Summary: Slashdot is promoting Microsoft spin/agenda, insinuating that people who dislike Microsoft are irrational and that it's the equivalent of discrimination

OVER THE PAST few years the blatant Microsoft affinity at Slashdot turned into somewhat of a disease (like in ZDNet, where top-level sections are all about Microsoft and writers are from Microsoft), with additional hires of Microsoft boosters as staff writers and subsequently grooming of the Gates Foundation, Microsoft, and people who work for Microsoft. Selling agenda is the business model now. Slashdot rapidly became a Microsoft mouthpiece, choosing agenda instead of news. No wonder readers are moving elsewhere, abandoning Slashdot and sometimes even boycotting it.

Don't expect sites like Slashdot to cover what sites like Activist Post are covering, reminding us again that Bill Gates remains an inherently malicious, greedy and selfish individual, spying on children for profit. As Activist Post puts it: "New York state authorities are outsourcing data collection on school kids. The program, which is to be launched state-wide, is supposed to gather information on students starting from the age of five to better "tailor education" to the needs of children.

"New York hired a non-profit private contractor inBloom, funded by the Bill Gates Foundation, as the gatekeeper of this data."

The latest agenda-selling from Slashdot can be found here, linking to a self-described employee of Microsoft ("Web Platform Team at Microsoft"). Slashdot hardly discloses this relationship, nor does it bother to highlight the fact that Microsoft employment is a choice, not a condition (nobody is born a Microsoft employee). The messenger actually chose to work for the criminal organisation, but now he pretends that the crimes have absolutely nothing to do with him. He is trying to portray disdain for crime as a psychological issue of some kind and to also pretend Microsoft has changed while it's clear that it did not.

This is a typical Microsoft tactic and Slashdot should be ashamed of itself for pushing this agenda. "Dice publishing shills," iophk wrote about it, "quite shameless" (here is the alternative link he sent).

The Microsoft spinner says: "I think that Microsoft is very aware of perceptions and is actively trying to counter them by actually being open. I'd say we're more concerned than a Google or Apple about how folks perceive us."

Nonsense. Marketing. His closing words are: "I said, find a new reason to hate Microsoft. I didn't kill your Pappy, son."

What utter nonsense. He uses projection from collective to personal in an attempt to cleanse his employer from liability for crimes.

"Scott Hanselman disagrees," Mr. Robert Pogson responds. "He claims we should forget history."

It's not just history, it's the present too, including bribes, racketeering, etc.

To quote further from Pogson: "Bill Gates offered to pay Intuit to ship IE instead of Netscape. That’s not a business deal. That’s a criminal conspiracy to drive Netscape out of business. That’s what Bill Gates is all about, harming others going about their businesses. He’s still in charge last time I checked."

Lastly, here is where Pogson addresses the deception pattern which is to equate choice with a condition: "Hatred like any mind-set can be rational or irrational. We are right to hate the dog chewing on the kid. We take brisk action to deal with that evil. We are wrong to hate someone for something they can’t help like skin colour, genes, or their ancestral home. There’s nothing anyone can or should do about things like that. Microsoft? It’s definitely in the rational hatred category. M$ is out to get us. It has been from early on in its existence and it’s still run by the same people. Some have changed. But Gates and Ballmer are still around. They are evil people trying to harm us all by supporting and exploiting monopoly to do unspeakable things in IT, meddling with the business of software development, manufacturing, retailing, end-users to enrich itself at the expense of everyone else. Proper businesses serve customers, not enslave them."

Nobody hates Microsoft staff for racial reasons, but it's easy for Microsoft to try and spin it like that, especially with its new CEO (we covered this before and predicated this move last year). People hate the choice to commit crimes and the choice to join criminals.

Slashdot could not defend the editorial choice by saying it's newsworthy. It's not news, it's not noteworthy, and there is a conflict of interest here. ⬆