Bonum Certa Men Certa

When Only Rich and Powerful Corporations Can Use Slurs and Hurt Marginalised/Vulnerable People

Video download link | md5sum f176ffa5f062021e42d31888319061b7 Dinosaur of a Company Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0



Summary: The privileged people who insist they're supporting inclusion and diversity -- to the point of collectively slandering or concern-trolling the Free software community -- are probably the biggest and worst offenders if not the sole culprits; today we focus on IBM and show how some of the same offenders ended up in Microsoft and the so-called 'Linux' Foundation

On March 16, 2023 (i.e. exactly 13 months from now) Richard Stallman will turn 70. IBM as a company and pertinent workers of IBM (like Hashman) ran a smear campaign against him, based partly on libellous characterisations. Maybe they want to force him to 'retire' already, leaving IBM workers in charge.



"We've been seeing discussions to that effect in layoffs-centered forums and we occasionally see reports about court disputes over age-related discrimination."In any event, there's some new and very damaging material from (right from the horse's mouth) and about IBM [1-6], revealing a culture of ageism (since they fancy "isms" so much, why not turn that back on them?) and messages which not only are certain to impede recruitment efforts but also motivate some existing workers to resign. We've been seeing discussions to that effect in layoffs-centered forums and we occasionally see reports about court disputes over age-related discrimination.

Perlow at MicrosoftA lot more could be said which isn't covered in the video above. Does IBM plan to retain "young" Red Hat staff with derogatory terms? Everyone ages. All of those IBM-led fake "woke" campaigns (like eradication of supposedly racist terms) are ruined by revelations like these; this will render the company broke, not woke. Because IBM is not woke, it's the opposite of it, based on the company's long history. Putting aside the connotations of words like "dinobabies" (combination of two negative-sounding terms), the general strategy of discrimination is incredibly harmful to the company's public messaging. The company insists that the term "master" (like name of a branch in Git) offends people, but calling old people "dinobabies" is OK? Which of these words is more offensive?

It is worth noting that Mr. Perlow from IBM (and later Microsoft; currently in Linux Foundation i.e. their front group, where he's chief communicator) compared Richard Stallman to a dinosaur (with a highly derogatory image made by his brother and published in ZDNet back in the days). Maybe he learned this slur during his time at IBM. We responded here and elsewhere. Here's a newly-taken screenshot:

Worked for IBM, then Microsoft, now a spokesperson, for Linux Foundation

Notice how he embedded the face of a person almost 60 years old in the body of a dinosaur (later he came to our IRC channel and told us his brother had produced that image).

"Notice how he embedded the face of a person almost 60 years old in the body of a dinosaur (later he came to our IRC channel and told us his brother had produced that image)."Very mature, eh? Very professional! That's how you net a top job at Zemlin's PAC, the Linux Foundation, which tells us that it's all about inclusion and diversity. Watch how the Linux Foundation's spokesperson speaks of people almost 20 years his senior.

So we now know that at IBM "dinobaby" is basically "snowflake" (right-wing slur) with ageism added on top. Not too shocking that such a racist, sexist company would resort to this internally; at least we can see the pattern. If IBM does not hire old people because they're a "burden", one might go further with analogies, recalling that IBM profited from helping Germany remove the "burden on society".

In terms of standards, they're inconsistently or selectively applied inside IBM, a company which champions/celebrates its very own "dinobabies" (calling whole product lines after them), even if they're the "very fine people" who literally saluted Hitler -- a fact they can only try to hide by aggressive censorship online. _________



  1. Making ‘Dinobabies’ Extinct: IBM’s Push for a Younger Work Force

    A trove of previously sealed documents made public by a Federal District Court on Friday show executives discussing plans to phase out older employees and bemoaning the company’s relatively low percentage of millennials.

    The documents, which emerged from a lawsuit contending that IBM engaged in a yearslong effort to shift the age composition of its work force, appear to provide the first public piece of direct evidence about the role of the company’s leadership in the effort.

  2. IBM executives called older workers 'dinobabies' who should be 'extinct' in internal emails released in age-discrimination lawsuit

    Internal emails show IBM executives calling older workers "dinobabies" and discussing plans to make them "an extinct species," according to a Friday filing in an ongoing age-discrimination lawsuit against the company.

    The documents were submitted as evidence of IBM's efforts "to oust older employees from its workforce," and replace them with millennial workers, the plaintiff alleged. It's the latest development in a legal battle that first began in 2018, when former employees sued IBM after the company fired tens of thousands of workers over 40 years old.

  3. IBM emails show millennial workers favored over ‘Dinobabies’

    IBM executives discussed in emails how to force out older workers and derided them as “Dinobabies” who should be made an “Extinct species,” according to a court filing in an age discrimination case against the company.

    The communications show “highly incriminating animus” against older employees by officials who at the time were in the company’s “highest ranks,” according to the filing Friday.

    The partially redacted filing says the emails surfaced in separate arbitration proceedings but it doesn’t reveal the identities of the company officials or indicate when they were speaking. A judge has ordered the release of versions of the underlying documents.

  4. IBM 'dinobabies': Internal documents show executives discussed plans to make older workers an 'extinct species'

    Shannon Liss-Riordan, a renowned employment lawyer who has represented employees in disputes against Amazon, Google, and Uber, then filed a class-action complaint on behalf of three former IBM employees in federal court in Manhattan, alleging that that tech giant discriminated against them based on their age when it fired them.

    According to Bloomberg, a court document in the case, unsealed last week, showed that senior IBM officials were directly involved in conversations about the need to shrink the company's older staff population, sometimes referring to them using terms like "dinobabies."

    As per the filing, IBM executives expressed dissatisfaction over the fact that the company had a smaller percentage of millennials in its staff than a rival firm, and said that the situation would change following the lay-offs.

  5. IBM emails show millennial workers favored over ‘dinobabies’

    The case is Lohnn v. International Business Machines Corp., 21-cv-06379, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.



  6. IBM looked to reinvigorate its ‘dated maternal workforce’
    Newly released documents in a lawsuit alleging IBM discriminated against older workers reveal that Big Blue wanted to “correct” its “seniority mix” by weeding out older workers it labelled “dinobabies.”

    A document unsealed last Friday in the case file of Lohnn vs International Business Machines discloses evidence gathered by the plaintiff in which a person whose identity is redacted applauds “use of the disparaging term ‘Dinobabies’ to describe older IBM employees, as well as his plan for how to oust them from IBM’s workforce, stating his intent to ‘accelerate change by inviting the dinobabies (new species) to leave’ and make them an Extinct Species’.”

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: Brian Fagioli, Google News, and Other LLM Slopfarms
Why does Google News keep promoting these fake articles?
Links 29/10/2025: Amazon Kept "Data Center Water Use Secret", "Abuse of Power" Against Media
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/10/2025: "My Hardware Specs" and "Goodbye Debian…"
Links for the day
EPO Cocainegate: Feedback and Clarifications
Part III will come out soon
Links 29/10/2025: "US Military Is Destroying the Planet Beyond Imagination" and Boat Strikes Deemed Unlawful
Links for the day
Quality Comes First (Techrights Search)
It's generally working already, but we wish to polish it some more
Techrights Party Countdown
Late next week we'll be holding a party near our home
European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing
"edited / censored some time more recently"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News
It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems
Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women
How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?
That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information
One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap
Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance
we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery"
Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth
This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money"
Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete