Silicon Valley needs to brought to heel.
In a March 1 release, Microsoft is warning customers using Office, Xbox, Skype, and other products that the company is prohibiting offensive language and inappropriate content starting on May 1.
“Don’t publicly display or use the Services to share inappropriate content or material (involving, for example, nudity, bestiality, pornography, offensive language, graphic violence, or criminal activity),” Microsoft warns in a portion of their new codes of conduct.
Microsoft also added that the company plans on “investigating” users who are accused of violating the new policy and will block content from being sent to other people.
So will they have monitors watching 24/7 to make sure nobody says something “bad” on Skype? And so nobody uses the service for cyber sex?
Also, Office? Does that mean nobody can use the Office suite to write stories that involve sex, violence and un-PC dialogue?
Who decides what is offensive?
Who decides what is offensive?
Who decides what is offensive?
Time to go back to pen and paper my dudes.
You want fanfiction? I’ll mail it to ya, free of charge in my own slutty, slutty handwriting.
anyone got alternatives to…basically all of Microsoft’s services?
Office: https://www.openoffice.org/
Skype: https://discordapp.com/
Live Mail: https://protonmail.com/
Xbox: https://www.xboxalternative.com/
- Libreoffice and Openoffice are both free, open source and very similar in interface, but I prefer Libreoffice having used both.
- Discord is better than Skype, but Discord can and will delete your accounts for breaking their terms of service (you’re not supposed to use Discord for anything illegal). In practice, they’re pretty hard on the far right and Neo-Nazis, and often delete their servers, which in my book is a good thing.
- ProtonMail is pretty decent and easy to use.
I don’t use Microsoft for anything but school because it’s garbage anyway but Discord is a great app.
Seriously openoffice is great.
Discord is infinitely better than Skype, and I’ve been using Office 2003 which they don’t support anymore anyway
This is the most concerning part of this situation:
Digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argues that Microsoft’s hard-line policy stems from Congress passing two new sex trafficking bills. The Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and the Stop Enabling Sex-Trafficking Act (SESTA) holds platforms responsible for users’ speech, illegally shared content, and anything connected to sex trafficking.
EFF claims SESTA/FOSTA “silences online speech by forcing Internet platforms to censor their users.” The Department of Justice has also warned that the bills raise “serious constitutional concern.”
Yeah, I would probably go with that over Microsoft being malicious. These bills were combined into a frankenbill that promotes internet censorship without actually stopping sex trafficking, with the DOJ saying it will be harder to actually catch sex traffickers because of it.
This also puts all of the alternative services in this post at risk. Sure, you can stop using Microsoft services, but what happens when alternative services are threatened by this bill? It stifles competition because legal costs can run a small business out.
We all care about net neutrality, but we need to care about this too. “Free and open” needs the free part.
Microsoft To Ban ‘Offensive Language’ And Monitor Your Private Account
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