alt Hacker NewsNorway wealth fund to vote for human rights report at Microsoft, against Nadella
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> Norway’s $2 trillion wealth fund said on Sunday it would vote for a shareholder proposal
> Microsoft management had recommended shareholders voted against the motion.
Ok, cool, but what about the reasons for those actions? What kind of lazy journalism is this? I guess it's nice that we know that something is happening, but what about reaching out to people and asking them why so people can actually understand? For the love of Adam Smith, at least mention the involved countries!
Its a bit late for Norway wealth fund to be concerned about human rights in tech companies dealings. Potentially damaging to Microsoft exposing how many children were __potentially__ killed or tortured with aid of Azure datacentres. That could damage Microsoft and potentially the wealth fund!
As a shareholder, I dont care. The line just needs to go up.
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Since it doesn't say it in the article, the human rights they're referring to is that Microsoft was caught providing Azure services to the Israeli army's unit 8200, which used them to surveil millions of hours of Palestinian calls.
Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Palantir are all providing cloud and AI services to Israel which it uses it the genocide in Gaza and the continued military occupation of Palestine.
- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/09/microsoft...
- https://www.972mag.com/microsoft-8200-intelligence-surveilla...
- https://afsc.org/newsroom/unprecedented-investor-action-dema...
- https://countercurrents.org/2025/11/microsoft-ignites-protes...
If you'd like to know more about Microsoft's human rights issues, I had a lead campaigner discuss it with me on my podcast
Crooks blaming crooks! What an irony
I'd like to see them pull all support for Bitcoin and crypto related "companies". As we all know, bitcoin's only use cases are scamming little old lady's out of thousands of dollars at atm's and speculation. It is not an investment vehicle, it is not a currency.
If someone at the NWF is reading this, please take this into consideration. Let's start to take action against the fraud and grift, and try to make humanity a little better, one step at a time.
Thank you.
Norway's wealth fund's annualized return is only 6.6% since 1998. https://www.nbim.no/en/investments/returns
Is this poor performance due to this kind of active management?
Europe in general has become the world leader in tech company extortion. If you run a tech company, be very careful about selling into that market. You should generally have an army of lawyers before making the leap.
Some additional details: The proposal was submitted by an individual shareholder.
She requests that the Board "commission a report assessing the implications of siting Microsoft cloud datacenters in countries of significant human rights concern, and the Company’s strategies for mitigating these impacts."
She specifically cites the 2024 completion of a Microsoft datacenter in Saudi Arabia, citing a "State Department report [that] details the highly restrictive Saudi control of all internet activities and pervasive government surveillance, arrest, and prosecution of online activity."
The Board opposes the proposal because it believes Microsoft already discloses extensive disclosures on key human rights risks, and has an independent assessment each year of how they manage risks and its commitment to protecting freedom of expression and user privacy. They also re-iterate the need to comply with local laws and legally binding requests for customer data.
The proposal is non-binding, so the Board doesn't have to act on it even in the unlikely event it gets majority support (ESG proposals rarely do, especially in this environment). In practice many Boards do choose to act on majority-supported non-binding shareholder proposals, though, because many shareholders will vote against directors the following year if they don't.