[artichokeheart]

Microsoft was never evil, well not any more evil than any other company. Microsoft was a monopoly. Given what they get away with with Windows 10 and 11 one could argue they still are or at least still act like they are.

[kobalsky]

Microsoft is beyond evil. The stuff they do in third world countries is like cold war CIA lite.

In Argentina, Microsoft bribed their way into having power of police.

If you are a company here, any day you can get a email from Microsoft compelling you to provide them an inventory of your software under the pain of being raided by the police to get audited if you don’t comply, or you just may get raided if they suspect you are using illegitimate copies of their software.

Yes, Microsoft can kick down your door and check your computers.

We are a software shop in a small city in Argentina and at some point we made a blip in their radar because we won a technology exporter award of our city.

Our prize was an email from Microsoft like I described before.

They didn’t get a dime because all our desktops and servers were Linux, but they did try. They had the gall of pitching Microsoft Teams in their threatening emails. It was surreal.

[fatfingerd]

Evil is malintent*capability so a company with monopoly over your entire hobby, profession and/or economy is going to score higher on evil even if a baby has more malintent.

[sneak]

Microsoft supplies software and services to organizations that run torture centers and concentration camps.

There is little wiggle room debate here.

[irfn]

Also Hanlon's razor