I’m not saying anything about this particular case, but this shows that Microsoft and other US tech giants have the power to politically disrupt or hurt a country, or in our case, a whole continent.

If the US/tech giants for whatever reason decide that Europe needs to be punished, they can hurt us really bad by just turning all our digital services down, which could potentially cause chaos depending on the scale.

Europe needs to start using European alternatives to American IT services!

Edit: Just to be clear - I’m not posting this to discuss the Israel/Palestine conflict, or whether what Microsoft did here was right or wrong. I’m trying to raise awareness of a potential dangerous dependancy of American tech, and am trying to promote European tech in a group called Buy European.

  • Kernal64@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    154·
    9 days ago

    A huge number of people have been boycotting and pressuring Microsoft to get them to do exactly this because Israel is using their platform to further their insane genocide. I haven’t seen any resistance to this idea, but now you’re saying this shouldn’t happen? While I agree that everyone should reduce their reliance on American big tech, this specific case of MS finally listening to a large amount of their non-Isreali customers isn’t the example to use to further this goal.

    • GreyShuck@feddit.ukEnglish
      15·
      9 days ago

      but now you’re saying this shouldn’t happen?

      To be fair, the very first words that OP says are “I’m not saying anything about this particular case”, and indeed they do not say anything about Israel after that.

      Fuck Netanyahu’s Israel. I really don’t see that OP is saying anything to the contrary here.

      • DreasNil@feddit.nuOPEnglish
        7·
        9 days ago

        Thank you for clarifying. As I tried to explain in my post, I’m not saying that what Microsoft is doing here is wrong. I’m saying that Microsoft, and other giant tech companies have a leverage on most countries that could become an issue for us in the future, if we don’t start relying more on our own technology.

        • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          8·
          9 days ago

          This is why I just stressed in another thread that “digital sovereignty” and national security both start and end with open source.

          Democratic institutions can’t be built on, and beholden to, for-profit entities; especially foreign ones.

          You (me especially) might agree with Microsoft pulling support for genocide (I do not believe they’ll stop supporting Israel, at all), but the Christian fascist USofA could just as easily use big tech to wage global warfare … they 100% already are. I guarantee it.

      • Kernal64@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        21·
        9 days ago

        But then why mention it at all? It seems to me to send a contradictory message that we want these companies to listen to the will of the people, but also oh no, why did they do that. Sure, OP doesn’t mention it again, but it is the basis for the entire post.

        Netanyahu’s Isreal is basically a regime of criminals committing atrocities, so anything that fucks them over, I’m down with. And to be clear, I’m not saying OP is supporting them in any way. It just seems like there should be better examples than this specific case where a company is doing what we’ve been demanding that we could use to get everyone away from reliance on American big tech.

        Off the top of my head, Google’s recent announcement that they’re going to block sideloading apps that aren’t approved by them, or if we wanna use MS, their whole Recall feature in Windows is a horrible invasion of privacy, and is why I just finished switching to Linux. Those would be far better topic starters for this discussion, IMO.