This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Microsoft did a crap thing, but regardless of the reason the data went away, their customers should all have had disaster recovery strategies and robust backups. The more precious the data, the more important it is to have robust backups.
I still feel for those affected, as I have lost data to my own mistakes in the past.
That's the main reason why you don't save data to one drive, unless you have at least one local backup.
And if you put anything on one drive, you better just put an encrypted backup there. No plain data.
The real headline:
Over 170,000 Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?
Not sure if Slate is A/B testing or if OP clickbait-ified the post title
Checked the source code, looks like we're dealing with three different titles here:
<title>Microsoft made a quiet change to a popular software grant. Small nonprofits lost everything.</title>
<meta property="og:title" content="The Quiet Decision Microsoft Made That Devastated Thousands of Nonprofits" />
<h1 itemprop="headline" class="article__hed article__hed--" >Over 170,000 Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?</h1>
Maybe it should read "170,000 nonprofits having to invoke their data restoration strategies and now in the market for ethical cloud providers, after Microsoft predictably lets them down".
I took the title lemmy suggested after I pasted the URL into the Create Post page.
The Quiet Decision Microsoft Quietly Made That Quietly Devastated Thousands of Quiet Nonprofits. Quietly.
Khosla had seen Microsoft’s announcement last year that it was winding down its free nonprofit licenses beginning July 2025, but, per the record, he should have still been in the clear. He renewed Canopy’s yearly license last October, and Microsoft had emailed him to confirm he would retain access until Oct. 4, 2026. Khosla had no reason to expect anything would change, and he received no additional warnings—even as Microsoft kept in regular touch about other software updates. And he later learned he wasn’t alone, when another company service representative called the very next day and told him that roughly 171,000 small nongovernmental organizations “lost everything” in their OneDrive accounts.
In a statement emailed to Slate, Microsoft wrote that the original offers were “retired to streamline our grant offerings and simplify our grant portfolio,” adding, “We strongly advised our nonprofit customers and partners to transition to a different Microsoft 365 offer for nonprofits before their renewal date to avoid disruption and data loss.”
As an IT person I can't imagine just deleting customers' data one day without keeping an archival copy. This feels like a mistake, in which case they're being dishonest in order not to admit to their mistake. And if it wasn't a mistake, it's a sign that they aren't competent at understanding their customers, making plans, or communicating. Either way, it shows Microsoft is not a company you can have confidence doing business with.
Holy shit. I mean minus points for storing all your company's data in OneDrive and just kinda trusting Microsoft, but also, holy shit is that fucked up on Microsoft's part. Literally telling people "you're good till your subscription ends" and then surprising them with "jk, we deleted all your data."
And then this asinine corpo-speak response:
Microsoft wrote that the original offers were “retired to streamline our grant offerings and simplify our grant portfolio,” adding, “We strongly advised our nonprofit customers and partners to transition to a different Microsoft 365 offer for nonprofits before their renewal date to avoid disruption and data loss.”
No they fucking didn't!
I just have a regular home license and one day my one drive was empty. The one drive I've pulled everything out of and after windows updates everything would be back in there again. Microsoft basically said there was nothing that could be done to recover my data. I switched to Linux that day. Like I specifically removed my files and turned off one drive in multiple occasions. And they turn it back on and move the My Documents folder back with no warning breaking folder paths for games. Such a shit company.
I saw this on a few sysadmin posts, from what I saw and what people described I have a theory that it was an unexpected interaction.
Those with the deletion had a expiration date for the donation licenses past the July '26 deadline. That shouldn't have happened as far as I can tell from the notification email. We had some of these, but I think the difference was the presence of other licenses.
Those with only the 10 donations and none of the other free licenses, would have become unlicensed when they were removed. There is a cool off for deletions, but if the licence had the wrong expiration, then the deadline date might have been set from the original expiration. Due to the incorrect extension that date might then have been in the past. Leading to the wrong deletions.
I have no way to confirm any of that and ms are not going to admit it. I don't think it was malicious, but is still a appalling show from Microsoft.
it's a sign that they aren't competent at understanding their customers, making plans, or communicating
For me that was self-evident when they rolled out Windows 11.
Fun story.
The licensing changed for Gates’ own Nonprofits too.
This is so devastating to hear about. I feel for these companies, a loss like this hits so hard and can be so, so hard to recover from.
Microsoft deserves all of the shitty PR for this shit.
This should also be a gentle lesson about not leaving all of your eggs in one basket, especially if it's a free product.
I'm increasingly convinced that "The Cloud" is just a scam. Just keep your own files.
It's been happening as long as the internet has existed. Most of us learned this lesson earlier in life when we lost files to geocities/homestead/imgbucket going belly up
I never have and never will trust "the cloud". If someone else is holding your data, it is no longer your data.
I pay for someone else to hold an encrypted backup of some data. The living data is in my server, they're just one of the backups in case there's a fire at my house or something. I pay because I expect legal liability from them to hold my data safely, no freemium shenanigans. And I encrypt because no one can be trusted not to mine my info for AI or sell my shit to a shady third party for profit.
No, the cloud is just someone else’s computer.
~~No,~~ the cloud is just someone else’s computer.
FTFY
But the cloud is buying up all the memory and storage
Clickbait title. ~~downvoted.~~
How is it a clickbait title?
Instead of stating the obvious that microsoft deleted data, it's hiding it in a mysterious "decision". Making user click through it to find out what they actually did.
I suppose that’s fair. I’m so desensitized that this doesn’t seem as bad by comparison; but I don’t want to discourage anyone from calling it out. My educated guess from when I first read the title turned out to be right, so it didn’t register that way for me initially. But you’re right, in the end. It’s a massive problem right now, it’s hard to get away from it enough as a consumer.
It's a hard one. Because i also dislike Microsoft for what they did and want to upvote for visibility.
Make a report. IMO all news articles should have the original title as the post title.
I just found out yhat you can't trust Microsoft because they're evil fucks! Pass the word!
I've been doing that for the past 35 years already.
Almost 30 years here! I went from people around me at work knowing there were alternatives to people being shocked...SHOCKED...I could "do computers" without Windows or MacOS. What a whirlwind it's been...sigh.
Used to be able to buy PCs running Xenix, with Lotus and vi. Who really needed anything more?
Once upon a time IBM was the evil empire and Microsoft were the good guys. Remember, there's no BM like IBM.
so does LibreOffice bring Microsoft more users or Microsoft bring LibreOffice more users?
Microsoft is the one bringing more user to LibreOffice, which is confused because it didn't even do anything to attract more people
rhetorical question. i was making a point that the meme goes both ways.
This is more about cloud storage than anything else though
Switch microslop and libreoffice
Sounds like a big painting brush toward profit and Microsoft had the usual shit communication and execution.
More to the point though, this is the fundamental lesson many people who say they went to business school or are IT experts are apparently now learning; if it's not free and open source you can't depend on it staying that way and the last 10 years has been a sprint to enshittify. Why someone in IT would base their entire storage and archive practice on the assumption a paid service or grant will remain free through grants, when there is no money to go around to pivot the org is naive at best. I see these as the same type who will rail against inequality, fascism, etc. and then be on Twitter and Facebook. The nobler aspects of man cannot coexist alongside boundless greed and fascism. Move early or be prepared to "be shocked" when structural inevitability comes.
Libre Office and countless other options are out there, just waiting to be adopted. The cells have been made very comfortable by our jailers, but the keys are right there if you want freedom.
You actually need to have your own servers or actively use multiple platforms as well as backup your data. No platform is forever and some are only there at a whim. Google has a bad habit of unpredictably locking up your data too.