Business Software Alliance (BSA), Microsoft, and AstroTurfing Online (Also in the Trump Administration Groomed by BSA and Microsoft)
OVER THE years - and decades* - we documented Microsoft AstroTurfing quite frequently and sometimes very extensively. One form of that company's AstroTurfing is misdirection; for instance, they want us to talk about security issues in Linux (like some relatively minor and already-patched bug) instead of actual Microsoft/Windows breaches. Here's a new example of misdirections from Microsoft, as an associate put it ("Five Eyes nations reveal the top 15 most exploited flaws"). At the end of March of this year a Microsoft employee made a ton of noise about Xz when the real security blunder was an imminent (days away) report about Microsoft as a whole suffering a breach, impacting the US government and resulting in espionage (the US government then published a scathing report about why it was Microsoft's fault).
"MANY articles talk about the technique of trolling used by astroturfers," the above-mentioned associate said, "but basically none mention the activity of astroturfing itself."
The above page documents examples of paid Microsoft astroturfers getting caught operating in Reddit. About a week ago someone said to us in IRC that some random people in Reddit were promoting VSCode and the same was true for some online forums focused on Linux (only hours ago an article that has VSCode promoted for Linux implied that this was "perfect", as per the headline; some days ago a site called "It's FOSS" chose to do the same; that's openwashing).
Noticing a pattern yet? How much of that boils down to Microsoft AstroTurfing? VSCode is proprietary and it is a way for Microsoft to spy on developers (yes, it's spyware). It's not hard to see why Microsoft is so desperate to spread VSCode, even at Intel.
"Trolling" as a term has been distorted and this new article ("The Rise of the Troll") is testament of it. To quote:
The Atlantic has examined trolling as an internet behavior for decades. (First, a minute for definitions: Trolling is a centuries-old term for a common fishing technique that involves slowly dragging a line through the water to lure fish into taking the bait, which The Atlantic has also written about. That word is a possible etymological ancestor of trolling in the modern parlance.) In a 2006 story about the evolution of Wikipedia, the writer and historian Marshall Poe recounted the tactics of a prominent early user known as “The Cunctator” (Latin for “procrastinator” or “delayer”), who pushed for a no-hierarchy, no-constraints version of the site. “Cunc,” as he was known, spammed pages, left inflammatory comments, and, most notably, baited the Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger into a prolonged edit war. (Sanger left Wikipedia in 2002, later citing its takeover by “trolls.”)
A lot of that is AstroTurfing. To quote a definition: "The term "astroturfing" is a play on the term "grassroots movement," since the grass is fake. Astroturfing has been attempted by online businesses who present a product as being highly desired and sought out by a certain customer base via company-sponsored message board posts, blogs or articles when there is no evidence to support such an assertion."
And speaking of Trump, notice how the Business Software Alliance (BSA) rears its ugly head again:
BSA represents OpenAI, Microsoft, and other leading tech companies hoping to influence Washington and international policymakers as they chart a path forward on regulating AI. For his part, Trump has vowed to undo outgoing President Joe Biden’s landmark executive order, signaling his White House will impose fewer rules on the fast-moving technology.
Has Washington become openWashington? Where the emphasis is openwashing rather than Open(Source)Washington? Either way, all the above are things to bear in mind. Microsoft was never against Trump, it is benefiting from his racism and corruption. █
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* We've been around for over 18 years and some decorations related to this were taken down this past weekend - to be replaced last night with Christmas decorations.