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Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

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Re: Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

#41

Post by metalliqaz »

pphysch wrote: post #26
israrkhan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this day and age, it is almost impossible for certain businesses not to build on someone's else kingdom. Facebook, instagram, uber, lyft, doordash, instacart, and hundreds of unicorn businesses are literally built on top of ecosystems that are controlled by 2 or 3 companies.

There was a fleeting moment where the Internet was the "Wild West" but we are long past that. The GP's idiom is about as practical as "don't be a citizen of any state".

That is a really great analogy and it's so true.

The only counter point I can think of is that you can always choose to build upon multiple tech platforms simultaneously, and depending on the technology you need, it might not even add all that much additional cost to do so.

Re: Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

#42

Post by graemep »

israrkhan wrote: post #20
chasil wrote: post #7

As I hear stories of Apple, Google, and Microsoft revoking valuable access, I remember this article... "Don’t build your castle in other people’s kingdoms." https://howtomarketagame.com/2021/11/01/dont-build-your-cast...

In this day and age, it is almost impossible for certain businesses not to build on someone's else kingdom. Facebook, instagram, uber, lyft, doordash, instacart, and hundreds of unicorn businesses are literally built on top of ecosystems that are controlled by 2 or 3 companies.

If you have a possible very high return for taking that risk (as the unicorn businesses do) then do it in full knowledge of the risk.

I am not convinced those businesses are good examples. Could they have redeployed elsewhere if they had to? Where they tied to one supplier? Did they have backups else where?

Most businesses and individuals do not have to take that risk and can avoid it.

Re: Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

#43

Post by graemep »

prmoustache wrote: post #13
laxd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use noscript and a separate browser for malicious sites like fb and ig. It might seem painfull at first, but you'll quickly end up with with a web that is better than before.

No. Just use blabla is not enough. Sites which do that should be denounced.

To whom should they be denounced and what effect do you expect it to have?

Re: Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

#44

Post by laxd »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #35
squidbeak wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with doing both?

Nothing is wrong with doing both. But when the reply to "this site does shady shit" is "just run this addon", it comes across with a subtext of "stop whining, you can solve it yourself". Perhaps not intentionally, but that is how it generally comes across.

It was only meant as a pragmatic here-and-now way of dealing with the issue, for the hn crowd. Most people are helpless victims.

Re: Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

#45

Post by graemep »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

The need for European digital sovereignty cannot be overstated.

its not going to happen. Quite the opposite. The EU's age verification app will only work on Google attested (i.e. controlled by American big tech) smartphones: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44705240

The UK's Online Safety Act's main effect is to strengthen big tech and protect them from competition, and make self hosing prohibitively expensive for many.

European governments will talk about digital sovereignty but will do nothing that involved actually spending money, or regulating the private sector or anything actually effective.

Re: Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

#46

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

rossdavidh wrote: post #25

1) I doubt this is Microsoft conspiring against a LibreOffice dev. It's not impossible, but it seems way more likely that it's just an automated process that is misfiring. 2) I cannot prove that this (opaque) process has been retrofitted to use LLM's in its decision making, but I would not be the slightest bit surprised. Neural networks are, intrinsically, even more opaque than the processes they replace. 3) Using Bi…

> I doubt this is Microsoft conspiring against a LibreOffice dev. It's not impossible, but it seems way more likely that it's just an automated process that is misfiring.

I could agree with the beginning of that but not the classification of a misfire. A misfire implies a brief, exceptional occurrence and neither of those adjectives seem likely here.

That's based on a few years spent in Microsoft's forever-shuffling admin carousel (EAC, Exch Migration, Intune, Azure hydra, 365/Copilot-all-the-things). Thru that, I have come to believe that incompetence is almost always the right answer for MS-generated woes.

Re: Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

#47

Post by bravesoul2 »

rossdavidh wrote: post #25

1) I doubt this is Microsoft conspiring against a LibreOffice dev. It's not impossible, but it seems way more likely that it's just an automated process that is misfiring. 2) I cannot prove that this (opaque) process has been retrofitted to use LLM's in its decision making, but I would not be the slightest bit surprised. Neural networks are, intrinsically, even more opaque than the processes they replace. 3) Using Bi…

Yeah if Microsoft is banning 1% of accounts and independently 0.01% have a newsworthy conspiracy angle then on average One in a million users would fall in this bucket. p is going to be near 1 without other info.

Re: Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

#48

Post by bravesoul2 »

tracker1 wrote: post #37

Do not trust Microsoft, Google or any other company to provide backups... Have at least one backup/copy of your own data on your own hardware. I have onedrive, google-drive and dropbox copied to my nas as well as my desktop and laptop. Other projects are in github or gitlab and copied on my nas. That said, I should better automate my project backups... I also need to get my backup (redundant) NAS at a friends house (…

Google is good in this regard as you can schedule a takeout and get a complete dump. Stick that on a drive that is running backblaze and do periodic physical backups.

Re: Microsoft bans LibreOffice developer's account without warning, rejects appeal

#49

Post by eYrKEC2 »

rs186 wrote: post #38

The moment I saw nytimes' reporting that a dad lost access to his Google account because of "nude" photos of his baby and couldn't get help, I de-Googled almost completely and am now using fastmail as my main email account. My other inboxes are only kept just in case someone reaches me via those old addresses. I knew that if I didn't do that, the same thing would some day happen to me.

Fastmail is headquartered in Australia and Australia has censorship laws. Hope you're "aligned"!
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