Microsoft blocks emails that contain 'Palestine' after employee protests | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft blocks emails that contain 'Palestine' after employee protests

theverge.com

57 pointscebert27 comments

Am I just too old school?

Like I don't think it makes sense to do these protests at work. I get there are cases where your employer is doing something immoral. But maybe just switch jobs if you are that upset about it?

Why not protest and switch jobs? One is not old school by been submissive, I'm old school and I'm not like that.

I would argue that if your employer is helping a genocide, it's everyone's responsibility to fight it.

Sure, but do you help fight it by spamming the entire company with a bunch of mail?

Surely you fight it by any means necessary? It's a genocide! Microsoft's tools and servers and people were involved in killing way over 60,000 people (and plausibly 300,000). I don't know how anyone could sit idly by in that situation.

I'm frankly a bit shocked by the equivalence here: genocide not worth spamming. Please tell me this was sarcasm.

Actually creating spam and noise in an organization is one of the classic ways to sabotage and hurt it, as described in the CIA's simple sabotage field manual.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

Are you thinking of this?

I don't think you know what "old school" means.

Old school Polaroid employees back in the 1970s started the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers’ Movement to successfully pressure Kodak to stop their secret support for apartheid South Africa.

Labor strikes are also an old school alternative to "just switch jobs."

But if you want to change something, how does it help to switch the job?

> But maybe just switch jobs if you are that upset about it?

That's the gentler way to strike.

As members of the working class, we technically have the freedom to choose which employer we sell our labor to - but we are forced to sell our labor an employer to survive

So, in reality, it's hard

It's like saying, "But maybe just don’t get sick if you can’t afford medical treatment"

Internally. I feel like this word does belong into the headline. Other than that, I will never understand how employees don't move all of their communication far outside of their employers infrastructure in cases like that.

It's not about the dozens of activists talking with each other but about them writing to tens of thousands of people within the company. The former you can do on any platform. The latter you can only do on the employer's platform: that's where the people who're apathetic to your cause are, and they're not about to join your Discord.

Should I be surprised that a story about a tech company censoring workers communications (emails sent inside and outside) was flagged? Maybe this post was flagged due to the nature of the communications. Maybe Microsoft isn't the only censor.

Microsoft is having a really bad time of it recently. Each of the 3 days of their Build conference was disrupted by protests of their involvement in the genocide.

They got Satya's keynote: https://x.com/NoAz4Apartheid/status/1924512658587263410

In the last one, during a security presentation, the presenter accidentally leaked private information as a result: https://www.theverge.com/news/671373/microsoft-ai-security-c...

> disrupted by protests of their involvement in the genocide

If only there was a very simple and obvious way to prevent that.

Microsoft claims that internal and external reviews don’t hold that their services are being used by Israel to further genocide.

I’m sure I.G. Farben could have ginned up a press release to say “Oh that final solution stuff? We have no involvement.”

Microsoft is squarely on the wrong side of history here.

The world is watching you, Satya Nadella.

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