Comment by zx2c4

>More regulation won't help here, because the regulation-maker is itself the hostile party.

It's easy to paint the big gov as bad, but this is a case where unfortunately the populace seems to be in agreement with the big bad gov. While most US citizens support encryption, 76% or so, the vast majority 63% also favor government "backdoor" access for national security reasons.

I guess either we believe in democracy or we don't. It could be said that if Veracrypt isn't/can't be backdoor'd, perhaps the gov is simply implementing the will of the people :( via Microsoft.

Technofeudalism is what happens when grossly under-regulated anarcho-capitalism dominates rather than sustainable, more ordinary capitalism where government regulation is the supreme, minimized biased arbiter that keeps things fairer and sensible for the benefit of the many rather than the benefit of the few.

In the EU, under GDPR, it is legally required to explain automated profiling.

I understand the sentiment, but.. do you realize how much more expensive that would make all these services?

I don’t know the number. But personally I think using the services and ‘simply’ only use them if the disappearance isn’t catastrophic and have the price be low or free while it works isn’t too bad a trade-off.

Admittedly that’s a big ‘if.’

I think the GP is relating to MS services and accounts as utilities that should not be possible to be taken away easily, not about Wireguard.

Agreed. Be careful what you wish for.

I'm not one of those people but want to point out that there isn't much of a contradiction there. I don't know if hospitals, universities, train tracks, roads, and libraries technically speaking count as utilities but they overall don't seem to be profitable and at the same time are extremely desirable for a society and an economy to have. AI could turn out to be of the same sort.

> No tinfoil needed.

That's what Big Tinfoil wants you to believe!

>I don't think Microsoft cares (about anything else than making money), but there are plenty of (state) actors that can influence the decision-making at Microsoft when it comes to these issues.

Microsoft the corporation may only care about making money, but a lot of very high ranking folks within MS Security aren't just friendly to intelligence agencies, they take genuine pride in helping intelligence agencies. They're the kinds of people who saw nothing wrong or objectionable with PRISM whatsoever, they were just mad they got caught, and that the end user (who they believe had no right to even know about it) found out anyway. The kind of people who openly defend the legitimacy of the FISA court.

This aren't baseless accusations, this comes from first-hand experience interacting with and talking to several of them. Charlie Bell literally kept a CIA mug on a shelf behind him, prominently visible during Teams calls, as if to brag.

Remember - Microsoft was the very first company on the NSA's own internal slide deck depicting a timeline of PRISM collection capabilities by platform, started all the way back in 2007. All companies on that slide may have been compelled to assist with national security letters. Some were just more eager than others to betray the privacy and trust of their own customers and end-users.

>I don't think Microsoft cares (about anything besides making mo' money)

If Microsoft amounts to a sentient entity (i.e. is able to care about things), we have a bigger problem.

If we put the wall of metaphor between us and that interpretation, it still remains likely that "users shielding themselves" is of primary concern to Microsoft's bottom line.

You think it would succeed at that? Come on. Copilot is for entertainment purposes only!

If you use an automated process to disable accounts but then state there is no appeals process available as they stated, then you are not to be trusted to be acting in good faith. Bad actors should be called out and not given the benefit of the doubt.

Automated systems breaking things without any human contact to get them resolved seems to be the theme of the last 10 years.

Where are the people that tried to sell us software signatures as security benefit? The reality is that they are a very specific security problem. In theory and in practice.

Maybe they let Mythos loose and it suggested the safest approach was to remove access ;)

When a company makes it impossible to correct their stupidity, it's a malicious act. The behavior speaks loud and clear: "We don't care what damage we do to developers or users. And we don't want to hear about it."

I'm more convinced than ever that this aphorism has it completely backwards.

The guise of a harmless mistake has worn so thin and is so overused by tech companies that I now only see deliberate intent.

No. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish was replaced by the AAA strategy: Acquire, Assimilate, Abandon. They were trying to be more Google-like with that "Abandon" step I think.

They've since moved on to the SSS strategy: Ship, Slip, Slop.

This license modifier already exists for others to use (I can't post the direct links here because this site will sanction me for doing so)

plus n-word dot com hosts information about the plus n-word license which purports:

- The software will not be used or hosted by western corporations that promote censorship

- The software will not be used or hosted by compromised individuals that promote censorship

- Users of the software will be immune to attacks that would result in censorship of others

We literally just did this. Now we have Valkey. Nobody won.

That actually is not analogy at all and it makes sense. When a low-paid Uber Eats delivery person just throws the box carelessly and brings damaged dish to the customer, that's a real issue.

In digital services there's no such thing. There's only a damned corporation employing idiots who don't care about community.

What? How?

Having multiple accounts wouldn't help, as Microsoft could easily suspend all the accounts of everyone associated with the project if any account looks suspicious. The single point of failure is Microsoft.

You're not actually allowed to avoid this by having multiple accounts, that falls under "ban evasion".

But yes, there's a lot of critical single maintainer projects.

No, that is not the issue here. The source of the problem is something different. This is a wrong root cause analysis.

How would more than one account help in this scenario, exactly?

I got a 20y old hotmail/live account deleted by Microsoft because a bot tried to reset my password too many times. Considering the magnitude of the targeted attack, MS found the safest way to keep me secure was to wipe my account. That way the attacker could not get into my account.

are you making an argument that businesses worldwide somehow are known to make well thought-out, rational, wise decisions that are in best interest for the business and efficiency of running it?

because most managers I know in my professional life go with the vendor that buys them dinner or slips them tickets for box seats.

Yes.

Given MS‘ track record, yes

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