alt Hacker NewsHe replies to an Italian user
> We can’t offer free services in a country that fines us millions unreasonably. Fix your government or lose access to our charity.
On one hand, I agree with you, it's problematic to threaten collective punishment. However, I don't think it's unreasonable to "divest" from a country trying to fine you for behavior outside of said country. It's also important to communicate that clearly, and unfortunately bluntly. Did you have a different expectation or suggestion for what they should do?
Replies
Well, for example, from what you quoted:
> We can’t offer free services in a country that fines us millions unreasonably.
This is normal and reasonable.
> Fix your government or lose access to our charity.
This is petulant and smug.
My suggestion for what they could have done differently is have a PR team handle the public announcements.
TBF what they did here is probably more effective than my plan, but only because the world is a trash fire.
I think it is a big strategic mistake for him to personally take ownership of this topic and to elevate it on a political level. He openly aligned himself with two people who are extremely unpopular in Europe, while threatening an important EU member state.
I think his hubris makes him overestimate Cloudflare's importance for Europe. Cloudflare is simply not important enough. If it was Microsoft or Apple threatening, then maybe - but those companies are clever enough to leverage lobbying for this.
Now the Cloudflare CEO has set himself up to be at the whims of JD Vance/Trump, while providing a perfect "arrogant US tech company" scapegoat that can be slaugthered by European politics and the media conglomerate that he is threatening.
Europe is too important for USA. I don't think the US administration will like the relationship to go sour at this very point in time just because of this Cloudflare doofus barking around.
Anyways, it is like Facebook CEO and Amazon CEO applauding the Trump inauguration; it is a totally unnecessary political statement which fragments their userbase and introduces a political dimension to any procurement decision involving Cloudflare. It takes people's illusion that Cloudflare is a neutral tech company and replaces it with this guy's twitter ramblings, who is obviously an Elon Musk and JD Vance fanboy.