> I appreciate @JDVance taking a leadership role in recognizing this type of regulation is a fundamental unfair trade issue that also threatens democratic values. And in this case @ElonMusk is right: #FreeSpeech is critical and under attack from an out-of-touch cabal of very disturbed European policy makers.

Pretending to take a principled stand against censorship but then randomly throwing flowers to two of the biggest threats to freedom of expression is deeply hypocritical, and makes it really hard to take his reaction seriously. And let's not forget that really vile AI image that is sure to alienate all Italians against Cloudflare.

▲ testdelacc1 a day ago | parent [-]

He knows the only way he wins this is if the current US Administration goes to bat for him.

▲ ben_w a day ago | parent | next [-]

At this point, I'm wondering to what extent all this batting is driving the EU calls for digital sovereignty, and to what extent those calls will be turned into actions.

▲ wmf a day ago | parent | next [-]

EU can't build so if they firewall themselves from the US they'll just have a pretty empty Internet.

	▲	ben_w a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The other night I was thinking about graphene. Not the OS, the material. ‘We considered patenting; we prepared a patent and it was nearly filed. Then I had an interaction with a big, multinational electronics company. I approached a guy at a conference and said, “We’ve got this patent coming up, would you be interested in sponsoring it over the years?” It’s quite expensive to keep a patent alive for 20 years. The guy told me, “We are looking at graphene, and it might have a future in the long term. If after ten years we find it’s really as good as it promises, we will put a hundred patent lawyers on it to write a hundred patents a day, and you will spend the rest of your life, and the gross domestic product of your little island, suing us.” That’s a direct quote.' - https://innovationedge.com/2010/10/13/graphene-patent-geim/ So, we absolutely can get stuff done, the Americans just keep buying us up (DeepMind) or stealing it or using initimidation (Graphene) or espionage (of Airbus for benefit of Boeing way back).
	▲	jimnotgym a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		We actually have websites in Europe, including the very first one. We had more before Reddit and Metabook centralised so many. I think we will be fine thanks

▲ tjwebbnorfolk a day ago | parent | prev [-]

EU is extremely good at "calling for" things to happen. I haven't seen a single one of those things actually happen.

▲ epolanski a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

He can't win this, at best he can quit Italy and not offer any services there.

	▲	waffleiron a day ago \| parent [-]
		Which will makes any non-US company reconsider using Cloudflare real quick.

▲ thrance a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Indeed, but that doesn't mean I have to be fine with that. He already had a perfectly good case against that fine, but using the occasion to cozy up to actual fascists completely discredits him to anyone serious.