Five Microsoft employees were removed during a company town hall meeting after staging a protest against the company’s contracts supplying Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud computing services to the Israeli occupation military.
The demonstration took place on Monday, following an Associated Press (AP) investigation that revealed Microsoft and OpenAI’s advanced AI models had been utilised by the Israeli occupation military to select bombing targets in recent attacks against Gaza and Lebanon.
Microsoft: has town hall
Also Microsoft: “approved opinions only!”
Company Town Halls are “we listen to you” theatre.
Modern large companies behave towards their employees the same way they behave towards their customers: they use marketing to influence them into doing what’s best for the C-suite, the Board and (usually) shareholders.
In Tech specifically this kind of crap has been common since the 90s even in Startups (as part of the “pay them with hope, sense of belonging and pride rather than money” technique), though the big Tech companies are the most extreme in this kind of stuff.
At most large companies, this isn’t too uncommon. Town Halls are not the same as town halls elected officials might stage.
I think that should be expected given the governing structure of almost all large companies, because they’re dictatorships. Employees have no say over who’s in leadership, and can be fired more or less without recourse. You wouldn’t expect a town hall in Russia or North Korea to allow dissent, would you?
100% correct.
When you work for a corporation, you are working for a dictatorship. You have the power to choose which dictatorship you’d like to work for, but you only have whatever power they let you have.
Power that can be snatched away any time of their choosing.