Bonum Certa Men Certa

More People Are Coming Out: Microsoft Tried to Get Them Fired for Standing in Microsoft's Way (the 'One Microsoft Way')

Broken glasses



Summary: Microsoft's bullying tactics aren't "old news"; the same tactics carry on to this date and they're the moral or corporate equivalent of doxing

Examples continue to surface which show a distinct pattern (that continues to this date); Microsoft does not appease critics but instead it tries to render them unemployed. We're starting to see more and more examples (people 'coming out', so to speak) of people whose job/livelihood Microsoft attempted to destroy because they had not been friendly to Microsoft's financial interests. Some of them send us messages. Others write about it publicly in response to our articles. Few were reluctant to tell us their story but only said, in general terms, that it had happened to them too. Microsoft apparently does this a lot. About a decade and a half ago it got caught making 'dossiers' on people -- a form of intimidation. Wired wrote about it.



Here's a new example of a user with a karma of 3,771 and almost 7 years in the site Hacker News. This person wrote earlier today: "Years ago, a Microsoft sales associate called my CEO to try to get a member of my team (and probably me) fired because we told Microsoft we were taking a pass on upgrading our company to Vista; too many problems. Similar things have happened to other people in my network. Not saying this is MS policy or anything, but it happens."

"Microsoft may well bribe people at the Linux Foundation and the media, but it cannot fool the entire world all the time."An article of ours gained momentum in several places in Reddit and Hacker News (even the front page), e.g. [1, 2, 3], all this despite the relatively old age of the article. Sadly, it's also a very short article that does not name our 4 recent examples, including my own [1, 2, 3]. It focuses on only one; there are also examples of retributions (see our Wiki page on "Microsoft Retribution against individuals and organisations") which we've been gathering for a dozen years. Some of these examples are very recent, yet Microsoft apologists (e.g. in today's comments) pretend it's "old news" or "old Microsoft". Microsoft is still a very malicious company. oiaohm brought up the report "Microsoft hijacks Android's share menu w/ ads for its apps" earlier today in IRC (the report is days old), adding that "Microsoft is still finding new underhanded ways." Yesterday we showed how it was screwing its very own "partners". Nothing has really changed. Months ago Microsoft sued a company for refusing to pay patent royalties (tax, extortion money)... for Android. Microsoft may well bribe people at the Linux Foundation and the media, but it cannot fool the entire world all the time.

Recent Techrights' Posts

GNU/Linux Has Become More Mainstream in the United Kingdom
It's a long weekend here and we guess some people dabble in GNU/Linux migrations, at least at home
 
Links 30/08/2026: Soldiers in Niger Attack Presidential Palace and Airport, Nepali City Struggles to Handle the Many Dead Bodies
Links for the day
Clownflare Sees GNU/Linux Rising to 11% This Past Week
Is it the year of "Linux in China"?
Links 30/08/2026: Russian Strike on a Ukrainian Warehouse and Rhetoric Escalations
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/08/2026: Photography, Paper Books, Linux Kernel and the Debian Projects Permitting Slop Plagiarism
Links for the day
Imagine a World Where Nobody Fights for Software (and Computing) Freedom
The community keeps fighting back, so some of these ambitions are delayed or watered down
FSF Has Grown (More Staff) After a Year of Financial Growth
On October 4 the FSF turns 41
SLAPP Censorship - Part 166 Out of 200: Garrett Wasn't Found Innocent Per Se, the Court Wanted More Evidence of Who Was Behind Particular Accounts Using Tor
It's complicated
Criminals Don't Obey Laws, California Does Not Enhance Online Safety
It has been a while since we last mentioned so-called 'age-verification' laws
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 29, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, August 29, 2026
Links 29/08/2026: Stop the Hate, Goldfish Myths, and xmpp.nz
Links for the day
Links 29/08/2026: Wave of Social Control Media Bans, Suno Data Breach Class Actions
Links for the day
Links 29/08/2026: Microsoft GitHub Outage (Again), "Displaying Ads Directly on Your Monitor", and "Election Deniers Could Soon Control Elections"
Links for the day
IBM is "Taking the PIP" (Piss), People 'Retire' 'Voluntarily' to "Focus on Family"
IBM has a billion bucks for 'the butcher', but not a million dollars for critical projects and initiatives in Free software
It Should be Uncontroversial to Say That Social Control Media is a Weapon
Democracy is not compatible with the likes of Kapo-Berg and MElon controlling public discourse of billions
Misuse of Bots (Now Sold as "Agents", "Hey Hi", "Automation", and "Efficiency")
They even try to rebrand robotics as "hey hi" and try to sell slop as "work"
Debian: Plagiarism OK, Just be "Responsible" About It
The result isn't the worst, but it's not good either
Don't Let Them Kill Activism
Are the oligarchs shutting the lid on activism and whistleblowers?
SLAPP Censorship - Part 165 Out of 200: Two Years Since My Wife and I Sued
In early September 2024 we hit back
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 28, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, August 28, 2026
Gemini Links 29/08/2026: Death Notice, Systems Biology, and Gopher
Links for the day
Links 28/08/2026: Chatbot Pushers Admit They're Used Heavily for Social Engineering Scams, Strong Backlash Against "Smart Glasses" (CCTV on Legs)
Links for the day
Michael Catanzaro's Latest Blog Post Affirms Rumours of Red Hat Changes and RAs/PIPs at IBM
reading between the lines, IBM is "spitting out" Red Hat staff
If Linux Was Written in Rust, 80% or More of Linux Developers Would Not Understand It (Same If It's Composed by LLM Slop)
The licence (GPL) is not enough when there are ways to bypass it
Gemini Links 28/08/2026: Absurd Tomodachi Summer, Screen Piggery, and Jugulans 1.0.3 Released
Links for the day
Links 28/08/2026: "UK Power Grid Has a Phantom Data Center Problem" and "Growth at All Costs is Cancer"
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 164 Out of 200: Patent Troll SLAPPs, Defamation Trolls, and Stranglers From America
You start to wonder if the core issue is insecurity
Rumours of More PIPs and Layoffs at Confluent Just Months After IBM Bought It
It is meanwhile apparent IBM will have mass layoffs next week (September)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 27, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, August 27, 2026
After Many Waves of PIPs (Silent Layoffs) IBM Makes Non-Silent Layoffs, Effective Next Week (September)
What we heard is turning out to be true