A BBC investigation reveals that Microsoft is permanently banning Palestinians in the U.S. and other countries who use Skype to call relatives in Gaza.

  • SleezyDizasta@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    This is a pretty misleading article. They cite the BBC “investigation” as a source, but if you go to the BBC article you’ll quickly see it’s not an investigation or anything near that. It’s just a reporting of the anecdotes of 3 individuals who happen to be Palestinians living abroad. You can’t establish any type of conclusions on a sample size that small.

    This isn’t a study, it’s not a survey, it’s not a poll, it doesn’t prove that Microsoft is intentionally making these bans, it doesn’t track down the actual reasons for the bans, or anything really. The BBC article is fine for what it is, just a reporting of a mildly interesting event, but this windoscentral article is just bad bait.

    • cecinestpasunbot@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      It’s not misleading. It’s reporting on the BBC article as it was originally published.

      https://archive.is/8Aefo

      The BBC article was subsequently edited down to remove key information while no comment or retraction was made. This isn’t surprising as many journalist who work for the BBC have accused their editors of bias.

      https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/23/as-israel-pounds-gaza-bbc-journalists-accuse-broadcaster-of-bias

      This is why media literacy is important. If you knew how media outlets operate it would be easy to figure out what happened in this case.

      • ComicalMayhem@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        wait so you’re telling me in addition to checking the cited material, I have to now check if the cited material was edited? no one fuckin told me that what the hell

      • SleezyDizasta@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        While that is a good catch, the only two differences between the original article and the edited one is that they removed the statement where they mentioned they’ve spoken to 20 Palestinians living abroad and added a little paragraph that mentions the number of causalities that were caused by the war. The contents of the article are still largely the same. The original article still isn’t an investigation like the windowscentral article claims. It’s just a reporting of the experiences of the 20 or so individuals they’ve spoken to, where again, only 3 individuals are highlighted. I don’t see anything wrong with the BBC article, my issue is with the way that windowscentral framed the BBC article.

        Also for the record, while the BBC has it’s biases, Al Jazeera is a Qatari state owned propaganda outlet. They’re not credible on most things, but especially when it comes to anything relating to the middle east. Take anything they say with a tub of salt.