A BBC investigation reveals that Microsoft is permanently banning Palestinians in the U.S. and other countries who use Skype to call relatives in Gaza.
Reportedly, Microsoft has been banning and wiping the accounts of users who have leveraged Skype to contact relatives in Gaza. In some cases, email accounts over a decade old have been locked, destroying access to banking accounts, OneDrive storage, and beyond.
United States resident Salah Elsadi lost his account of over 15 years in the dragnet. “I’ve had this Hotmail for 15 years. They banned me for no reason, saying I have violated their terms — what terms? Tell me. I’ve filled out about 50 forms and called them many many times.” Eiad Hametto from Saudi Arabia echoed the report, “We are civilians with no political background who just wanted to check on our families. They’ve suspended my email account that I’ve had for nearly 20 years. It was connected to all my work. They killed my life online.”
Many of the users affected by the bans expressed that Microsoft may be falsely labelling them as Hamas
Fuck Microsoft and al Big Tech corporations
Surely the US government won’t like that if they’re US citizens, right?
They’re brown citizens though, so the US won’t do anything to help.
That sort of thing is only important when the other side is not Israel. See: USS Liberty, Shireen Abu Aqleh.
Microsoft are terrorists.
Microsoft is a private company and they can ask you to leave, no reason given, anytime.
And they have a history of over 30 years of being evil, manipulative and anticonsumer. If you base your online life on the good will of Microsoft you will be very disappointed sooner or later.
Why do people sprout this bullshit. You can’t discriminate against a protected class that includes race, gender, age, disability, national origin, religion,
They aren’t. The are discriminating “for no reason at all”. Feel free to sue them. Godspeed.
Unfortunately, I don’t have standing as I’m not a Microsoft customer or Palestinian, nor do I have relatives or any contacts for that matter in Gaza.
Having relatives anywhere is not a protected class, to begin with.
Surely if I have relatives that are a protected class, I’d also likely be a protected class as well, no? Especially if I was kicked from their platform specifically because of the protected class…
But that’s irrelevant because I’m nowhere close to having standing to sue. The closest thing is that my SO is an naturalized citizen from another country, but that country is only marginally closer to Gaza than where I am.
They already do.
What’s the funniest (and saddest) is when people who are supposedly against private discrimination repeat this when it fits them.
Uh so where do we go for email that’s not a private company and not something that requires tech knowledge to setup your own email server?
Where do i buy a car that’s not a private company? Where do I get internet service?
You can’t. Choose a reputable one. And pay for it, so you are a customer, not the product. Aaaaand I lost 95% of lemmy.
Nowadays we are the customer and the product. Paying doesn’t guarantee you anything.
Of course it doesn’t, I said that just above. Gets you a better chance tho.
Remember: today it’s “just” the Palestinians and you may not be affected or care. But tomorrow, it could be you.
Yep. If you ever shared a political opinion, that could put you on someone’s naughty list. If that someone gets a position of power and decides they want to attack, well, you could be the next metaphorical Palestinian.
Voting on Lemmy isn’t private (and is probably for sale on closed platforms) so just upvoting an opinion might be enough to get you on some lists.
Downvoted your comment just to be safe
Man, messed up innit. & how could it be made private without enabling a whole different set of bad actors (astroturfers, marketers, political axe grinders)
I have always been pro-privacy, but in a kind of lukewarm, “I wish someone would do something about this” way.
What has finally pushed me to ditch services from large corporations over the past couple of years is not really a concern for privacy, its a drive for self-sufficiency.
As basically the last stepping stone, as of a couple of weeks ago, my email, calendar and contacts are self-hosted, and it’s just… So freeing.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. —Martin Niemöller
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Today, BBC News put out an investigation having spoke to 20 Palestinians living abroad who claim Microsoft has permanently banned them from their systems for calling relatives in Gaza.
Skype might have fallen out of favor for general messaging purposes over platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram, but it remains an affordable service for calling cell phones directly via the web.
Many of the users affected by the bans expressed that Microsoft may be falsely labelling them as Hamas, the terror group behind the notorious October 7 massacre that killed hundreds of concert goers near Re’im in Israel.
Microsoft declined to respond to the accusation, but claimed that it doesn’t block calls or ban users based on geographical location.
“Blocking in Skype can occur in response to suspected fraudulent activity,” a Microsoft spokesperson told the BBC — potentially implying there’s more to the story.
But given how much of our online life is basically handed over to big corporations like Microsoft, who are under no obligation to guarantee access to these services, it is alarming how they can just ban you with no real explanation or transparency.
The original article contains 647 words, the summary contains 186 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
It’s all to stop terrorism!
So much bs in the name of justice is just laziness
I don’t understand why it’s so mainstream to equate Palestine with Hamas. It’s as if there is an actual conspiracy going on to to support this genocide. Is it because it’s so easy to say you’re antiemetic if you oppose “the Jews”?
Many Palestinian protests have people cosplaying Hamas and waving Hamas flags.
Hanging out with people that like to dress up as a member of a group that wants to kill Jews makes someone a little antisemitic I think.
Denying that there’s an antisemitism problem in the Palestinian movement doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. In fact that’s the sort of attitude that allows it to persist.
Denying that there’s an antisemitism problem in the Palestinian movement doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Uh… Did you expect them to not be antisemitic? I mean it’s not a good thing but what other outcome did you expect from 75 years of Apartheid and genocide?
That aside, Hamas is the only viable resistance group in Palestine, other than maybe PIJ (which is more extremist). What do you expect them to do?
Please point to where the anti Israeli movement hates All Arab and Hebrew speakers?
Jews are not the only semites and yes everything I’ve seen in the US is directed at the country, not the people.
Jews are not the only semites
Okay this only really works as a gotcha. It doesn’t do anything to address the point being made. That aside,
Please point to where the anti Israeli movement hates All Arab and Hebrew speakers?
I misread their comment and thought they were talking about Palestinian resistance in Palestine, not the worldwide Anti-Zionist movement so nevermind anything I said up there.
I don’t understand why it’s so mainstream to equate Palestine with Hamas
Decades of Islamophobic propaganda combined with a strong American economic interest in Israel might have played a role.
It’s completely normalized racism. America has been institutionalizing Islamophobia for years to justify their invasions of the Middle East where we kill millions of
innocent civilians“terorrists”Before the 2000’s a lot of that manufactured hate was directed towards Asians because we needed to justify war crimes in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Laos etc.
Without America the Palestine people would have starved to death years ago. Their own Arabian brothers won’t even help them. America doesn’t need to institionalize islamaphobia when they do it themselves. You can look into any Islam media and you would find they actively burn u.s. flags on state media and call for our destruction. Nothing was needed to justify your made up war crimes in any of those countries because they all started the wars. Japan bombed pearl harbor. North Korea invaded South Korea. Vietnam Gulf of tonkin. Etc etc.
Without America, Palestine would be united and free by now. A single multicultural country from the river to the sea that can recognize and celebrate its diverse people and history. Instead though we have a genocidal European colony.
You heard it here first folks, war crimes don’t exist if they burn your flag!
LO-fuckin-L at using Gulf of Tonkin, a well known false flag operation meant solely to draw the US into a protracted conflict we had no business being in. 🤡
I mean sure maybe the August 4th incident was overblown but the August 2nd 1964 incident did happen where our ship was attacked by Vietnam torpedo boats. Maybe you get attacked and don’t do shit at all about it who is the real clown there?
Ohhhh got it, only one false flag attack was committed by the US. That means the war in Vietnam was justified.
To be clear regarding “false flag” operations for anyone unaware: this entails attacking our own military in order to provide spurious cassus belli to enter a conflict we had no valid reason to enter. In this case, a civil war on the other side of the planet, in a bay we should never have been in to begin with.
How stupid does a person need to be to think that, not only was the war in Vietnam justified, but that the Gulf of Tonkin false flag incident is that justification?
Vietnam torpedo boats attacked our ship on August 2 1964. Deny that fact as much as you want. Our ship was in international waters when attacked. There were multiple justifications to get in that war I don’t really care to get into them. Tldr: We help our allies and protect democracy in the region.
🤡 👟👟
We help our allies and protect democracy in the region.
LMAO. Your military protects interests of the billionaires and their economy. It has fuck all to do about democracy.
But keep guzzling whatever you already are, those braincells aren’t going to repeat propaganda by itself.
Right?! Could you imagine if some country attacked one of our naval ships and we didn’t do anything about it?
Hold on, I need my popcorn for this!
The 6 day Israel-Arab war. A casualty was encourred and Israel pleaded it was an accidental casualty of war. They made concessions.
The gulf of tonkin. Not a casualty but a calculated attack.
You can look into any Islam media and you would find they actively burn u.s. flags on state media and call for our destruction.
Well yes. Do you have any idea how much US neo-colonialism has harmed the Middle East over the past 70 years? Your country supports ISIS for fuck’s sake go touch some grass.
Also why do you think their Muslim brothers won’t help them? Surely not because most of the Arab world is run by American puppets.
Without America the Palestine people would have starved to death years ago. Their own Arabian brothers won’t even help them.
Iran won’t help Palestine, but also Iran is the shadowy hand behind Hamas.
Egypt won’t help Palestine, but the CIA/MI5 need to coup the elected government every decade or three when it gets to Muslim Brotherhood-y.
Lebanon won’t help Palestine, but Israel says there are tunnels into Gaza from Lebanon so they need to start bombing again.
Turkyie won’t help Palestine, but the IDF had to murder Turkish aid workers in 2010 to prevent their aid flotilla from reaching the shore.
Iran won’t help Palestine, but also Iran is the shadowy hand behind Hamas.
Your point being what? That they fund Hamas so they’re helping?
Egypt won’t help Palestine, but the CIA/MI5 need to coup the elected government every decade or three when it gets to Muslim Brotherhood-y.
Somehow Egypt helps them by having secret govt backed coups? Instead they could have just taken in refugees but why would they do that? They’ll just have a coup instead.
Lebanon won’t help Palestine, but Israel says there are tunnels into Gaza from Lebanon so they need to start bombing again.
So Lebanon helps the Palestine people by building tunnels where Hamas stored weapons and hostages?
Turkyie
I recall the Turkish police raiding those same charity offices accusing them of being linked to Islamic terrorists.
So Palestinians are Hamas?
Why is Iran not helping Fatah?
Their support of Hamas is on ideological grounds. Similarly to Qatar’s reason for funding Hamas. Israel is holy waqf land that belongs to Muslims and should be cleansed from Jews.
Russia is also helping them out with weapons.Even when Egypt had sovereignty over Gaza they made sure to prevent Palestinians from going to Egypt.
Tunnels from Lebanon… to Gaza…? Where’d you read that?
Hezbollah begun bombing Israel in support of Hamas. They’re also funded by Iran (much more than Hamas though).
Meanwhile Palestinians live in camps in Lebanon. Some of those walled and surrounded by watchtowers.
They have less rights there than anyone else (including refugees and migrant workers), despite living there for 3 generations at this point.Turkey under Erdogan has been mostly hosting Hamas leaders while bombing Kurds in Syria.
I don’t think much needs to be said about Assad.
The only country in the area which actually helped Palestinians was Jordan. Although that also changed for a while after Black September.
Most of UNRWA’s funding over the years has come from the EU and USA.
Israel is holy waqf land that belongs to Muslims and should be cleansed from Jews.
That’s crazy because I’ve heard Israelis assert the exact opposite.
Most of UNRWA’s funding over the years has come from the EU and USA.
There’s a certain dramatic irony in funding UNRWA, paying Israel to bomb UNRWA, and then claiming you’re the only folks providing aid to Palestinians.
That’s crazy because I’ve heard Israelis assert the exact opposite.
Yes, religious extremists exist also in Israel.
There’s a certain dramatic irony in funding UNRWA, paying Israel to bomb UNRWA, and then claiming you’re the only folks providing aid to Palestinians.
I’m not the one who wrote USA is the only one providing aid.
What you quoted is the reality. The bulk of the funding over the years has been from the USA and the EU.
He’s really bad at sarcasm. He’s trying to point out the inconsistencies.
Lol fuck off with that hard angle, also the Gulf of Tonkin was a false flag.
Haha that was funny. Mentioning the Gulf of Tonkin incident as justification for war and really meaning it
The fun thing with Tonkin is it doesn’t even need to be a false flag, it can credibly be explained by a bad radar return. I don’t know which is is a worse basis to get 400,000 Americans Killed? (Including Agent Orange and Suicide numbers)
Early in 2001, the commission presented a report to the incoming G.W. Bush administration warning that terrorism would be the nation’s greatest national security problem, and saying that unless the United States took proper protective measures a terrorist attack was likely within its borders. Neither the president nor the vice president nor any other senior official from the new administration took time to meet with the commission members or hear about their findings.
The commission had 14 members, split 7-7, Republican and Democrat, as is de rigeur for bodies of this type. Today Hart told me that in the first few meetings, commission members would go around the room and volunteer their ideas about the nation’s greatest vulnerabilities, most urgent needs, and so on.
At the first meeting, one Republican woman on the commission said that the overwhelming threat was from China. Sooner or later the U.S. would end up in a military showdown with the Chinese Communists. There was no avoiding it, and we would only make ourselves weaker by waiting. No one else spoke up in support.
The same thing happened at the second meeting – discussion from other commissioners about terrorism, nuclear proliferation, anarchy of failed states, etc, and then this one woman warning about the looming Chinese menace. And the third meeting too. Perhaps more.
Finally, in frustration, this woman left the commission.
“Her name was Lynne Cheney,” Hart said. “I am convinced that if it had not been for 9/11, we would be in a military showdown with China today.” Not because of what China was doing, threatening, or intending, he made clear, but because of the assumptions the Administration brought with it when taking office. (My impression is that Chinese leaders know this too, which is why there are relatively few complaints from China about the Iraq war. They know that it got the U.S. off China’s back!)
So what you’re saying is: Lynne Cheney has been wrong for 23 years so far.
Plenty of folks on here have bought into the China Boogeyman narrative. Her family’s propaganda has been devastatingly effective. We likely will be at war with China in another generation, given our current trajectory.
China isn’t blameless. Factory and camp narratives aside, their naval actions are bellicose.
their naval actions are bellicose
The atrocities that western nations have had to commit to keep a foothold in places like Osaka, the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, and India really disqualify any of these folks from claiming another country is “bellicose”. We’re still out in Oceania committing genocides of native peoples, to this day.
That’s before you get into some belly-aching about a Chinese warship sailing through the Straight of Taiwan, as though its not American property.
Hahaha. First of all this is old, there’s not any bases in Afghanistan anymore. Second, this is the same propaganda Russia runs with about NATO. They do belligerent stuff and then complain when their neighbors ask the country with a bigger stick for protection. Also, did someone include HK in this graphic? I know there’s lots of US bases in the Pacific, but I think someone is gilding the lily.
But also no, it’s not just about sailing a ship through Taiwanese waters. We do the same thing to China all the time, just to remind them that under international law that’s okay.
It’s conducting war games that completely surround Taiwan.
It’s claiming a ridiculous area for it’s EEZ, far larger than international law allows and completely disregarding any potential EEZ for other countries in the area.
It’s sinking fishing vessels in international water
It’s hacking the government systems of it’s neighbors
The list goes on…
Why would China engage in military conflict with the USA when they can just sit back and watch the USA collapse on its own?
I don’t understand the overarching point of this comment.
Military Industrial Complex needs to be fed.
Do you ignore the majority of Palestinians support Hamas? It’s factual reality the majority of Palestinians democratically voted and elected Hamas which ran on a destroy Israel agenda. In reality they asked and started this war due to that election. It’s not because it’s so easy to say they are antisemitic it’s because it is factually correct to say it.
They didn’t actually support Hamas in 2023, until Israel bombed them into the stone age and supported shifted. Which is the same phenomenon we’ve seen in every war with a massive bombing campaign since 1936. They did vote democratically, and that vote was blocked by Israel and the US. The platform though was a moderate one in which they drew a line between Israel and people. They very much want to destroy the country but they believe they can live with the people as long as there’s not an apartheid power structure. A line they still have in their doctrine today, a line people like you blithely ignore. Also that election was nearly 20 years ago. Are you admitting that Hamas and Israel were already at war? Usually the party line is there was peace and doves and olive trees until the barbarous Hamas blew it all up. And the people in Hamas are also semites. They are literally semites.
This guy answered “what would you do?” with “enthusiastically support the Nazis”
So all Americans are dickheads because Trump won democratically in 2016?
What if you changed that statement to all conservatives instead of all Americans? Because not all conservatives support Trump or voted for him in 2016. But he is now representative of them.
Like. Hamas wouldn’t exist without the actions of Israel. And that is exactly why so many Palestinians have thrown their support behind Hamas. But that doesn’t mean Palestinians, Hamas, or even conservative Americans are a monolith.
The point is rather that the group is being labeled in such a way to discredit efforts to give Palestinians the human rights everyone should have. It’s the same thing that happened with the Black Community in the US and the black Panthers. This has been a thing for centuries with just about every grass roots or guerilla militia in existence. At some point if you buck the ruling classes power, you become a target and the propaganda follows.
Do you ignore the majority of Palestinians support Hamas?
Imagine supporting the only viable resistance organization when you’re subjected to a slow-burn genocide. The humanity!
Every sentence in your comment is another israeli propaganda lie. None of them are factually correct. Congrats on a new Hasbara record.
From river to sea, right? They can’t even make it past the river though.
Basically we spent 20 years fighting “terrorists”. So now it’s really easy to paint one side or the other as the “terrorists”. And thanks to Islamophobia pushed by mainstream TV shows and Movies, if you get painted as a “terrorist” then everyone in your country is also a “terrorist”.
The word is in quotes because very few of the groups fought by regular forces (regular infantry as opposed to special operations) were actually international militant NGOs like Al Qaeda. Mostly they were local militias mad at the coalition forces for their own reasons, like “Why did you kill my kid in an airstrike!?!”, or “I like the Taliban because they pay me really good for the poppy you torched. Also, you torched my livelihood in a country that has no safeguards against starving to death.” And even the Taliban, ridiculously evil bastards that they are, were never an AQ like group. They were concerned solely with taking back Afghanistan.
All of this nuance was lost on anyone who didn’t read the actual reports coming out of these countries though and many of those reports were classified. So all most people got was their favorite action and/or police drama shoveling the idea that all muslims are terrorists. With a side of Fox News villifying any brown people they could find.
So now, Israel walks in, sees all this, screams “terrorist!” and shoots the nearest Gazan kid. Predictable results were predicted many times by academic scholars.
I don’t understand why it’s so mainstream to equate Palestine with Hamas.
Because the mainstream is unironically ignorant of the true political and social state of Palestinian society. They don’t realise that Hamas is an extremist Palestinian political party, while the actual moderate Palestinian faction worthy of support is the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Show them this Wikipedia page of the ongoing civil war among Palestinians and you’d get cricket noises from the average perpetually online mainstream.
Gaza is controlled by the Hamas, while the West Bank is controlled by PLO/Fatah. But no one in the mainstream in the Twiterrati, Facebook and other social media will know that, because they get junk food information from fake news and propaganda or their own bubble in those social platforms.
The PLO was voted out in Gaza because they were nothing but Israeli puppets. They actually lost the entire election, but Israel and the US blocked Hamas from taking control of the government in West Bank too. And now there’s this narrative that Hamas violently seized power without acknowledging that there was an election and the result was not honored without that seizure.
Guess that officially adds Microsoft to the BDS list? Unless it’s already on the list.
Good luck? They effectively have a monopoly on large portions of the market.
Have to start somewhere, for example, instead of throwing a Microsoft based PC at your kids to do their school work, have them use Linux. Phase Microsoft products out of your homes/lives.
BDS?
Boycott Divest Sanction
one does not become dependent on tech giants without a critical loss at some day, no matter whats the “reason” for it and they tend to do weird stuff within or without laws…
For others or for a new start and how to avoid such in the future (maybe “migrate” your relatives to secure services “before” you get ripped off):
- get your own domain like somestupidtext.info make sure the toplevel (.info .com .net or whatever) has laws that let you effecticely reclaim your domain if one of the providers block something or fail to do their job. also make sure you do not fall into only-first-year-very-cheap traps for domain prices. maybe check that the toplevel domain is not one regulary found to be used by spammers and thus maybe blocked by some providers.
- use one company only for DNS related things, maybe name.com, but there are plenty others and lots of generic hosting providers also provide dns-only hosting.
- get some provider to host email for your domain or run your own emailserver and set mx records to that mailserver.
- configure and change valueable services to your email addresses under your domain
- make sure you have a local(!) copy of all your emails that automatically updates itself, if you can, at least daily, offlineimap checked in into a git repo could do a good job
- if one provider sucks, change it and leave the rest as is.
- the setup alone already shows the provider, that only gov (of that toplevel domain) can effectively block you, as when the email provider tries to block you, you find a new one and change MX records (and obviously cancel and stop paying the blocking one), if the DNS provider tries to block you, you get a new provider and transfer the domain to it, if that fails a lawyer could help) also the small providers have usually no way to know what you do on another account at another company, only if you put your whole life into the hands of the few known big evil ones, you are that vulnerable to the chaos they produce.
also setting up recovery addresses (if possible) is a good idea, like when one email is unusable for whatever reason, the provider already has a known email address from you to start a recovery process, of course that second email address MUST be out of reach of the provider of the first one, that is, if you have somemailprovider.com address and one at microshits, then microshit buys somemailprovider.com, you have to change everything from that somemailprovider.com to a new one just to stay secure. due to this, your own domain with a connected email service of a random hosting provider comes in handy as you would not have to change all the email adresses but only that random email provider. also if skype/zoom etc does not work for you, there are plenty of other ways to do video talks on the internet. i prefer to be independent for same reasons even though i haven’t been blocked yet, i just saw the signs of possible approaching evil because of the shitflow big evil tech produces all the time just to flush their believers view of what would be possible down the drain and choosed independence ahead of losses. following signs like leaving companies with red flags (like just too big, like already robbed their users, like give a shit on their users security, like give a shit on their bugs and blame users while their own big-tech-company-network is pwned by someone unknown for month and such) a more privacy aligned messenger that supports videocalls would be for example matrix, there are multiple clients to choose from and lots of providers to choose from (also self hosting or becoming a provider is possible while for talking to each other it is NOT necessary to use the same provider, but again self-hosting of course is most-secure) one cannot do things securely without knowing a bit about what it is. to learn more about dns, email, matrix or other topics the internet is full of informations, sometimes wikipedia is very helpful and linux user groups exist for talking about stuff and helping each other. the type of support is different and -as i see it - much more efficient, but different, there is no one to do it for you (or you get into the very same dependency trap again) but you are encouraged to learn what it takes to do so and do it yourself.
example prices from a random dns provider: .de 10€ / year .eu 16€ / year
random mail provider imap email 100GB storage 3 € /month
that is having more control over your email than when using big tech, may cost you more or less 4€ per month (and maybe the learning time to set everything up). for matrix server one might use managed services, looking around i found etke.cc with 5€ as a base minimum when you provide your own VPS for it, but with many other options too. maybe the free hosting announced by element.io where i did not look into yet is an option too. i prefer my own domains and servers, but just using separate hosting companies for dns, email and matrix gives a whole lot more control while still beeing a simple and adjustable setup. while matrix does not lock you in into one instance from the beginning (i can chat/call from/to my own account/server to any other account on other servers while beeing able to try this out using a multi-account-client that connects to all acvounts/servers at the same time) they now have bridges so one can use the same client to chat with others on telegram or whatsapp (and others) too, so this is rather the opposite of vendor lock-in. while a matrix hoster could still block your account in error and if you did not use your own domain for your matrix account at the hoster, you could connect to your friends again from another account at another hoster as you would still have their matrix adresses stored in your client. however to securely use matrix one should read about its security mechanisms and what backup keys are and why one should validate new connections.
if you had the loss, at least take advantage of the message/lesson: big tech is too powerful and thus insecure. maybe do three steps in parallel: choose and migrate to smaller providers, more providers each for different things, if one f**ks up, everything else stays in place, thus less stressful on problems. second step in parallel: get yourself into DIY your digital life. every little step into independence is a step more powerful while removing the very same power from big tech to attack the stability of your digital life. third step in parallel: share your problem including the possible solutions, which you choosed and how it went to those you think might take advantage of that information ;-)
I love these ideas but self hosting is simply not a solution for average citizens who aren’t skilled at such things. To them it would be like paving their own highway with bridges and also maintaining and policing them. It might be easy for you and me, but that’s because we have training and experience and we chose this way. It’s not a justifiable opportunity cost for most people.
I think a different kind of org than the googles metas and Microsofts of the world is in need, like a compute & communications co-op that can actually compete on that level of capability offerings, accessibility, performance and security.
i think it should not be too difficult to compete with m$ security, that is at least true for the state of the last 30 years or maybe more.
But something like a non-profit organisation - or a bunch of them- that make self-hosting for essential services (like email, messenger, video calls) a charm could be a big win for billions of peoples.
Absolutely agree
Self hosting email is a terrible idea. Your Internet goes out? All your emails are black holed
Looks like I dumped msft at the right time. What ass hats.
REGULATE MONOPOLIES
While I agree enthusiastically, does Skype even have a dominant market position, let alone a monopoly?
Why does it matter? If they ban your Microsoft account because you had an upside down Xbox sticker on your fridge, is it relevant if Microsoft has a monopoly on sticker manufacturing?
Skype doesn’t matter because they don’t ban you from Skype, they ban you from everything, including things they do have a dominant market position on. And also from Skype, which doesn’t matter as much.
When I posted that comment I was thinking specifically about Skype, not MS as a whole. I agree MS is well more than large enough that it needs regulation.
I’m talking Microsoft. Having this much control over means of communication is alarming. And Microsoft continues to grow.
Hypothetically, I wonder if they can just block Microsoft accounts alltogether, denying access to (now, kind of mandatory MS account) Windows machines.
Ok, oligopoly. Happy?
Probably the first time they have paid attention to Skype.
Damn, thats some google level behavior.
What the fuck, MIcrosoft.
All of these are a shit stain from the same asshole of corporate USA
What the fuck, MIcrosoft.
Ok, honest question. Are you surprised?
If it was any other company I would be. But it’s Microsoft.
Yes.
I’m no microsoft fanboy, but I am shocked that they would do this. Everyone should be shocked. To be anything but shocked is to be complacent.
This is the kind of shit google does on the regular, Never heard of Microsoft doing anything like this before.
And as I’ve said in response to instances of google doing this, I’ll say it again here. This continues to highlight the dangers of having all your eggs in one companies basket, by choosing comfort and convenience you’ve given your entire digital life over to a company that has no compunctions against metaphorically guillotining it for any reason they want.
Yeah what are people going to do when Google starts banning accounts for using ad blockers?
That’s probably when I’ll finish de-Googling entirely.
No, it’s standard corp level behavior that’s beholden to government censorship and propaganda when it doesn’t fit the narrative. You can substitute any big tech company in the US for Google. They all do this. It’s why the government is not a fan of TikTok, they don’t have that same level of control over the flow of information.
that and it is quite literally spyware that sends all the consumer data to the CCP where they can adjust their own algorithms to show things that can sway the minds of people too young to think critically
The hell do you think the data from American companies goes‽ Snowden literally told us the US govt is doing the same thing…not saying they should, just asking where is the outrage that we’re being spied on by our own government… It’s plenty there when we’re being spied on by China… And quite frankly I feel like China can do a lot less to me than home can.
they can adjust their own algorithms to show things that can sway the minds of people too young to think critically
Ironic. You’re literally commenting on companies adjusting their algorithm to create a narrative and censor something your government doesn’t like.
Think critically next time. You’re not smart as you think you are.
the cpc adjusts the American version of an app operated in Singapore to propagandize Zoomers
This only happens in the minds of the paranoid. China has their own version of TikTok, Douyin, which operates under their media restrictions.
it is quite literally spyware
So are Facebook and Instagram, which are apparently not a problem. Remember Cambridge Analytica?
where they can adjust their own algorithms to show things that can sway the minds of people too young to think critically
Every social media platform does this for maximum retention
to the CCP
What’s the CCP gonna do with it that’s worse than what Western companies do with it?
So what you’re saying is, that there is now an easy way to delete your MS account?
i am sure that only affects the data YOU can ever access, but never the data already stored for later abuse ;-)
What confirmation do we have that Microsoft did not have a good reason to ban this person? There seems to be just this single report going around the net.
What confirmation do we have the person did deserve the ban? Microsoft refusing to respond does not absolve them from guilt.
Also this happened to multiple people that called their family in Gaza, it’s not one instance.
