> Apparently "several" means three.

“Several” has long meant three or more, but the article says that three workers described the effort to Reuters, not that the three constituted the entire effort.

Several is usually not used in that context, the word in the headline should be "a few."

> How and why is this news?

"Described to Reuters by three Microsoft workers" doesn't necessarily mean only three workers are involved in this protest. However I would be interested to see the actual numbers. If the number of employees signing the petition were impressive, I'd expect it to be prominently reported. Since it's not, that leads me to suspect it's not very much more than three.

Agreed, but they got both of us to click, didn't they?

But is it worthy of a click? I can find "several" people of any opinion.

Let's just say that Reuters got more value out of the click than I did.

I'd like to think you are right, I am much more comfortable with greed than ideology from the press.