Microsoft destroyed my online life after I called home to Gaza
www.bbc.com
Palestinians calling home to Gaza on Skype are being blocked and banned from using Microsoft products.
  • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    5 months ago

    A moral society would, once the genocide is finally stopped, investigate every company and organization that did shit like this and punish those responsible.

    Whatever manager approved this should be facing charges. Anyone who called the cops on protestors. University staff who retaliated against anti-genocide staff and students. All of those people should be facing charges of helping facilitate genocide.

      • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        4 months ago

        See also: COVID. There needs to be a systematic hunt for those who pushed pro-COVID policies. For those at the highest levels, they should be fucking hanged. But also managers who encouraged staff to work sick should be heavily fined and banned from ever being a manager again. Anyone who pushed for ending their companies masking or work from home policies, barred from anything but the most simple menial labor.

    • VILenin [he/him]
      ·
      4 months ago

      Show

      Evergreen tweet by Norm before it got removed

        • hello_hello [comrade/them]
          ·
          4 months ago

          They always have had the opportunity. They accumulated so much user-share ever since COVID that they are the defacto video conferencing software. Same thing with Discord but people can't let go of their treats so Palestinians looking for their family be damned.

          • Chronicon [they/them]
            ·
            4 months ago

            As someone who was remote long before covid, I don't get this? is it that pervasive still? Why?

            I heard about it getting big, saw some social events and activism related events on it during the pandemic, but only have a whopping one client that uses it now (they are a globally distributed team and afaik always were, so not sure why they use zoom rather than Google Meet or Slack, both of which they also pay for.)

            Companies that have been doing videoconferencing forever seem to still hold onto webex (ew), other companies seem to be using whatever they use for other communication (slack, meet, teams, etc), but I don't see a lot of zoom any more except the free version sometimes for non professional stuff

            • hello_hello [comrade/them]
              ·
              4 months ago

              For schools and universities a lot of them use Zoom (and then a brief stint using Google Meets) at least in the US.

              They definitely broke into the mainstream once the pandemic hit with American schools and other institutions. Schools are great clients for nonfree software because you get to groom children into using your product which will carry on with them all through life (the Chromebook model).

              • Chronicon [they/them]
                ·
                4 months ago

                ugh

                yeah I guess that makes sense, I'm not school age, but I know some people who were during 2020 and most of their shit was on zoom

                there is an elementary/middle school near me that uses linux and teaches open source but its like a charter or magnet or something in a wealthy suburb iirc so idk how to feel about that

  • N0body@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    ·
    4 months ago

    With a paid Skype subscription, it is possible to call mobiles in Gaza cheaply - and while the internet is down - so it has become a lifeline to many Palestinians.

    Paid subscriptions having their accounts banned for calling their family to see if they're still alive.

  • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    4 months ago

    Also I’ll be honest at a fundamental level I don’t think companies should be allowed to block paid accounts without a warning and refund, regardless of the offense

    Like even if they were doing actual crimes, like planning a murder over Skype or something, if you have a paid subscription they should be required to give you at least a few days to get your shit and a refund. Eviction rules.

  • zephorah@lemm.ee
    ·
    5 months ago

    Microsoft is off the rails. Time to mainstream Linux for more reasons than Windows 11.

      • grazing7264 [they/them, comrade/them]
        ·
        4 months ago

        I think Windows intentionally breaks GRUB dual boot, if you see your computer saying "repairing Windows" it's a good chance that it's breaking your dual boot setup

        They definitely succeed because it made me stop using Linux for a long time, I didn't have time to fix it and didn't know how. It happened multiple times.

        Now I exclusively use Linux out of spite

        • communism@lemmy.ml
          ·
          4 months ago

          I don't think it does that if you have Linux on a completely separate drive instead of just a separate partition, but I'm not sure. In any case the solution is just to reinstall grub. Grab a live usb of some linux distro, chroot into your linux install, then grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/path/to/efi/dir --bootloader-id=GRUB (on uefi, if on bios do whatever the command is for bios, and replace the target architecture with whatever your architecture is, etc)

          • Beetle_O_Rourke
            ·
            4 months ago

            I don't think it does that if you have Linux on a completely separate drive instead of just a separate partition

            I've had it nuke GRUB on a seperate dualboot nvme, that was the catalyst for becoming fulltime linux for me.

        • tactical_trans_karen [she/her, comrade/them]
          ·
          4 months ago

          Same! But also compatability with plug and play things, proprietary software, learning command lines and file structure, fixing things... I make a living at my computer so I need it to work. I know it's more stable, but getting everything set up first for me in the past was too much.

        • sexywheat [none/use name]
          ·
          4 months ago

          Yeah I stopped dual booting after my master boot record just fucked off and disappeared for the third time. I just use separate rigs now.

          • Chronicon [they/them]
            ·
            4 months ago

            I switched to only booting the windows drive directly from BIOS boot menu, linux drive as default. I never boot up the windows partition tbh, it was only there for VR and I lost interest in that pretty early

        • imogen_underscore [it/its, she/her]
          ·
          4 months ago

          i've never had it bork bootloader when the drives are separate. to be safe you could just hard disable windows update, EOL is next year anyway lol

  • Barx [none/use name]
    ·
    4 months ago

    If there is one (1) thing I recommend doing to take control over your online life it is to buy your own domain name and then use it for your email. Like me@myname.com or something. That way, no matter what fuckery happens to anything else, you can still receive emails at the same address by just using a different email host.

    These unconscionable things can only happen because our digital lives are corporate-owned.