As Expected, Microsoft Uses Media Operative (Jordan Novet) to Downplay the Scale of Mass Layoffs
Microsoft got their favourite media mole to "break" the news: yes, it's Jordan Novet, as usual. Microsoft trots him out every time there's bad news it needs to twist for the media to then parrot as "truth". We covered many examples earlier this year and especially in 2023 and 2024. He's not some "ordinary" journalist; he has done this for Microsoft for many years. He's like a media operative of theirs, akin to Peter Bright. Microsoft 'feeds' them the material they publish to "seed" a false consensus or PR spin.
A few minutes ago he said (in the headline) "Microsoft is cutting 3% of all workers".
Well, those numbers are false and misleading, based on prior leaks. The real numbers are 5%+5%, i.e. 10%.
We already did some prebunking. We'll follow up soon with easy debunking
One might add that they already "flood the zone with ****" about the famous criminal and some unrelated old chaff [1, 2]. █
Update: And yet another Microsoft-controlled (sponsored [1, 2]) site now parrots the same misleading figures. It is from Todd Bishop, who burns Microsoft whistleblowers by ratting them out to Microsoft.
These are not random people; Microsoft uses them to seed false "information" (misinformation) for other sites to parrot as "the facts"
"GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop" does not cite any sources, so we know he got fed this false information directly from his controllers (Microsoft). He had direct contacts with the President, who spread many lies this year.
To be clear, this is not journalism but Microsoft-controlled sites and/or authors disguised as reporters to "manage perceptions" for the company and "set the scene", drowning out the noise with face-saving nonsense.
Update #2: We now see bots and slopfarms (LLM slop) spreading, replicating, amplifying and supposedly 'legitimising' the above lies, e.g. here.
Microsoft-controlled LLMs are likely to cause a storm of words to spread online; anyone with a critical eye (or views) will be lost in the noise they make on the Web.
Update #3: Now the Microsoft sites are parroting the above Microsoft operatives as credible sources, even though they're just Microsoft. So it's like Microsoft basically using itself as a citation to spread whatever narrative they're after (like blaming "AI" for an actual business failure, pretending people get replaced by slop).
It's too late [sic] to correct Microsoft, as it now controls the narrative though its operatives:
Microsoft citing Microsoft citing Microsoft...
"You want to infiltrate those. Again, there’s two categories. There’s those that are controlled by vendors; like MSJ; we control that. And there’s those that are independent. [...] So that’s how you use journals that we control. The ones that third parties control, like the WinTech Journal, you want to infiltrate."
--Microsoft's chief evangelist
Update #4: More mindless parroting, some of it automated by now [1, 2, 3, 4]:
Update #5: 15 minutes ago the Daily Mail said in the headline "US's biggest company to ax thousands of workers..." (that's false, the biggest US company is probably Walmart and even in tech alone Microsoft isn't biggest).
Notice who's cited:
Did they consider checking a source that's not the company itself, saving face?
More of the same below
