Live data from Hacker News

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

neowin.net

51–60 of 106 posts

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

#51

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…

The support for issues like this from all big corps is always horrendous.

Google is similarly notorious for brining businesses to a halt and only fixing the issue when it makes the news and a human at Google finally sees it.

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

#52
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.

There's a good reason they're called unicorns. That's not a strategy you should adopt for any business that's actually important to you.

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

#53
post #49
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"!

Then you just switch to another provider. The important part is owning your domain name and not relying on someone else’s.

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

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that just in the UK. For the EU's own shenanigans, we have persistent attempts such as these examples of fuckery: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44720103 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44705240 There have been many, many other examples over recent years. Anyone making any claim to the superiority of the EU regulation state in how it respects digital rights for individuals is full of shit or sheerly ig…

> Anyone making any claim to the superiority of the EU regulation state in how it respects digital rights for individuals is full of shit or sheerly ignorant. The EU is a huge organization and too often the right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing. But, the EU isn't alone in curbing digital rights for individuals, it's a worrying trend all over the world even over here in the states, with congress introduci…

Authoritarianism is much easier to implement in a pervasive surveillance environment, digital or otherwise. Unfortunate for all of us, even those who think they are immune.

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

#55
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct I’ll take the cluster F of what we have now over the UK style of the government watching over my shoulder as they force me to give up anonymity on the web for those sites that most require it

If you live in one of the states that hasn't yet added one of these laws. I expect it will become a federal bill in a year or two so there aren't 20 variants of the same law. You can really feel the "big tent" nature of the GOP when these bills are being pushed despite being absolutely abhorrent to large swaths of Republican voters.

I actually can see an argument for age verification, if it could be truly guaranteed to apply only to porn.

The constitutionality of the current laws was upheld on the basis of treating age verification for access to porn as an incidental burden, and thus warranted only intermediate scrutiny.

My (naïve?) hope is that any future mission creep will be rejected by the Supreme Court under strict scrutiny, especially as it extends into general and political speech.

However, once you have the legal and technical frameworks in place, mission creep is almost inevitable, and it could easily take years of litigation to resolve.

“Think of the children” has always been the thin end of a wedge used by those looking to incrementally dismantle inconvenient civil liberties.

All that said, we’re in a much better position in the US under the first amendment. The UK’s “online safety bill” is already targeting a myriad of forms of political speech, and is just the latest example of the significant shift towards the curtailment of free speech across Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

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

#57

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.

[deleted]

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

#60

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…

> However, any time you're dealing with Big Tech, even if they have no particular animus towards you, they may suddenly be unavailable (to you) without explanation, for an extended period of time

this risk goes for any 3rd party, at least the ones that follow sanctions compliance or suspicious activity monitoring. if your name shows up on a denied party list, it's illegal for anyone to tell you why they arent talking to you anymore.

Post reply on HN