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Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say

bbc.com

91–100 of 230 posts

Re: Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say

#91
post #65
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I think that if a person cannot participate in modern society without being a customer with only a few competitors to choose from, then such businesses should have a "universal service obligation" and not be allowed to refuse service without a good reason. Such a reason should be mediated by the legal system. For example a major chain convenience store with few similar competitors could ban someone for shopli…

Suing isn't as useful as you'd expect. It costs $10,000's and months to even get to court. Criminal liability for improper bans, and allowing citizens to directly charge the company with the crime (some states do this) would probably be more practical. Alternatively, some variant of streamlined court (similar to small-claims court) could be established, where you could automatically use the court if the defendant had…

This could be solved with something like CFPB, but with the Chevron Deference repealed, courts are pretty much the only remedy now for anything until congress decides to write much more specific and in-depth laws.

Re: Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say

#92
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Digital Markets Act and/or Digital Services Act ought to have something to say about this, especially the "this secret decision is final and we refuse to say anything else" part of the story.

That wording sounds like the decision was made in Israel and not the US. I would guess the shutdown requests came from Israeli security services. Thus it is final and not appealable and can also the reasoning can not be revealed.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say

#94
post #8

Was this decision made in Redmond or in Israel? Microsoft has offices in Israel and these offices are likely responsible for things happening in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Israel is currently at "war" with Gaza and having Israeli employees of Microsoft having the ability to disable anyone's account calling civilians in Gaza is pretty horrible. Is Microsoft via Skype and Hotmail participating in what Israel's lea…

It has R&D centers and local business centers. Skype is not in Israel and there's no reason for a VoIP solution to route through a country local facility. The "complete siege" ended ages ago. Israel provides power, food etc.

I don't know about power and food since I have friends in the North who still don't have access.

Re: Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could have a huge chilling effect on start ups, indi devs, and hobbyists

Not at all, smaller players would be exempt. Only if the service becomes massive enough and starts to police their users with secret courts in this way do they get treated like a utility.

> smaller players would be exempt

Yesterday we had the discussion on FCC rules, and CE marking, from which small players are not exempt. There's no reason to assume there would be de minimis exemptions, there aren't for the GDPR.

Re: Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say

#97

Some people forget that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

Typical sentence of people that are guilty, just like those who pretend they should be able to hide information outside of the protective gaze of the glorious all-powerful elites who know better than thouh. What are you trying to hide, you seditious terrorist, hmm?

Nice atronym.

Re: Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say

#98
post #53

These companies want to become as ubiquitous as a public utility. Therefore they should be regulated like a public utility

Regulations are why Microsoft is banning users who call Gaza. The real solution here is to use Signal (or something like it). And I don't mean to criticize Microsoft or regulations. Microsoft is faced with an impossible task here, I assume they're doing the best they can.

>The real solution here is to use Signal (or something like it).

The article discusses that they are unable to contact their family over the internet because Israel is shutting off internet. So they were using Skypes Skype to Phone service to call their family's mobile phones over normal cell service in Gaza.

Re: Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say

#99
It is incredibly frustrating to realize that a lot of companies are within their right to deny you service as soon as you even _appear_ to pose a risk to them.

Geico recently denied my renewal of insurance because they said their underwriters received notification that I use my vehicle for business. (I don't.) I have spent hours trying to explain to them that this is a mistake, but they have zero interest in providing me with insurance. I've heard this is common for people in CA.

I'm not sure what legal recourse the people in this story have. Hopefully they have a legal right to at least download an archive of their data so they can recover old emails, attachments, photos, etc.

Re: Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say

#100

Every time I read a story like this, about MS or Google or Twitter or which-ever big corporate it is, I'm so glad that I exited these platforms and years ago. I left LinkedIn before MS bought it, because it was clear it was being copied by all and sundry. I left GitHub once MS bought it (and I thank God for that, ever time I see another story about MS being awful). I never used Google - they were obviously evil and f…

Curious, what sort of phone do you use?
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