taipan

joined 10 months ago
[–] taipan@lemmy.world 47 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

They're referencing what the second protester (Vaniya Agrawal) mentioned in her email:

Know that Microsoft’s human rights statement prohibits retaliation against anyone who raises a human rights-related concern: Human rights statement | Microsoft CSR

The Microsoft Global Human Rights Statement has a "Foundational principles" section that says:

Our commitment to human rights defenders: Our commitment to respecting and advancing human rights includes respect and support for the work of human rights defenders around the world. Human rights defenders are people who, individually or with others, engage in activities and advocacy that contribute to the protection of human rights and the rule of law, good governance, tolerance, and diversity and inclusion. Human rights defenders face persistent physical, social, economic, and psychological threats. Microsoft does not tolerate threats, intimidation, retaliation, physical, legal or cyber-attacks against human rights defenders. This commitment extends to all human rights defenders, including those working on issues related to Microsoft and those exercising their rights of freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly, including to challenge or protest aspects of our own business.

Microsoft is clearly declining to fulfill its commitment as it is written in its statement.

[–] taipan@lemmy.world 19 points 3 weeks ago

Exactly. Some of these vigilantes are using this act as a cover to conduct violence against LGBT people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_grooming_conspiracy_theory

[–] taipan@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The difference between Wikipedia and Facebook is that Wikipedia content is under a Creative Commons license which allows the entire encyclopedia to be forked and the underlying software (MediaWiki) is free and open source. The entire Wikipedia database is continuously mirrored to servers in countries outside of the US, so Wikipedia can be resurrected in any other country if the situation you describe happens. In contrast, any Facebook content would be lost due to adverse government action.

Asking people to stop using Wikipedia is like asking people to stop using Linux because the Linux Kernel Organization is based in the US (California), despite Windows and macOS also being US-based. There's no comparable non-US alternative to either Wikipedia or Linux, and the projects can be forked to different countries by their contributors without any action from the projects' managing organizations. If you boycott Wikipedia, you also play into the hands of Elon Musk and other agitators who are attacking Wikipedia in an effort to redirect the public to right-wing US media sources.

Finally, part of my point was that Britannica is not an improvement over Wikipedia, because Britannica is also US-based. This is the reason I mentioned that Wikipedia editors are mostly from outside the US.