That’s the main reason why you don’t save data to one drive, unless you have at least one local backup.
And if you put anything on one drive, you better just put an encrypted backup there. No plain data.
Microsoft did a crap thing, but regardless of the reason the data went away, their customers should all have had disaster recovery strategies and robust backups. The more precious the data, the more important it is to have robust backups.
I still feel for those affected, as I have lost data to my own mistakes in the past.
The Quiet Decision Microsoft Quietly Made That Quietly Devastated Thousands of Quiet Nonprofits. Quietly.
The real headline:
Over 170,000 Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?
Not sure if Slate is A/B testing or if OP clickbait-ified the post title
Maybe it should read “170,000 nonprofits having to invoke their data restoration strategies and now in the market for ethical cloud providers, after Microsoft predictably lets them down”.
Checked the source code, looks like we’re dealing with three different titles here:
<title>Microsoft made a quiet change to a popular software grant. Small nonprofits lost everything.</title> <meta property="og:title" content="The Quiet Decision Microsoft Made That Devastated Thousands of Nonprofits" /> <h1 itemprop="headline" class="article__hed article__hed--" >Over 170,000 Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?</h1>I took the title lemmy suggested after I pasted the URL into the Create Post page.
Clickbait title, downvoted.
How is it a clickbait title?
Instead of stating the obvious that microsoft deleted data, it’s hiding it in a mysterious “decision”. Making user click through it to find out what they actually did.
I suppose that’s fair. I’m so desensitized that this doesn’t seem as bad by comparison; but I don’t want to discourage anyone from calling it out. My educated guess from when I first read the title turned out to be right, so it didn’t register that way for me initially. But you’re right, in the end. It’s a massive problem right now, it’s hard to get away from it enough as a consumer.
It’s a hard one. Because i also dislike Microsoft for what they did and want to upvote for visibility.
Make a report. IMO all news articles should have the original title as the post title.
It’s hard to feel sorry for these non profits even if it the data loss is a tragedy. It’s been years of people screaming that this kind of shit could happen. That not accepting the pain of early adoption of open source software would lead to the extreme pain of being locked out arbitrarily.
Victim blaming is an ugly color on anyone.
Victim blaming is ugly when someone is actually a victim. Ignoring everyones warnings and having your data deleted by Microslop is absolutely your own fault.
It’s like still being on Facebook and being surprised that you’re more and more depressed. That person isn’t a victim of anything other than their own ignorance.
The more I think about it the less I see them as victims, and more as irresponsible with important data.
This is so devastating to hear about. I feel for these companies, a loss like this hits so hard and can be so, so hard to recover from.
Microsoft deserves all of the shitty PR for this shit.
This should also be a gentle lesson about not leaving all of your eggs in one basket, especially if it’s a free product.
so does LibreOffice bring Microsoft more users or Microsoft bring LibreOffice more users?
Microsoft is the one bringing more user to LibreOffice, which is confused because it didn’t even do anything to attract more people
rhetorical question. i was making a point that the meme goes both ways.
Switch microslop and libreoffice
This is more about cloud storage than anything else though
You actually need to have your own servers or actively use multiple platforms as well as backup your data. No platform is forever and some are only there at a whim. Google has a bad habit of unpredictably locking up your data too.
I just found out yhat you can’t trust Microsoft because they’re evil fucks! Pass the word!
I’ve been doing that for the past 35 years already.
Once upon a time IBM was the evil empire and Microsoft were the good guys. Remember, there’s no BM like IBM.
Almost 30 years here! I went from people around me at work knowing there were alternatives to people being shocked…SHOCKED…I could “do computers” without Windows or MacOS. What a whirlwind it’s been…sigh.
Used to be able to buy PCs running Xenix, with Lotus and vi. Who really needed anything more?
I’ll take The Noisy Decisions RMS and Linus Torvalds Made That Devastated Microsoft for all the marbles, Alex.
I’m increasingly convinced that “The Cloud” is just a scam. Just keep your own files.
But the cloud is buying up all the memory and storage
It’s been happening as long as the internet has existed. Most of us learned this lesson earlier in life when we lost files to geocities/homestead/imgbucket going belly up
I never have and never will trust “the cloud”. If someone else is holding your data, it is no longer your data.
I pay for someone else to hold an encrypted backup of some data. The living data is in my server, they’re just one of the backups in case there’s a fire at my house or something. I pay because I expect legal liability from them to hold my data safely, no freemium shenanigans. And I encrypt because no one can be trusted not to mine my info for AI or sell my shit to a shady third party for profit.
I get a discount on OneDrive, making it the cheapest storage I can get, and it acts like this for me. Unfortunately the interface between Linux and OD leaves much to be desired.
Always has been. Bait and switch etc.
For specificity, and to be fair to small-fry private cloud vendors, there’s nothing inherently scammy about offering remote IT infrastructure for rent.
But it absolutely applies to the large hyperscaler cloud providers like MS, simply because enshittification is plan A, the optimal and preferred end game for any product described as a “platform.”
Why:
Platforms rely on network effects, the standout feature of which is that user acquisition directly scales platform valuation, customer retention, and competitive advantage all at the same time.Once that market dominance is sufficient, you can squeeze customers with relative impunity, because your original competitors either went under or are too far behind to be a threat.
The rainmaking phase of enshittification is why VCs are willing to dump so much money into bootstrapping startups (to hasten their market dominance). It’s why many products and services everyone pays for now were once sold at a loss or even offered free of charge. And it’s why shareholders will keep shares of unprofitable companies for years or even decades.
Enshittification is the ultimate payoff of the platform model/scheme and has been from the beginning.
Sure, this small and mid-size services are just fine for backing up your data, and should surely be used as such. But using “cloud services” is nonsense. Too bad it has such good marketing.
So good i literally had a fucking CEO ask me “well what about this cloud thing?? Should we get rid of our citrix and use that??”
No, the cloud is just someone else’s computer.
No,the cloud is just someone else’s computer.FTFY
They are not mutually exclusive.
It’s someone else’s scam?
Somone scam computer?
computer scam someone?
Someone else scamputer
Scamelse puter someone
Is Microsoft to Blame?
No, the people using any of its products. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Please dont do any politics in your life governing consumer protection.
I’m all for consumer protection, but we’re talking about a US-company that also made many of the dumbest decisions since win1.0. Come on, it’s 2026, if anyone still does not get it why to avoid monopolies, especially those US-american, then who shall help those?
Crushing majority of people have no idea. They just know MS is a big tech corp, so probably not caring much about them small fish. For the rest, all PC are Windows. Linux is getting known a little better but we’re not “there” yet.
Also, most small non-profit don’t have an IT guy. They just try to get something that works painlessly and have better to do than becoming sys admins.
You’re right in all points. But still, knowledge is free and out there. MS is here for a long time now. And honestly, if I’m using things without knowing anything about them, who is to blame? Am I not simply ignorant?
If I just walk into traffic, being ignorant of cars that might exist, and get run over. Would it be fair and square to protect ignorant me by prohibiting cars? Or that road?
Consumer-protection is very important, and I’m a great advocate for it. But can’t we just assume a tiny amount of reflection? We should protect people from e.g. connected cars, rising prices and whatnot. But If I’d hire a murderer from murder-r-us to mow my lawn, and he kills me. Is it really his fault? How could I have known?
I think there’s a certain threshold between not-having-to-know (e.g. relative prices on supermarket’s price-tags for easy comparison) and should-be-obvious (e.g. monopolies are never a good thing and never have your interest at heart).
have better to do than becoming sys admins.
Exactly! That’s why I go to a mechanic with my car and listen to his advice, as I have zero clue about how that car even works. And it’s also obvious I don’t install anything myself or just buy brand X because “everyone does”. I ask professionals.i don’t decide, I delegate.
That’s why I go to a mechanic with my car and listen to his advice, as I have zero clue about how that car even works.
What happened to “knowledge is free and out there”?
And honestly, if I’m using things without knowing anything about them, who is to blame? Am I not simply ignorant?
People don’t learn about linux for the same reason you don’t learn about your car.
Professional help costs a money that these non-profit often don’t have.
Peers help is often also unhelpful and misleading. You can assume that among these non-profit using that service, a lot of them subscribed based on advices from other users.No you don’t see people walking in the middle of the street oblivious to the traffic. But if “common knowledge” was cars never hit anyone, you would see people doing it.
MS not only knows that, but they wanted that situation, making their products incompatible with their own standards in order to let people believe that “nothing else works correctly”.
Now they have it. They should be hold fully responsible for what they claimed, offered and therefore deleted.
You don’t blame victims of elaborate scams for being victims.
I have zero respect or empathy left for people that still rely on corporate *sswipes and their ridiculous products if alternatives are there. I mean, how can anyone be surprised by anything these psychopath corporate super-organisms do - they are literally psychopath entities that seeks destruction of others while growing themselves - no remorse. I guess these ‘non-profits’ were run by people who lived in a market-religion, went to business school, and bought ties - idiots… just a guess oc…
“Ronald Khosla, a former vegetable farmer and tech entrepreneur, keeps things simple at his nonprofit: He’s the co-founder, president, and head of IT for Canopy, a modest venture firm…”
So, he was a business c*nt, with a stupid/ignorant mindset, and a pet ‘non-profit’ project to give him a nice public image. F’ him and others like him for not understanding why tf ‘non-profit’ is here at all ! Their stupidity/ignorance and continued support for/trust in for-profit corps and that whole system, hurt everyone…
Blaming consumers is never going to get you anywhere. I understand the sentiment, but we’re kind of self-selecting here: if you’re a Lemmy user, fine, you probably know better than to use Microsoft products. But try to think about that older person down the street who has only ever used Windows, or that random small business that built their whole infrastructure on MS products in the early 2000s. They’ve probably never heard of Linux, and that’s not their fault. Almost nothing you say will get them to switch operating systems or word processors. And why should they have to? It’s the corporations limiting user options and locking them in to shitty/scammy products, not the consumers who just want a computer that works.
And yes I’m a Linux user, but that’s the point, I’m tech literate, while most lifelong Microslop users won’t have the ability to switch easily, and might not even know they’re locked in.
Empathy is easy, I recommend re-upping your supply and rethinking who is actually to blame for corporate chicanery.
Sounds like a bug brush toward profit and Microsoft had the usual shit communication and execution.
More to the point though, this is the fundamental lesson many people who say they went to business school or are IT experts are apparently now learning; if it’s not free and open source you can’t depend on it staying that way and the last 10 years has been a sprint to enshittify. Why someone in IT would base their entire storage and archive practice on the assumption a paid service or grant will remain free through grants, when there is no money to go around to pivot the org is naive at best. I see these as the same type who will rail against inequality, fascism, etc. and then be on Twitter and Facebook. The nobler aspects of man cannot coexist alongside boundless greed and fascism. Move early or be prepared to “be shocked” when structural inevitability comes.
Libre Office and countless other options are out there, just waiting to be adopted. The cells have been made very comfortable by our jailers, but the keys are right there if you want freedom.
Generally hasn’t been IT making these decisions. Same as cloud fundamentally just meaning offsite storage someone else owns. The PR push about how it somehow is not that was/is massive.
The momentum of cross functionality is also massive. There exist many programs and websites that do not accept non-microslop files.
Yup, as a sr sysadmin I fought hard against moving our servers to the cloud. But the company never actually listened to IT about IT things.
Management is obsessed with the cloud and “serverless”, because it’s cheaper short-term, and they don’t have to care about eventualities like hardware breaking.
Long-term, it would be far cheaper and way more secure to host locally, especially for data storage.
But we all know long-term thinking is something that management can’t do. And of course, the PR doesn’t help at all.
