this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
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Corporate censorship is not illegal. If you come to my house spouting Nazi rhetoric I have ever right to call you out on it and kick you out of my house.
There are laws deliberately protecting the people's right to free speech that is not infringed by the government.
Now if you want to talk about how we should remove companies/corps rights as entities, we can have the conversation.
Trump was banned from Twitter and it was a good thing because it was them enforcing their TOS/EULA rules in a reasonable manner that doesn't play favorites. Because the average person like you or me couldn't say a lot of what Trump said on the platform and not get banned.
That doesn't mean Twitter is a good company. There are no good companies. Corporations are not your friend. But they also aren't government entities and they shouldn't be. So if the state wants to sponsor the internet as a utility it can create its own cloudflare-like service for the purpose of DNS blocking and block whatever it wants. But cloudflare isn't a state sponsored utility. It's a corp. It has every right (whether you agree it should have rights or not) to not operate in countries it doesn't want to operate in.
Your thinking is so calcified by the specific laws of the united states of America it is frustrating. Laws are written by mere mortals like you and me. When those bunch of dudes wrote the Constitution more than two hundred years ago, they couldn't have imagined the internet in theirs wildest dreams. And that's without pointing out that the reason they valued absolute freedom of speech so much can be largely attributed to the historical backdrop at the time.
A long time has passed, something better is possible. It's time to think again from first principles.
If platforms aren't allowed to moderate their platforms discussion will devolve into the same shit-tier content that Lemmy is so famous for.
Corporations have rights. Quite literally. They are legal entities. We aren't required to use their services. They aren't required to provide said services.
In this case public authority is the government.
The choice for Cloudflare or any company that operates in the jurisdiction of the government enacting the law is to obey the law or not do business in that governments jurisdiction. It seems like that's exactly what Cloudflare is suggesting they will do if the government tries to force them to adhere to said law. That's their right as a company.
I'm not saying cloudflare is a good company. My argument isn't that pulling out of the country is a good idea.
My main concern and the reason that I responded to your comment in the first place was because you tried to make this about freedom of speech, and as it pertains to this discussion I'm not really sure what your argument is except that your idea of free speech is predicated on the idea that the freedom of the people and their speech should in some way negate the freedom of the company.
The threat of legal action on Cloudflare's part seems to be to do with the fine that the government is trying to force on them for refusing to agree to obey the newly enacted law. It's normal for corporations to fight civil penalties like this.
Your argument doesn't seem to be that it costs tax dollars (it does), or that it's unfair because you or I wouldn't have the same opportunity due to monetary limitations to legally fight the government. Or even that if you or I didn't agree with the law we couldn't just up sticks and leave the country. Your argument seems to be that somehow, by standing up for the rights they do have, this company is somehow blocking free speech? I'm asking because I still am not sure I understand.
Amazing this is so downvoted.
It is literally impossible to discuss free speech online, and has been for decades, due to a tsunami of americans thinking their specific law is the only position possible and flooding all debate with smug explanations of how it actually works, actually.
I'm not arguing against free speech here. Granted I also didn't downvote these comments.
The main problem is that the original comment and subsequent comments don't explain what the alternative is. It isn't just the US that has such laws (as I tried to demonstrate by posting an alternative law from the UK.
The thing is, generally the rights of an individual generally stop where the rights of another individual start and vice versa.
The original comment doesn't even explain what part of either the ruling by the country in question or the threat of legal action on the part of Cloudflare they disagree with, nor did they explain how that is in any way related to free speech.
There exist whole countries that have internet that doesn't use Cloudflare's services. Cloudflare is a big player in the DNS space but they aren't the end all be all of the internet.
If the concern is that Cloudflare's threat to leave the country will amount to censoring free speech because websites won't be available due to the lack of Cloudflare services, that's a problem with the infrastructure of the country in question and their ability to provide DNS blocking as a service (forcing them to rely on a business that is provides said services in exchange for money).
That same money can be used to stand up a Cloudflare alternative.
Reliance on tech corporations is not an excuse to claim free speech is being detrimentally affected by censorship.
Even if it was, the least the original commenter could have done was offered alternative solutions.
I haven't been talking about this specific case about Cloudflare, at all. To set the record straight, I am unequivocally against the Italy government trying to ban pirate sites, that's absolutely wrong.
What I am arguing against is the absolutist sentiment that "censorship is always wrong, in whatever circumstances, no matter what it is used to do". Granted, I could have been more tactful talking about this under a post where the government is using censorship to do a terrible thing. But my position is still my position.
Like, we want gun control, don't we? Because gun kills people. Speech can kill people too! Many, many people has died because of the current rise of vaccine hesitancy. If you want to regulate guns to reduce harm, why won't you want to regulate speech too?
I need some time to think about what you wrote before I respond. I need to switch gears here and also give some thought to how such a thing would play out.