Since it doesn't say it in the article, the human rights they're referring to is that Microsoft was caught providing Azure services to the Israeli army's unit 8200, which used them to surveil millions of hours of Palestinian calls.
Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Palantir are all providing cloud and AI services to Israel which it uses it the genocide in Gaza and the continued military occupation of Palestine.
Yes, let’s go after US Steel because some guy with a gun shot up a school.
Unless Microsoft is directly supplying the software which surveils instead of just “general purpose compute” this isn’t as big as Norway would want you to believe. They can just terminate the accounts as violations of terms of service and claim that millions of users use azure cloud to serve websites and content, the dance will go on.
I don’t think punishing the steel maker for a gun maker who sold it to a distributor who then sold it to a nut job should be liable for the nut job. This is the same for tech. Sub contractors for Israel government got Azure hosting and subbed it out to Palantir to plant their platform inside (gun maker) and then sold it to Israel (nut job).
Palantir on the other hand…
tsimionescu•18m ago
Sure, who could blame companies exporting steel to Nazi Germany! Surely some of that steel was going into building hospitals and civilian infrastructure, why focus on the but that were going to a spot of genocide and senseless war!
akho•8m ago
That's the yardstick people use to measure Sweden, yes. Similarly applicable here.
Scarblac•11m ago
The Norway wealth fund is a co owner of Microsoft, like everyone with shares. Google says they own 1.35%, worth 50 billion.
If they want Microsoft not to provide "general compute" to the Israeli army then they can try to get a majority of Microsft owners to go along with it.
I think that's not the same as pressure on Microsoft from the outside.
nmridul•11m ago
Yes, its general purpose compute. But if you or me use Azure for illegal purpose (pirated content, tax evasion, violence etc etc..), for sure Microsoft won't be sitting idle.
beanjuiceII•9m ago
providing compute to someone online radicals happen to not like is not an illegal purpose
umanwizard•7m ago
Norway's sovereign wealth fund are not "online radicals", and many genocide scholars, UN bodies, etc. have also found that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians.
If you want to dispute that claim, fine; reasonable people can disagree about the definition of "genocide" and about what standard of proof is necessary. However, reducing the opposing opinion to "online radicals" is inaccurate.
saubeidl•6m ago
What about providing compute to a criminal with an arrest warrant by the ICJ?
pbiggar•10m ago
It's relevant because Microsoft, like all big companies, have Human Rights Pricinples and such that are part of the company. It's basically impossible to get big institutional investment without it.
The issue is that they were caught not following their practices, and then lying about it. So the shareholders are asking that they produce a report about whether they are following their own human rights principles.
And Satya is resisting it, because it is very clear that they are not following them, as workers [1] have been calling out for years now. Many leaked documents have shown that Microsoft actually embeds employees directly with the IDF and makes millions in service contracts with them. [2]
For anyone that is still green on company politics, all company principles are check boxes that form part of an HR circus of yearly compliance trainings, and marketing for young employees that are naive enough to think they mean anything.
saagarjha•9m ago
> Unless Microsoft is directly supplying the software which surveils instead of just “general purpose compute” this isn’t as big as Norway would want you to believe. They can just terminate the accounts as violations of terms of service
Actually we should as well, given the shady deals some of them make with politicians, which create a set of cascading events that end up in school shootings as if they were good old saloon fights.
pappaguter•24m ago
Being spoiled by inherited fortunes enables all sorts of erroneous moral superiority attitudes.
grafmax•22m ago
Where moral superiority means condemning genocide.
It’s to appease part of the political spectrum in the country. Which, fair enough as it’s a sovereign wealth fund. It won’t actually produce any real outcome. Just a Potemkin show to keep the wing-nuts sated.
pbiggar•29m ago
Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Palantir are all providing cloud and AI services to Israel which it uses it the genocide in Gaza and the continued military occupation of Palestine.
- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/09/microsoft...
- https://www.972mag.com/microsoft-8200-intelligence-surveilla...
- https://afsc.org/newsroom/unprecedented-investor-action-dema...
- https://countercurrents.org/2025/11/microsoft-ignites-protes...
reactordev•22m ago
Unless Microsoft is directly supplying the software which surveils instead of just “general purpose compute” this isn’t as big as Norway would want you to believe. They can just terminate the accounts as violations of terms of service and claim that millions of users use azure cloud to serve websites and content, the dance will go on.
I don’t think punishing the steel maker for a gun maker who sold it to a distributor who then sold it to a nut job should be liable for the nut job. This is the same for tech. Sub contractors for Israel government got Azure hosting and subbed it out to Palantir to plant their platform inside (gun maker) and then sold it to Israel (nut job).
Palantir on the other hand…
tsimionescu•18m ago
akho•8m ago
Scarblac•11m ago
If they want Microsoft not to provide "general compute" to the Israeli army then they can try to get a majority of Microsft owners to go along with it.
I think that's not the same as pressure on Microsoft from the outside.
nmridul•11m ago
beanjuiceII•9m ago
umanwizard•7m ago
If you want to dispute that claim, fine; reasonable people can disagree about the definition of "genocide" and about what standard of proof is necessary. However, reducing the opposing opinion to "online radicals" is inaccurate.
saubeidl•6m ago
pbiggar•10m ago
The issue is that they were caught not following their practices, and then lying about it. So the shareholders are asking that they produce a report about whether they are following their own human rights principles.
And Satya is resisting it, because it is very clear that they are not following them, as workers [1] have been calling out for years now. Many leaked documents have shown that Microsoft actually embeds employees directly with the IDF and makes millions in service contracts with them. [2]
[1] https://noazureforapartheid.com/ [2] https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/microsoft-azure-israel-top-cu...
pjmlp•3m ago
saagarjha•9m ago
They did: https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2025/09/25/update-...
pjmlp•6m ago