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Comment by u0124309 | Hacker News Reader

Of course it is. And from a user's perspective, I often hear people saying they are 'forced' to use it because their employers want them to, otherwise they risk being fired, but I have never understood how that behavior is considered legal, since it's literally coercing somebody to accept Microsoft's abusive privacy and service policies that explicitly state that unless agreed, their products can't be used.

I have never used Zoom or Teams in my life since I never agreed with their ToS&PP, and I've never been in a situation where my career would depend on it (I'm self-employed). When somebody asks me to join these, I nicely respond with that exact reason why I can't use them and propose using Jitsi Meet instead, and I have never experienced anybody rejecting it yet.

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> since it's literally coercing somebody to accept Microsoft's abusive privacy and service policies that explicitly state that unless agreed, their products can't be used.

As an employee, the company sets the conditions and tools to work there.

If communication is to happen on Microsoft Teams, and you refuse to use it, your future employment with them seems difficult. Same as if you refused to show up to meetings, or kept sound isolation headphones on at all times, including when your boss wanted to speak with you. Or you would never use a telephone.

When using enterprise tools, I expect the employer to have accepted the terms of use; most employees can't bind the employer.

I certainly prefer to avoid Microsoft communications tools, but if the work is interesting enough, I guess it's fine.

A lot of places claim things for "security" and violating them is grounds for firing because truthfully or not, they claim circumventing them is exposing data. We used to be able to choose our e-mail client as they had IMAP access. A few years ago they decided to only allow Microsoft's own protocol to enforce Outlook use and disabled IMAP access.

> since it's literally coercing somebody to accept Microsoft's abusive privacy and service policies that explicitly state that unless agreed, their products can't be used.

Sure, but the privacy and service policies are only applicable to your employer's data, it was never your data in the first place.

> I have never understood how that behavior is considered legal

You can't give employees veto power over software choices, an employer that can't choose which software platforms its employees use is not going to be viable.

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