12mo ago

'Microsoft killed my online life,' Microsoft is reportedly banning Palestinians in the U.S. for life for calling relatives in Gaza

www.windowscentral.com

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.

A Boring Dystopia @lemmy.world

Björn Tantau @swg-empire.de

12mo ago

Microsoft is reportedly banning Palestinians in the U.S. for life for calling relatives in Gaza

www.windowscentral.com /microsoft/microsoft-killed-my-online-life-microsoft-is-reportedly-banning-palestinians-in-the-us-for-life-for-calling-relatives-in-gaza

Technology @lemmy.world

Linkerbaan @lemmy.world

12mo ago

Microsoft is reportedly banning Palestinians in the U.S. for life for calling relatives in Gaza

www.windowscentral.com /microsoft/microsoft-killed-my-online-life-microsoft-is-reportedly-banning-palestinians-in-the-us-for-life-for-calling-relatives-in-gaza

78 comments

That's what you get for trusting Microsoft with anything...or Google...or Apple...or Facebook... stop tying your communication to these companies, they can pull the rug at any time.
- You have to trust someone with these communications, there is no free communication beyond face to face
  
  Matrix (federated) or Briar (multi-modal P2P) are both good options for getting rid of dependency on central organizations.
  
  Unless you build your own, you have to trust your ISP to move packets, but you don't have to rely on any third party services or give them your personal info to use social media.
  Fully decentralized, open-source, and encrypted social networks exist. The only servers needed are your computer and the computers of the friends you communicate with. (See: Retroshare )
  They're just never going to get big because small, personal friend-to-friend networks can't compete with the network effects of centralized media and a never-ending torrent of dopamine on tap.
  
  trust yourself by hosting a matrix server
  
  Signal is right there.
  
  Not true at all lol, have you heard of peer-to-peer?
  
  This is what net neutrality and anti-trust laws are for.
  
  https://jitsi.org/
  
  This is exactly what they want you to believe.
- Your average person doesn't know of any communication method other than mega corps.
- Yor right I will just use my billions of dollars to build a global internet infrastructure and make my posts on my own phone using the os I just built in my spare time for fun its not about trust its about necessity
- That's what you get
  You're right, they deserve this. You asshole.
- We had an issue a couple days ago where we couldn't move a VIP to a new phone because the vendor wanted us to perform multi-factor auth via a device from two years ago. We had to roll back the service. Our entire lives are built atop fragile digital infrastructure with broken and poorly thought-out policies.
MS probably doesn’t care who calls who. I’d be surprised if this wasn’t a government issued order and they can’t disclose it.
- Governments don't order such specificity. They would have, at most, told M$ that Skype is being used by Hamas and that there would be an audit on the situation, so M$ over-corrected to be better safe than sorry
Fucking disgusting
- Reeks of governmental intervention
This is a pretty misleading article. They cite the BBC "investigation" as a source, but if you go to the BBC article you'll quickly see it's not an investigation or anything near that. It's just a reporting of the anecdotes of 3 individuals who happen to be Palestinians living abroad. You can't establish any type of conclusions on a sample size that small.
This isn't a study, it's not a survey, it's not a poll, it doesn't prove that Microsoft is intentionally making these bans, it doesn't track down the actual reasons for the bans, or anything really. The BBC article is fine for what it is, just a reporting of a mildly interesting event, but this windoscentral article is just bad bait.
- It’s not misleading. It’s reporting on the BBC article as it was originally published.
  https://archive.is/8Aefo
  The BBC article was subsequently edited down to remove key information while no comment or retraction was made. This isn’t surprising as many journalist who work for the BBC have accused their editors of bias.
  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/23/as-israel-pounds-gaza-bbc-journalists-accuse-broadcaster-of-bias
  This is why media literacy is important. If you knew how media outlets operate it would be easy to figure out what happened in this case.
  
  While that is a good catch, the only two differences between the original article and the edited one is that they removed the statement where they mentioned they've spoken to 20 Palestinians living abroad and added a little paragraph that mentions the number of causalities that were caused by the war. The contents of the article are still largely the same. The original article still isn't an investigation like the windowscentral article claims. It's just a reporting of the experiences of the 20 or so individuals they've spoken to, where again, only 3 individuals are highlighted. I don't see anything wrong with the BBC article, my issue is with the way that windowscentral framed the BBC article.
  Also for the record, while the BBC has it's biases, Al Jazeera is a Qatari state owned propaganda outlet. They're not credible on most things, but especially when it comes to anything relating to the middle east. Take anything they say with a tub of salt.
  
  wait so you're telling me in addition to checking the cited material, I have to now check if the cited material was edited? no one fuckin told me that what the hell
Well, fuck Microsoft now more so.
The corpos can fuck you over any time for any reason. If your data is not held on your own infrastructure, it's not your data. If your computer runs Windows, it's not your computer.
Genuinely shocking and disgusting. What is Microsoft's problem with people just trying to live their lives? They absolutely need a class action lawsuit over this. I'm so glad I just switched to Ubuntu as my default and now really don't want to give this sh*thole company another cent.
Holy balls we are living in the wild west era of the internet.
Shit needs to be regulated.
Just I'm not super confident regulation will come in the form of mandatory encryption at rest, end-to-end encryption by default and only not when necessary, banning selling data to 3rd parties, being able to quickly and speedily unban unjustly banned accounts by regulator intervention (like this one).
Terms of service are bullshit when our entire digital identities are attached to emails.
Looking around, the regulation we'll see will instead be in the form "nothing to fear if you've got nothing to hide."
I can daydream, though.
The digital genocide of Palestinians hath commenced.
“Killed my online life”
How dramatic. Get another account.
- The problem is they lose their email address, which is tied to just about every digital account they have. Losing your email can royally fuck you. Many sites send an email to the old email of you try to change it, so you'll have to get in touch with support to get it changed, and then support will want proof it's your account somehow, and the whole process is gonna take days or weeks to fix all your accounts. God help you if you forgot any passwords because now you can't login or even reset the password since that goes through email.
  
  Everyone should own their own domain and have ownership of their digital life. If you don’t, then you are borrowing something that can be taken from you easily.
  No one can take my email from me. Even if the current provider goes out of business, I can always point it elsewhere.

78 comments