The Case Against Microsoft and GitHub | Hacker News Reader

The Case Against Microsoft and GitHub

sneak.berlin

20 pointsUkiahSmith14 comments

This is incredibly narrow black and white view, it's full of mental gymnastics, leaping to conclusions and putting words in their mouths. I know that HN is collectively biased against MS, but this particular piece is poorer than usual.

The original premise for getting away from their services is the PRISM slide. Microsoft is one organization in that list. The others are Google, Yahoo, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL, Apple. To focus on one and pretty much leap into blaming them for ICE's abuses is unobjective and incredibly biased. ICE does not exist in a technological vacuum devoid of FB, iPhones, and Skype.

If author truly cares they should either drop all companies mentioned or do the civil thing and be objective in their assessment. I predict that the likely conclusion will be: all large companies are complicit and that it's entirely a gray area. It's entirely possible to be good and evil at the same time.

Large companies often work as a loose collection of departments most of whom don't know what anyone else is doing (the nature of growth), so they end up with situations where leadership has certain focus topics and some management has other focus topics. What changes over time is marketing and the narrative that companies want to push out.

I have no problem with Microsoft selling PowerPoint to the military (although it does not mean I endorse Microsoft, or PowerPoint, or the military; I merely mean that if someone is selling a product and some customer wishes to buy it, then they can do that). It is not the provider's fault what the customer is doing with the products, I should think.

But, their collaboration with NSA for illegal mass spying, is certainly a bad thing to do. They have "been letting the feds read whatever they like out of it without a warrant for the last dozen years", which is no good, and especially if their terms of service does not mention this. (But even if they mentioned in their terms of service, this still doesn't make it good.)

"It's entirely possible to be good and evil at the same time." Yes, I believe that, and unfortunately, too often people ignore this.

> providing Windows NT to aircraft carriers like the USS Yorktown.

Navy vet here:

USS Yorktown (CV-10), an Essex-class aircraft carrier commissioned in 1943 (museum ship since 1975)

You mean:

USS Yorktown (CG-48), a Ticonderoga-class cruiser commissioned in 1984 (awaiting scrapping)

Via https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown

> Navy vet here

Article blithely suggests that support to the Navy is tantamount to mass murder. Vet calmly ignores that nonsense and simply provides an update for accuracy of ship and hull designation references.

By the way, thank you for, among other things, keeping shipping lanes safe, which in turn makes global trade a possibility, which in turn has lifted millions out of poverty worldwide.

When the basic facts aren't checked, the rest of the argument collapses.

And you and everyone who gave far more than I are welcome for all of the joy received.

I'm actually fairly undecided on the GitHub/ICE thing, largely because it doesn't make logical sense to me as something we should be doing in general (this is an open invitation for someone to provide an explanation, if they're so inclined…) The crux of my issue with it is that even if we assume "ICE is bad" GitHub makes software that is generally useful to everyone. Why are we asking for this particular contract to be cancelled? Will doing this help improve the situation in any way? Why are we mad at GitHub specifically, and not e.g. McDonalds which ICE might order food from, or Staples which ICE buys office supplies from? I fail to see why we should just arbitrarily ask certain companies that provide generally useful services to stop interacting with entities we disagree with…

> Why are we asking for this particular contract to be cancelled?

We are asking for there to be negative consequences in general for companies who decide to operate with no moral or ethical compass. It's not about this contract: it's about sending a message to companies that collaboration with those who torture and murder is not okay, and will cost them business and retention.

Taking on customers entirely uncritically should not be without market risk. "I dunno man, I just sell hosting" is not an acceptable position.

Censorship isn't okay, but freedom of association is, and companies need incentives to exercise it to fire particular customers doing evil, and disincentives to turning a blind eye to how their products and services are being used.

To say this is just about "entities we disagree with" is to miss the point, I think. This isn't about "problematic speech", or the standard left/right claims of bias or censorship, or any other kind of the routine partisan tribal complaints you read about regularly. This is about concentration camps. Right here, in the United States.

Main points since the article renders strangely for me on the iPhone:

Collaboration with US military for conducting mass murder

Collaboration with NSA for illegal mass spying on innocent people

Collaboration with ICE who runs concentration camps

Drop Microsoft. Drop GitHub. Drop LinkedIn. Drop Azure. Drop Windows.

Bummer. I was hoping for a more feature/engineering-oriented article.

I recently started the switch from GitHub to GitLab, both for myself and my company. Generally boiled down to a wider feature set for a better price.

If the facts check out then this article might be what is needed to reboot the anti-MS movement. Well written and adequately furious.

Problem: is there are list of companies that are not providers to the US military and/or ICE, i.e. companies that do not take such jobs because of moral stances? If there are none then what are we left with?

I agree on most/all points. There are many more suspicious issues about MS and how they treat you data.

A small inconsistency worth pointing out: the author has a linkedin link in his bio...

Click it: the link target points to the post you just read. I decided to update it to the rationale given here instead of just silently removing it, so that people who use LinkedIn can read why they won't find me there.

The profile at the link's text is getting removed this week, once I migrate my contacts.

From the footer:> Unfadeable, so please don't try to fade this.

What does that mean?

I am curious too. I don't know what "Unfadeable, so please don't try to fade this." means either. (The best I can find is that it appears to be song lyrics, although I don't know what is the significance of that, nor why it is written there or what it means there.)

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