People do work at Microsoft though and they're probably aren't very happy when their work is called slop. You could even say they are feeling insulted or offended.

Has there ever been a single good piece of writing that uses "M$" or the likes?

"M$" may not be insulting in itself, but it's certainly typically associated with insultingly poor writing.

How is M$ insulting? It just looks like a leetspeak version of MS.

Why get yourself twisted like this?

They can do a bad thing, and then you can make fun of it with an insult.

Own it, the insult is warranted, why hide and pretend it's not an insult.

If Microsoft is consistently shipping slop, then they deserve insults over it; not every "bad" thing is always unwarranted. Locking someone in a box is "bad", prison is a necessary thing that benefits society. Insults are "bad" and sometimes warranted.

They did not rewrite Notepad in Rust? Seems to be an easy target

> Is it for open and frank discussion

So... 4chan? Why would you possibly want that in this context?

Although, you're posting on HN so it's probably fair to assume that "open and frank discussion" isn't a very high priority for you.

>An even more important question is: why does Microsoft care so much about a handful of people using that term that they are willing to risk getting Streisanded over it?

Because the decision was made by some normal adult without mental health issues who hasn't internalized just how disturbed some people on the internet are?

It really shouldn't be unreasonable for moderators to try to maintain a professional tone. Although in this case they certainly picked the wrong platform if "professional" was what they were going for.

This is one of those things that's hard to understand without practical moderation experience. The presence of an insulting meme creates the idiots who spam it, and creates a larger category of people who deploy it to toxify what would otherwise be polite and respectful discussion. And low quality comments that get a couple laugh reacts, even if you can consistently remove them within the hour, are fully capable of propagating it.

Keyword bans are definitely a heavy-handed option, they do risk the Streisand effect, and in the worst case that can require the scorched-earth counterresponse described in the source article. But sometimes there's just no other way to kill the meme.