Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft GitHub Exposé — Part VI — The Media Has Mischaracterised Nat Friedman's Departure (Effective Now)

Series parts:

  1. Microsoft GitHub Exposé — Part I — Inside a Den of Corruption and Misogynists
  2. Microsoft GitHub Exposé — Part II — The Campaign Against GPL Compliance and War on Copyleft Enforcement
  3. Microsoft GitHub Exposé — Part III — A Story of Plagiarism and Likely Securities Fraud
  4. Microsoft GitHub Exposé — Part IV — Mr. MobileCoin: From Mono to Plagiarism... and to Unprecedented GPL Violations at GitHub (Microsoft)
  5. Microsoft GitHub Exposé — Part V — Why Nat Friedman is Leaving GitHub
  6. YOU ARE HERE ☞ The Media Has Mischaracterised Nat Friedman's Departure (Effective Now)


GitHub: Where everything comes to die



Summary: We take another detour to discuss the poor state of journalism, which is mostly amplifying self-serving statements from corporations, without ever bothering to properly investigate the facts

BY THIS point we were hoping to already deal with corruption and misconduct, but two weeks ago Nat Friedman announced his impending "departure" as CEO (he had gotten the boot).

We think it's extremely important to get the facts right, seeing media revisionism such as this. Not only Microsoft sites did this; even some Microsoft-funded sites did the same, contributing to revisionism.

The Register says "Nat Friedman to quit this month," but he was compelled to leave, he did not quit. Techrights will show why... just be patient as this series will last months, not days/weeks. We have plenty of material.

On balance, The Register has become more harm than good, or more nonsense than information, especially on topics like Microsoft. Too much influence from Microsoft operatives (such as Microsoft Tim), which is likely related to why the founder of The Register left. He left in protest over the direction which the site had taken. Most mentions of Microsoft in The Register this past week can be described as brand boosting*, no matter what the context may be. At the same time they mostly ignore the biggest Microsoft scandals and crime.

Microsoft loves to take over publishers. It is very important if not imperative to understand what happened to The Register because Microsoft does the same to other publishers, sometimes through Bill Gates with his bribes disguised as "donations".

The Register is not yet as bad as ZDNet, but gradually it is getting there... much like Slashdot over a decade ago.

In Microsoft's own words [PDF]: "Mind Control: To control mental output you have to control mental input. Take control of the channels by which developers receive information, then they can only think about the things you tell them. Thus, you control mindshare!"

Of course The Register wasn't alone in perpetuating Microsoft's face-saving narrative (which gives Friedman a chance of finding a job elsewhere); for instance, SPAMnil’s site (propped up by the Linux Foundation for PR SPAM) repeats Microsoft's narrative: “Nat Friedman Steps Down As GitHub CEO”…

But real journalists should actually investigate (e.g. interview people) and know he was pushed out. Then, they should find out why and report on it. As we shall show later in the series, the so-called 'tech' media silenced/gagged/chose to gaslight women; that media basically protected abusive men from negative coverage... at a later stage/part of the series we'll name the sites that did this.

When the “media” isn’t about journalism and isn't employing actual journalists but a bunch of Microsoft mouthpieces and hacks (like SPAMnil, who lies for Microsoft) truth itself becomes “weird” and “contradictory”, whereas PR seems “legit”. Suddenly the actual facts get labeled a "conspiracy theory" and relegated/censored. Likewise, women who suffer abuse are portrayed as the aggressors and those who oppressed them are defended by sexist companies like Microsoft.

Thankfully, however, many people read our series because they want facts, not Microsoft's face-saving PR... in service of the financial agenda of GitHub.

"GitHub (Microsoft) wants us to think that everything is fine now and women are safe because Friedman is out (they got rid of this awful CEO, but that's not enough), yet GitHub is still not getting rid of the ICE contract."It's Nat Friedman's last day today, or contrariwise the first day of another CEO (he said "I am excited to announce that effective November 15th [...] GitHub’s Chief Product Officer, will become CEO and I will become Chairman Emeritus."), but don't worry, Mr. Friedman. We know what you did last summer and we have evidence.

GitHub (Microsoft) wants us to think that everything is fine now and women are safe because Friedman is out (they got rid of this awful CEO, but that's not enough), yet GitHub is still not getting rid of the ICE contract. Forcibly sterilising women? Fine! "Please stay with us while we participate in human rights abuses" is their implicit message. Back in the days they googlebombed the media with "Arctic Vault" to distract from what they had done for ICE. GitHub also bombarded the media with a bunch of fluff when its employees defended insurrection and fired opponents of the January 6th insurrection.

In the next part we'll get back to our normal publication schedule in this series. ______ * To give two recent examples, here's The Register promoting a misleading narrative which strangely enough omits the mention of Microsoft and Windows. It is a serious incident exclusive to Windows, but you would not know this is you read The Register. It generally 'feels' (we did not count, but we did an exhaustive survey of this past week's headlines) like 20% of 'articles' in The Register are about Microsoft and the majority of these can be classified as "spammy" PR.

Recent Techrights' Posts

People Used to Talk
If pets can live a measurably happy life without gadgets and "apps", why can't humans?
Rust is Starting to Seem More Like Microsoft-hosted "Digital Maoism", Not a Legitimate Effort to Improve Security
Maybe this is very innocent, but they seem to have taken a solid, stable program from a high-profile Frenchman and looked for ways to marry it with GitHub, i.e. Microsoft/NSA
 
Gemini Links 08/05/2025: Practical Gemini Use Case, Shutdown of the Blanket Fort Webring
Links for the day
Links 08/05/2025: "Slop Presidency", US Government Defunds Public Broadcasting
Links for the day
Lasse Fister, Organiser of Libre Graphics Meeting, Points Out the Code of Conduct is Likely Violated by the Same People Who Promote Codes of Conduct (and Then Bully Him Into Cancelling a Keynote)
I am starting to see Lasse Fister as another victim
LLM Slop Attacks Not Only Sites of Free Software Projects But Also Bug Reporting Systems (Time-wasting, in Effect "DDoS")
Microsoft, the leading purveyor and promoter of slop, is a cancer
The Richard Stallman (RMS) "European Tour" Carries on In Spite of the Nuremberg Incident
Some people spoke about how they saw yesterday's talk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 07, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 07, 2025
The CoC Means the Founder of GNU/Linux Cannot Talk and a 72-Year-Old Man With Cancer is Somehow a "Safety" Risk?
Those who don't like RMS are not forced to attend his talks
Gemini Links 07/05/2025: A Shopping Spree and Digital Gardening
Links for the day
Links 07/05/2025: Pegasus Guilty and a Path Towards EU Without Russian Energy
Links for the day
Outsourcing GNU/Linux to Microsoft GitHub Promoted by Microsoft LLM Slop and Army Officers
Something doesn't seem right
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part III: No More Media Lawsuits From Brett Wilson LLP This Year, One Can Only Guess Why
People leak a lot of material to Techrights because they know, based on the track record, that the sources will be protected and whatever gets published will stay online, in full, no matter how stubborn an effort (even lawsuits and blackmail) will be sent its way
Gemini Links 07/05/2025: Adopting GrapheneOS, Further Enshittification of Flickr
Links for the day
Links 07/05/2025: CISA Gutted, Debt-Saddled (Likely Insolvent) 'Open' 'AI' (Proprietary Slop) Faking Its Financial State Again
Links for the day
Finland, Lithuania, and Latvia Fortify Their Digital Border With GNU/Linux
This month's data from statCounter is particularly interesting near the Baltic Sea
The European Patent Office (EPO) Has a Very Profound Corruption Issue, Far More Urgent an Issue Than Pronouns
a rather long document
Richard Stallman Gives Public Talk at Technical University of Liberec, Czech Republic
"For programs that you could run, and for network services that could do your own computing, under what circumstances is it reasonable to trust them?"
Today We Turn 18.5
The eighteenth "and a half" anniversary
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 06, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 06, 2025
Microsoft Finally Admits That XBox is ****
In this case, "enshittification" is an understatement
Another Wave of Microsoft Layoffs Comes Shortly. Microsoft Propaganda Sites and Slopforms Powered by Microsoft LLMs Already Spew Out Face-Saving Nonsense.
Based on last month's leak, some very extensive layoffs are now imminent [...] Perhaps we can expect a lot of noise, some of it spewed out by bots, to distract from or belittle the impending mass layoffs
Ubuntu Becomes Microsoft GitHub, Based on Decision Made by British Army Officer
You're hopeless, Canonical
Slopwatch: Microsoft Slop, Anti-Linux Slop, and IBM Marketing Itself as a Slop Company
Microsoft-controlled LLM spewing out garbage about "Linux"
Links 06/05/2025: Microsoft's Assassination of Skype After Years of Failure, Slop Hallucinations Are Getting Worse
Links for the day
Links 06/05/2025: Changing Places and StarGrid for PalmOS
Links for the day
Windows and Microsoft Causing Serious Data Breaches, Media Rushes to Blame That on "Linux" Somehow
While selling us some rusty old propaganda about how moving to Microsoft GitHub (Rust) will improve security
Making Site Archives More Easily Accessible (Approaching 50,000 Blog Posts)
Efforts to censor us have always backfired badly
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part II: Hiding Behind Lawyers and Barristers Who Lack Standards so as to Engage in Classic Corporate Extortion
They're trying to scare people and they misuse their licence to operate
Links 06/05/2025: LLMs/Chatbots Attract More Scrutiny (Getting Worse Over Time), PwC Has Many Layoffs
Links for the day
Thanks for listening. How can this Morse feed be further improved?
Right now any and all feedback on the audio would be helpful
statCounter: Bing's Market Share Lower Right Now Than It Was When LLM Hype Began (With "Bing Chat")
If anybody gains at Google's expense in search, it is BRICS' alternatives such as Yandex
Gemini Links 06/05/2025: Failure and Proxmox Cluster
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 05, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, May 05, 2025