Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

National blocking of Cloudflare (Spain / Italy cases)

  • Several commenters report Cloudflare IP ranges being blocked in Spain during major football matches, breaking unrelated sites and IoT devices.
  • Disagreement over blame: some fault Spain’s government and football league for overbroad measures; others say Cloudflare knowingly serving pirate streams invites this response.
  • Clarifications that in Spain it stemmed from a judge’s order, but others argue judges are still implementing government policy.
  • VPN usage is said to be rising in response. Claims about organized crime’s influence on football are mentioned but unsubstantiated in the thread (unclear).

Cloudflare’s role: neutrality vs “defending bad actors”

  • One camp sees Cloudflare as neutrally providing infrastructure (mostly DDoS protection / CDN), not “defending” pirates or Nazis, and warns against a dystopia where only “approved” sites can get protection.
  • Critics argue that deliberately keeping extremist and piracy sites online is a business choice, so Cloudflare should accept that governments might retaliate, even via broad IP blocking.
  • Some suggest courts could just order Cloudflare to drop specific customers rather than ISPs blocking entire ranges. Others think centralization makes broad blocks the only practically effective sanction.

Censorship vs moderation; infrastructure-level blocking

  • Strong view: network-level website blocking infrastructure “shouldn’t exist” because it is inevitably abused by states and incumbents.
  • Counterargument: that’s an extreme stance; countries must be able to regulate online obscenity, IP infringement, fraud, gambling, etc., including for foreign-hosted sites.
  • Distinction emphasized between:
    • Private moderation (e.g., a site or CDN blocking traffic at the edge) and
    • State-mandated network censorship (ISPs/DNS/VPN blocking).
  • Some note Cloudflare itself offers “blackhole an entire country” features, so its moral authority on blocking is questioned.

Free trade, “digital trade barriers,” and sovereignty

  • Supporters of Cloudflare’s framing see IP-range blocking that hits legitimate sites as a services trade barrier, especially when applied asymmetrically to foreign providers.
  • Others argue states are entitled to block services (e.g., piracy or gambling) they consider harmful; forcing them to accept all foreign content under trade rules would erode sovereignty.
  • Past WTO disputes (e.g., Antigua vs. US over online gambling) are cited to show that discriminatory online restrictions can violate trade agreements, though WTO enforcement is currently weakened.
  • Some see a broader trend of countries wanting to decouple from dominant US cloud/services and resist new commitments on digital trade.

Comparisons with China’s Great Firewall and Western “soft control”

  • Technical explanation of China’s two-tier system: border GFW plus strict domestic controls (licensing, state-only ISPs, residential hosting bans, VPN illegality).
  • Question raised: how easily could the US replicate something similar?
    • One view: the US already achieves narrative control via DMCA takedowns, platform moderation, payment processors, and social media policies, rather than a single firewall.
    • Others counter that the US still permits a wide range of historical and political narratives compared to China, though there is concern about increasing pressure (TikTok, Wikipedia, COVID and election “misinformation”).

Blocking “bad countries” and internet fragmentation

  • Proposal: US backbones should not connect to networks that connect to “low trust” countries (China, Russia, Nigeria, etc.).
  • Strong pushback: technically and geopolitically impractical, likely to isolate the blocker rather than the target, and would help authoritarians by cutting off outside information and harming dissidents.
  • Some note similar disconnection ideas around SWIFT and trade sanctions; effectiveness and collateral damage are debated.

EU vs individual countries; broader geopolitics

  • A claim that this is “typical EU” protection of incumbents is challenged: commenters stress these policies are by specific states (Spain, Italy), not the EU as a whole.
  • Side discussion on Americans conflating “EU” with “Europe,” and different regional understandings of terms like “America.”
  • US hypocrisy is noted: while USTR might attack foreign blocking as trade barriers, the US is itself exploring domestic site-blocking laws (e.g., Block BEARD Act) and has extraterritorial measures like the CLOUD Act.

Broader concerns: centralization, power, and edge cases

  • Many see Cloudflare’s scale as the underlying problem: when one company fronts a huge fraction of the web, any sanction against it inevitably harms many innocents.
  • Some argue Cloudflare behaves like an “Orwellian” gatekeeper (IP reputation, regional blocks) and that antitrust or structural remedies may be needed.
  • Technical suggestions include using ASNs to separate reputations of “difficult” customers behind shared infrastructure.
  • Specific anecdotes illustrate overblocking: absentee voting information blocked abroad, county-level geo-blocking, or whole-country blocks via Cloudflare settings.