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Microsoft is reportedly banning Palestinians in the U.S. for life for calling relatives in Gaza (www.windowscentral.com)

submitted 4 months ago by Linkerbaan@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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A BBC investigation reveals that Microsoft is permanently banning Palestinians in the U.S. and other countries who use Skype to call relatives in Gaza.

Reportedly, Microsoft has been banning and wiping the accounts of users who have leveraged Skype to contact relatives in Gaza. In some cases, email accounts over a decade old have been locked, destroying access to banking accounts, OneDrive storage, and beyond.

United States resident Salah Elsadi lost his account of over 15 years in the dragnet. "I've had this Hotmail for 15 years. They banned me for no reason, saying I have violated their terms — what terms? Tell me. I've filled out about 50 forms and called them many many times." Eiad Hametto from Saudi Arabia echoed the report, "We are civilians with no political background who just wanted to check on our families. They’ve suspended my email account that I’ve had for nearly 20 years. It was connected to all my work. They killed my life online."

Many of the users affected by the bans expressed that Microsoft may be falsely labelling them as Hamas

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[–] todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The UI is similar to Windows.

Which UI? Linux Mint comes in three flavors: Cinnamon, XFCE, and MATE.

Nobody has suggested a specific flavor, and those desktop environments vary quite a bit.

[–] Krzd@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

True, I meant cinnamon, which (IIRC) was the default/suggested to you when you went to the website.

[–] todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It isn't default or suggested. It says that it is the "most popular", but my point is that if you're making a beginner choose a desktop environment before they even install Linux, you're setting them up to be overwhelmed.

[–] oo1@lemmings.world 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

who are these adult humans who can't face choices? I don't really understand how or why they even chose their PC in the first place.

It sounds like such people will be a lot better off with android or mac, or windows or chromebook. If they want to do games get a console.

It's sort of like if a person has no enthusiasm for or interest in cars, they might be better off with a rental.

if you really want to make another version of something like chromeos for this audience, there is nothing stopping you. But the free/foss open source world is always going to have choices that bamboozle these people who can't look at the mint website and pick one, or just resolve to test all three.

[–] todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

It's not about being unable to face choices, it's that if you make beginners make choices about things they don't yet understand, they won't be able to make an informed decision, and they will feel overwhelmed.

I don't understand why people don't just recommend vanilla Ubuntu. It's popular, it's easy, pretty much every Linux Desktop troubleshooting article is written in the Context of Ubuntu. There's only one flavor of it, so you don't even have to learn what a Desktop Environment is until you're ready to get there.

If you want more Linux users, you need to lower the barriers to entry. If you gatekeep Linux by demanding that people already understand things like the differences between different DEs before they've even installed the OS for the first time, you can expect that people will keep using Windows.

Microsoft spends billions of marketing dollars pushing Windows. Linux doesn't have a marketing department, that's up to the community. We can't be marketing Linux as harder to use while Microsoft markets Windows as easier to use, not unless our goal is to boost Microsoft's profits.