaganda, and used it to amplify theirs.
The more laws and government agencies Germany had to fight propaganda, the easier time the Nazis would have had.
However, a few months after he deleted elections
No single person introduced women suffrage. It emerged through independent movements across different countries.
That said, it is generally accepted that New Zealand (1893) was the first self-governing country to grant women the right to vote nationally. Key figure: Kate Sheppard.
Earlier partial or local suffrage: Sweden 1718 - 1772 (limited), US 1869 (Wyoming territory).
Key global leaders of women suffrage: UK - Emmeline Pankhurst, US - Susan B Anthony, Elizabeth C Stanton (results in 19th Amendment)
Global timeline: 1893 New Zealand, 1902 Australia (with racial exceptions), 1913 - 1918 Nordics, 1918 - 1920 UK and US, 1945-1960s Much of Asia, Africa, and Middle East, 1971 Switzerland!
Fake electors plot, Georgia phone call to "find 11600 votes". You seem convinced that he just talks, we have ample evidence that isn't true.
> Even if they took over Congress, would that need they would be the new Congress? You really believe that?
I was unaware conspiracies are only illegal if they succeed.
That EU nation can join NATO to prevent it.
Delete smartphone, logout from abusive SaaS.
Deleting X (which I've done) doesn't stop Russia from influencing the voterbase of my neighbouring countries. Now what?
The speech of the manipulator is not the same as the speech of the expert and they shouldn't be given the same treatment, lest you want psychological warfare waged on your nation.
American free speech extremists like these tech CEOs are either willing patsies or useful idiots in the hybrid warfare against Europe.
I think free speech comes from the same base as universal vote: any selection mechanism would be corrupted and in the end cause more harm than good. That is why the solution is to let everyone speak / vote. If you have some uncorruptible people or mechanism for selection, just use that to make policy decisions directly.
I think the solution is to elevate critical thinking in the populations, so people can be less vulnerable to psychological warfare. Otherwise you're just picking a different manipulator - whoever writes or enforces the speech limits.
Critical thinking even in those capable of it is a limited resource. I can't spend all day every day critically examining every single statement the internet flings at me - it's mentally exhausting and wears one down.
Let's elect proxies to do it for us.
Besides, "elect a comission of experts" is a contradiction. Experts are not elected. Expertise is not determined by voting. You want to appoint or select a comission of experts, or elect a comission of politicians. These are the choices. Appointment or selection will be done by someone else, likely politicians too.
You just hope some incorruptible competent people will get there by magic. They will not.
If you could do this, just elect a comission of experts to run the country, instead of this "truth comission" that makes sure people are well informed to vote correctly in elections for the real government, which will in turn run the country. Why do the indirection? There is no reason, if you could "elect" good people, but you can't.
I don't think that's contentious. The point of free speech is not that all speech is equally valuable or positive. It's that I don't trust you to decide which speech shouldn't be allowed, because that power will 100% be abused, until it's just as pernicious as the "manipulators" it's claiming to defend against.
well, claim to be free speech extremists at least
No you can't, all of this stuff is designed to influence you without you knowing it, or you would not be influenced. This is like thinking advertisements have no effect on you.
People pay good money because they know it is effective, it is influencing you, you cannot decide for yourself.
There has to be a lot more nuance. I clearly see that both Putin and the CCP do a lot of things predicated on the exact claim that their respective populations can not be left to decide for themselves. "People left free would make bad decisions, we the rulers are morally obligated to force them into a good path". I think this is the ostensible meaning of "freedom is slavery".
There's AI generated content with tens of millions of views that is as fake as ancient aliens on the history channel but nobody seems to realize it. If you comment here there is a high chance you did not grow up among people with 8 years of basic education who haven't read a book in 20 years and believe quite literally everything they see. That is what a decent chunk of any population is like. The biggest blind spot of well-educated internet libertarians who taught themselves how to code at 15 is that they in all likelihood have no concept of how the average citizen navigates the world.
The problem with Putin isn't that he thinks a country needs intelligent and wise leaders, Plato would have told you the same thing. It's where he's steering it that's the issue and that the country's leadership is no more capable at the top than it is at the bottom.
The whole concept of democracy is based on this: you elect politicians, they decide. If you don't like that, you don't like democracy. Which is fine, but then you don't get to defend it either as the best system under the sun, etc.
We (America) are not a democracy, we're a constitutionally limited republic. Republic is a subset of democracy, but the 'constitutionally limited republic' part is important. We cannot elect politicians to censor the things that we want censored because our republic has not authorized the government to do censorship, and the bill of rights expressly forbids it. They are constitutionally limited from doing so until and unless the constitution is amended.
Until and unless we change the constitution, any efforts to do that are illicit. Popular democracy would allow a majority to vote to bring back slavery, and if you don't like that, you don't like democracy.
Maybe a bit of this is already happening (obvious suspect being X) or maybe not, I guess we'll never know for sure, but there is clearly an huge issue here that needs fixing as soon as possible.
Not only does it seem like you've gone off topic to push a personal agenda, you're presenting a false dichotomy. We could (if we wanted to) wall our networks off along national boundaries while still preserving freedom of speech within our enclave. I don't think that would be a good idea nor do I think the execution of such an initiative would be likely to go smoothly but the example serves to illustrate that there's a huge potential solution space.
Personally what I don't understand is why Cloudflare didn't stop offering access to 1.1.1.1 from Italian addresses. At the end of the day picking a direct fight with the government of a jurisdiction you operate in seems extremely unwise. I fail to see the upside for them here.
Actually assuming they don't intentionally operate 1.1.1.1 from within Italy how is it CF's problem if Italians access it? Shouldn't this be on the Italian telecoms to filter traffic to this dastardly "illegal" foreign resolver?
I have to say though, reflexively responding in that manner gives the impression of being quite radicalized. I don't think that's the level of discourse expected on HN.
The end result is worse than the disinformation.
If the problem is Russian bots, there’s a much easier way to solve it: make Facebook and the platforms that allow them to spread financially liable.
You’re unironically arguing that giving up your freedom is a protection against losing your freedom.
That's not a dictator. You're just grasping for hyperbole to prop up an ideological point.
I'm also reminded of the last time Matthew Prince was locked in the horns of a free speech issue when there was outcry for Cloudflare to stop platforming Daily Stormer and Kiwi Farms. Sites that were claiming their free speech rights to not only spread hate, but to doxx and threaten and, by extension, chill the speech of people they disliked. Hence, free speech is not unlimited. Some speech restricts the speech of others. And then it is very much the responsibility of regulators to step in and make a judgment.
> We believe Italy, like all countries, has a right to regulate the content on networks inside its borders. But they must do so following the Rule of Law and principles of Due Process.
I live in Italy, I'm a citizen. I don't feel any safer having the internet regulated by a bunch of bureaucrats than I do state actors and bots.
If there is disinformation, the solution is to counter it with actual information, to give the people better tools to identify it (like X's community notes), and to educate the general population so they will have better critical thinking.
Restricting freedom of speech is never a solution. How long until dissenting opinions are censored because somebody labels them "disinformation"? Who watches the watchmen? etc.
I'd rather live in a society with full freedom of speech and disinformation from State actors than have only 100% accurately vetted news.
That seems to be the American definition.
We don’t all have binary systems for our views and politics, and some of our democracies are doing better than than US despite our apparent lack of free speech.
Of course this is all hypothetical at the moment, as the current administration doesn’t seem to care much for the law.
I see your point about free speech but I think it has to be more nuanced. For example, where has continuing stupid anti vaxer debate left the Americans?
So what you argue is that we should build good bots to counter the bad bots right? and all this in a "secret" to avoid suspension by the tech companies. This looks like playing stupid games.
The disinformation in this era can basically shadow any kind of legitimate "counter-disinformation". To make the game fair we would first need lockdown the internet content on citizen ID authorization so that we can identify if the free speach spread is actually published by a real person or some chinese bot pretending to be a single European mom with 3 kids.
This is not something anyone wants so I think the current trade off of court orders to take down content is legitimate and the best approach. Cloudflare, the tech companies and US government likes the absolute free speech like everything else (i.e. free market) as long as it serves their interests. I wouldn't be surprised to see Cloudflare proudly repelling some "chinese propaganda attacks" and frame it like a cyber security win instead of anti-free speech action.
The tipping point happened during covid - the authorities were so synced up with the media, and the online censorship became so prevalent that the official narrative felt deeply off, coordinated, and often contradictory. There was no debate in the EU, we had to lock down all of the countries, with no alternative (for instance, protect old people but let younger ones live their lives) possible.
Given how Orwellian and borderline crazy average media discourse had become, especially after the vaccine was out, I saw many people start looking elsewhere. My mother was one of them. She had consumed mostly state media her whole life. As she realized how stupid the narrative had become (state media was discussing if it was ok to sell socks in shops, or if doctors should examine unvaccinated customers), she and others like her turned to online media promoting fringe and radical theories.
Now, the European bureaucrats, having not learnt their lesson, want to double down and further restrict freedom of speech. The problem is that as long as the local media just repeats the official party line, which often strays away from reality, russian content farms will get new eyeballs.
If you don't like the risk of russian accounts, don't follow them, and follow accounts that you like. It's as easy as that.
You have news, government news sites, journalists, newspapers, it's never been easier to find sources to trust and compare them against each other.
Screaming murder because Sergei6778 says that Ukraine is evil is just stupid. Take responsibility for your own reading and mind, and stop using the law as a hamfisted tool to stop free speech. Take the bad with the good, or else there won't be any good left in the future.
I'm often baffled by the level of superficial and binary thinking even in "intellectuals" (as in people who hold degrees and you'd expect to have at least a modicum of critical thinking). More often than not it seems based on emotions.
Now have these people spend most of their waking hours doomscrolling some echo chamber on tiktok, and I can see why some may be worried about the influence of some "bad actor".
Given this, and the highly polarized political scene (and I'm in Europe!), I have to say I'm quite worried as to how things will unfold. Hell, there's no need for Sergei and his friends! Just the local politicians' popularity contest is enough.
In a democracy, most people are unfortunately stupid and easily manipulable. We can't let the Russians (or the Americans!) use them as their proxy.
The part about "foreign masters" doesn't make sense to me.
Maybe the part about foreign masters makes more sense with this context:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/14/jd-vance-ali...
I still don't understand the "foreign masters" part. You mean other parties don't talk to foreigners?
Other parties don't have friendship treaties with Putins party.
And yet oddly you blame Russia for "fucking up the middle east". Why? Have you considered the possibility that it's you who is a victim of propaganda?
>Other parties don't have friendship treaties with Putins party.
I'm sure other parties have friendships with the parties or institutions in countries other than Russia.
Then let me correct myself: Your government's American proxies messed up the Middle East.
So you force a a migrant crisis and the spread information about the failings of liberal democracy... it's KGB basic training.
Just curious, where did you get that idea? Free and independent Western media, I suppose?
Apparently, it's KGB who removed any mention of Russia from the Wikipedia article on Libyan crisis and added links to NATO bombing campaign.[0]
Good point.
That's what Putin's "foreign agents" law addresses.
The law is much criticized by Western media and "NGOs" for some reason.
As a matter of fact, it marginalizes any recipient of foreign money even if they do something genuinely good for Russian people, but I doubt it is why the West doesn't like this law.
The level of radicalisation over Israel/Gaza really doesn't look organic, when compared to the reaction to other conflicts.
You should be able to insult and criticise the Prime Minister.
You should not be able to gain a position of power and then go on a crowded stage to claim that vaccines cause autism. This is intolerable. We are attacking the foundations of society. People are not rational actors. Not you, and not me. We are very simple animals.
But you're basically arguing for not criticizing the status quo.
Many social improvements have been attained by "attacking the foundations of society". How would you like living under some absolute monarchy? How do you think gay people would like to live in a church-run society like 500 years ago?
> You should not be able to gain a position of power and then go on a crowded stage to claim that vaccines cause autism. This is intolerable. We are attacking the foundations of society.
Not sure when the strawman is. "The foundations of society", for me, means "the way things are". Which can be vaccines, sure, or any kind of general policy which has been showed to have a positive effect on society, but it can also be all kinds of things taken for granted which aren't necessarily rooted in reason.
I would like to expand this not only to foreign state actors that people mention but also companies inside which are actively trying to do nefarious stuff
As an example, Tobacco industry knew that the damages were there but they still tried to spur up medical confusion around it all so that people would still think that medical discussion is going on when it was 100% clear that tobacco harms. Who knows how many people died
The man who discovered that washing hands saved lives was so ridiculed and I think met with hostility because doctors couldn't comprehend the idea that it was they would could spread diseases. This is decades before germ theory was invented
His name is Ignaz Semmelweis and the world was unjust to him. Doctors ridiculed and threatend him and he was labelled obsessive and doctors called it mere coincidence. His career crumbled as he was forced out of vienna/his hospital and his mental health deteriorated as his warnings were ignored
in 1865 Semmelwise was commited to an asylum where he died just two weeks later at age 47
Only after pasteur developed germ theory and lester pioneered antisceptic surgery, semmelwise was finally vindicated.
This simple practise of handwashing is now considered the most basic medical standard worldwide saving countless millions of lives in the process.
(I had to write it by hand here basically transcribing this really amazing video that I watched about such a topic, I would highly suggest watching it)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBCOh1SYQYA (crazy people who were proven right)
Semmelwise's stories can brings chills to spine.
But one maybe counterintuitive reason I don’t like free speech absolutism in the social media era — one of the platitude’s of FIRE is like, “the answer to hate speech is more speech” and “I want to know who the racist are so I can avoid them.”
1. The answer to nothin in this firehouse of speech in modern society is “more speech”.
2. Part of the peace we used to have in society is I didn’t have to know about everyone’s political opinions. Loosely speaking maybe I thought small-town folk were close minded, but there weren’t tens of thousands of examples of it across feeds on the internet all day.
Any platform distributing 'content' over a certain audience size should be treated as a media company and subject to much stricter rules and some kind of ethical oversight - like newspapers used to.
Unlimited free speech could have been positive maybe 100 years ago. Strikes, protest, writing angry letters to your Mayor demanding change are all great forms of speech.
Posting some unhinged xenophobic conspiracy theory on Twitter for everyone to see and to get retweeted by the President of the US or the most powerful CEOs are toxic and corrosive forms of speech.
so, no, thanks. i don’t want this, at least for those countries that are still more or less free from it. i already live in one where we have to fight this dictate every day: opening a browser, writing a post, doing whatever we want, but not the way guys who captured power want it.
this perspective — “just let them protect us” — comes from a democratic habit. when you’re used to living this way, you can trust elected people.
I bet you'd be able to plot some pretty interesting maps from that.
The disinformation campaigns have always been there, the reason they're growing roots in the mind of the average European is because the EU is spending it's razor thon political capital on things Chat Control, Digital Omnibus which are wildly unpopular.
Isn't it a bit ironic that in order to protect "liberal democracy" you need to reach out for authoritarian suppression?
My parents and grandparents didn't fight against the Romanian authoritarian regime for reading of confidential communications to come back under a EU banner instead.
The EU is more of a threat to itself than Russia is, the only reason the "Russian propaganda" has teeth is because the current bureaucrat class in the EU Council have outlived their Mandate of Heaven
Let's assume I want every citizen to navigate the web freely while fighting propaganda machines as much as possible, so that means I want an automated system that creates the set difference between these two in real-time, as reliable as possible. To create such a system, and since there shouldn't be any overlap in these two sets, I can effectively put my efforts in half if I put my work in the detection of one such set.
The scaling problem, as I see it here, arises from the following: While the set of individual citizens (kind of) has an upper limit, represented by the number of internet users worldwide, the botnet nodes in propaganda machines do not. I can limit the set further, for example if I want to focus on the citizens that are part of my government only, whereas propaganda machines can come from anywhere on the globe. Internet users already need to provide a proof on authentication for quite a lot of services, while botnets generally want to avoid being identified as such.
While I'm far from in favor of Chat Control, I can somewhat understand why these initiatives are in motion at all.
> The EU is more of a threat to itself than Russia is
To put it mildly, this conclusion is non-sequitur at best.
"Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time"
So the EU and the EC are big lumbering organisation that make poor decisions; but then people make poor decisions day in day out. But just because you *feel* disaffected doesn't mean the system is inherently wrong (unless of course you believe that politics' primary, if not only, purpose is to make you "feel good(tm)").
It's probably far more accurate to say that wealth inequality is the EU's biggest threat and that "the elites" (which is more than just senior politicians and bureaucrats) don't feel the pain of inequality and so aren't internally motivated to do much about it (culture eats strategy for breakfast, etc etc).
Are those Russian accounts in the room with us now?
The polls don't lie and they show that there are hundreds of millions of people all over the west who just flatly disagree with your whole ideology. The unity you imagine would exist if not for shadow accounts doesn't exist, and it's delusional to believe it does.
No no. Just accept that you're a totalitarian dictator at heart, embrace the warmth of just being evil publicly, without pretense or obfuscation. "Silence the opposition!" you cry.
Contrary to widespread belief, Europe has the means to fight those threats. It just chooses not to, for reasons I don't understand.
Look at germany for example (where I'm from). Shutting down nuclear power plants and coal at the same time.
More than 50% of people here still tell you this is necessary to save the planet - even though what we save is so little globally, that it does nothing relevant to stop global warming.
> This is not about normal politics, Europe is under siege.
I am not European but this seems such an dangerous precedent to set upon. You mention destroying liberal democracy but also the fact that Europe is under siege makes people think of providing war time resolutions to Countries even for small details (and Mind you this ban itself has nothing to do with russia that much, its just the amount of influence football has in italy)
To me it feels as if by saying Europe's under siege, it gives more war time resolutions or justificiations for unmoral behaviour. In fact that's what happened right now. This also actively undermines democracy and one can clearly see how.
I understand your comment's in good faith and I appreciate it but I am just not even sure how this move of fining Cloudflare for not being in line for their censorship is related to this other instance.
In Europe freedom of speech is under threat from its own population, which is more and more driven by fear. This fear might not be unreasonable and has multiple sources, but it remains a bad basis for decision or policy making.
Democracy relies on having a reasobaly well informed population. The problem today is that it takes ten times more effort to refute bullshit than to spread it. Information hygiene is becoming a very big problem in this anything-goes social media environment.
Traditional mass media had journalistic norms and standards, nowadays anyone can claim anything with no quality control.
It's the same age old story: there simply is no substitute for good governance, Italy doesn't have it and hasn't had it for decades, and "freedom of speech absolutists" wouldn't know what it looks like in the first place.
Yet we are increasingly binding ourselves (and even “authorized” bots) in chains of verified identity, deliberately suppressing anonymity. Imposing a “zero-trust” architecture on society inevitably leads to totalitarianism.
The right to express ideas without personal attribution has always been a cornerstone of free speech and a free society. It is now being redefined and demonized as mere “bot activity.” While real bots certainly exist (as they have since the days of spam) many accounts labeled as bots are simply human beings who choose anonymity because they hold controversial opinions they do not wish to have traced back to them.
Companies like Cloudflare are among the leaders in this shift by building frameworks ostensibly to monetize AI bot traffic. The consequence, however, is the effective end of online anonymity. When anonymity is forbidden, freedom itself disappears.
We (all tech people everywhere me included) argued for a lot of time for free speech on the internet, but the result currently is that we built a system that is free speech for Russian and Chinese bots and actors. In Europe we are under daily attack from Russian accounts that spread massive amounts of desinformation, deep fakes, just emotional appeals with the goal of destroying liberal democracy. The US government is actively trying to support them by fighting against any kind of European rules and spreading their part of desinformation.
This is not about normal politics, Europe is under siege.