this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2025
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I'm not saying anything about this particular case, but this shows that Microsoft and other US tech giants have the power to politically disrupt or hurt a country, or in our case, a whole continent.

If the US/tech giants for whatever reason decide that Europe needs to be punished, they can hurt us really bad by just turning all our digital services down, which could potentially cause chaos depending on the scale.

Europe needs to start using European alternatives to American IT services!

Edit: Just to be clear - I'm not posting this to discuss the Israel/Palestine conflict, or whether what Microsoft did here was right or wrong. I'm trying to raise awareness of a potential dangerous dependancy of American tech, and am trying to promote European tech in a group called Buy European.

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[โ€“] maam@feddit.uk 17 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Do not use this community to promote Nationalism/Euronationalism.

Zionism falls under that rule. So no comments promoting Israel are allowed here.

[โ€“] DreasNil@feddit.nu 14 points 3 weeks ago

I'm slightly confused. I guess you're warning people to not promote Israel in this comment section? Just to be clear - I am not promoting Israel in my post. I am raising awareness of a potentially dangerous dependency of American tech.

[โ€“] Obituarykidney@lemmy.world 16 points 3 weeks ago

Can I please be blocked from their ai services too? I don't want it on my PC.

[โ€“] Kernal64@sh.itjust.works 11 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

A huge number of people have been boycotting and pressuring Microsoft to get them to do exactly this because Israel is using their platform to further their insane genocide. I haven't seen any resistance to this idea, but now you're saying this shouldn't happen? While I agree that everyone should reduce their reliance on American big tech, this specific case of MS finally listening to a large amount of their non-Isreali customers isn't the example to use to further this goal.

[โ€“] GreyShuck@feddit.uk 15 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

but now youโ€™re saying this shouldnโ€™t happen?

To be fair, the very first words that OP says are "Iโ€™m not saying anything about this particular case", and indeed they do not say anything about Israel after that.

Fuck Netanyahu's Israel. I really don't see that OP is saying anything to the contrary here.

[โ€“] DreasNil@feddit.nu 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Thank you for clarifying. As I tried to explain in my post, I'm not saying that what Microsoft is doing here is wrong. I'm saying that Microsoft, and other giant tech companies have a leverage on most countries that could become an issue for us in the future, if we don't start relying more on our own technology.

[โ€“] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

This is why I just stressed in another thread that "digital sovereignty" and national security both start and end with open source.

Democratic institutions can't be built on, and beholden to, for-profit entities; especially foreign ones.

You (me especially) might agree with Microsoft pulling support for genocide (I do not believe they'll stop supporting Israel, at all), but the Christian fascist USofA could just as easily use big tech to wage global warfare ... they 100% already are. I guarantee it.

[โ€“] DreasNil@feddit.nu 4 points 3 weeks ago

I totally agree with you. And I saw your post also ๐Ÿ˜Š

[โ€“] Kernal64@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

But then why mention it at all? It seems to me to send a contradictory message that we want these companies to listen to the will of the people, but also oh no, why did they do that. Sure, OP doesn't mention it again, but it is the basis for the entire post.

Netanyahu's Isreal is basically a regime of criminals committing atrocities, so anything that fucks them over, I'm down with. And to be clear, I'm not saying OP is supporting them in any way. It just seems like there should be better examples than this specific case where a company is doing what we've been demanding that we could use to get everyone away from reliance on American big tech.

Off the top of my head, Google's recent announcement that they're going to block sideloading apps that aren't approved by them, or if we wanna use MS, their whole Recall feature in Windows is a horrible invasion of privacy, and is why I just finished switching to Linux. Those would be far better topic starters for this discussion, IMO.

[โ€“] Tobberone@slrpnk.net 7 points 3 weeks ago

You are reading too far. The example OP is pointing to is "Microsoft has the power to disrupt the government of a sovereign country. There needs to be an alternative" anything after that is an example of something like that happening. Whether you, as the reader, agree with that action in that particular circumstance depends highly on what side of which border it happened and on what side of which border the reader lives.

[โ€“] DreasNil@feddit.nu 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

You're discussing an entirely different subject. Which is also a very important one.

Here's another interesting article on the subject that we're discussing in this post: https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-european-military-just-ditched-microsoft-for-open-source-libreoffice-heres-why/

[โ€“] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 3 points 3 weeks ago

Itโ€™s the principle.

[โ€“] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah it's a big problem... especially with Trump declaring everything under the sun as being a threat to the US and an emergency. And now that Microsoft has done this, he now knows it's possible to cut off other countries from IT services. He has a weapon he likely didn't know he had before now.

US companies will cave in to him without any hesitation so it doesn't really matter whether the US President has the authority to do this.

IT departments around the world need to diversify so they aren't dependent on US tech companies.

[โ€“] wewbull@feddit.uk 1 points 3 weeks ago

Lucky Israel!