I agree and appreciate you calling this out.

It’s easy to not understand the impact or meaning of referring to violence in a flip way when one has never had to have experienced it.

I disagree. Microsoft's actions have real world consequences, increasingly including violence. They're building a surveillance machine that is already being used like organizations such as ICE, and that's not even the worst of it. Look at how they are trying to tip the balance of power from employees to employers with telemetry in Windows 11, Office 365, LinkedIn and GitHub.

Like domestic abusers, things only expand and escalate from here.

The underlying point about power imbalance and gradual normalization of bad behavior is fair, but that analogy carries a lot of real-world weight that doesn't map cleanly to software decisions

Not too surprising in a society where we use the language of homicide and violence for trivial things like describing a good comedian.

I felt the exact same way. Put a bad taste in my mouth and I just stopped reading.

Thank you for saying this. Some journos don’t mind crossing the line for a click bait headline.

Yeah, fully agree. The idea domestic abusers care about flowers is ludicrous. They’re violent and mostly remorseless about it. Anyone who dealt with it personally would chuck the flowers in the bin.