I am tired of a social equilibrium where the default state of things is that companies or governments will do ridiculous, abhorrent things and then maybe if there is a loud enough backlash or protest they might revert some of it.

Like this results in just complete DDOS of the backlash / protest system.

And maybe that's what they are hoping for.

Most people on here share this sentiment and endorse the exact laissez faire economic dogma that gave us a world run by corporations in the first place.

And let’s be clear: “big government” talk is meaningless squabble. The corporate order loves having a big government who protects it. What we need is a government (of any size) who works for the people.

What they really need to do to this counterproductivity tool is remove the ability for managers to see anything about any of their underlings, and for anyone else to see anything but aggregated and anonymized data. (Which means adding noise to the data.)

That sounds like exactly what they did? (only company-wide averages, adding noise is not really needed)

"Like any corporation, Microsoft would like to be the first to admit that we messed up our communication regarding this feature and are deeply sorry that we have been caught. To show our commitment to change, we're immediately announcing a largely meaningless marketing and PR gesture that we hope will allow us to continue with business as usual.

We hope that you will continue to consider Microsoft for your workplace surveillance needs."

Removed or not, they can figure out this data. Organize your career so that you’re too important for a “productivity score” to matter.

Anyone know how many of these “features” are _already_ provided in Google GSuite/Workspace?

numerical reductionism strikes again...