It’s a nightmare scenario for Microsoft. The headlining feature of its new Copilot+ PC initiative, which is supposed to drive millions of PC sales over the next couple of years, is under significant fire for being what many say is a major breach of privacy and security on Windows. That feature in question is Windows Recall, a new AI tool designed to remember everything you do on Windows. The feature that we never asked and never wanted it.
Microsoft, has done a lot to degrade the Windows user experience over the last few years. Everything from obtrusive advertisements to full-screen popups, ignoring app defaults, forcing a Microsoft Account, and more have eroded the trust relationship between Windows users and Microsoft.
It’s no surprise that users are already assuming that Microsoft will eventually end up collecting that data and using it to shape advertisements for you. That really would be a huge invasion of privacy, and people fully expect Microsoft to do it, and it’s those bad Windows practices that have led people to this conclusion.
Is this article some kind of apple propaganda?
P. S: I fucking hate Windows.
Lol! How incredibly detached from reality!
Nobody cares! Well a few people care that make a big fuss, but most people don’t ever think about their os. I bet a pretty big percentage don’t know what os they use and I bet more than half don’t know what version of the os they are using.
Nobody cares!
They don’t care, but their nephew that has to fix the PC is it acts up cares, and when the nephew says he’s not touching that thing with a 10 foot pole they’ll consider that for their next purchase.
And if in the news there is an article that thanks to copilot they could identify the culprit in a crime, they’ll look at any Windows version and their stroking material in a map on that drive a little different.
Haha I thought I recognized that username. The same person arguing with me that recall was a brilliant move which will solidify Microsoft as the industry leader they’ve always been 😂
Ah, the asshole! I thought I blocked you already. Bye!
Hey block me too, you’re too dumb to exist in my space
This. Normal users give zero shit, they neither understand nor care about any of this. If they can use a cool feature they will. How many use Facebook again? What do they care about privacy? Exactly.
They lost trust from some niche <10 %, that’s it, from which most use/want to use Linux anyway.
If we could tackle the idea that Privacy matters and get more common folk aware of what they are losing, then I would like that very much.
Sure, would be great. Like many other things, including far more important topics. But that is not the world we live in. The head line is simply nonsense and it will break absolutely for Microsoft.
It’s not gonna affect their bottom line though. Microsoft are doing it because they know they can get away with it and drag the bar so low that they’d make RealNetworks circa 1999 look like privacy-respecting saints.
Your average Joe cannot afford the second mortgage needed to finance a MacBook purchase, and they’d have an aneurysm if presented with a Linux terminal.
And don’t even get me started on business and professional use. Many businesses rely on proprietary or even bespoke software that doesn’t run well, sometimes not even at all on Linux. FOSS alternatives are often dogshit. And before you dispute me on that fact, can you name one web designer that would use Affinity Photo, GIMP or PDN over Photoshop? Or could you name one person that prefer AbiWord, OpenOffice or LibreOffice to Microsoft Word?
PC Gaming is one of those use-cases that has evolved by leaps and bounds… until you realize just how many multiplayer games rely on a form of anticheat. Many of these solutions are straight-up incompatible with Linux.
Man, there is a LOT of people in this thread hoping to normalize this, or pretend it will happen anyway, or that it’s ‘not really a PR disaster’, or that people will ignore it, or-
Go make your money elsewhere, christ.
Microsoft lost my trust a long time ago. For the last 10-15 years, my only relationship with them is, “how much sh*t am I willing to put up with before I switch to something else?”
And CoPilot/Recall was the breaking point.
Linux!: Had set It up years ago when it was a slog. Came back recently after Windows did this— and it was so much easier.
Work? Yes. The comfort of knowing I’ve put off for one more day the tech ubergods carving my life open? Also yes.
Outside of the “Microsoft bad” comments, this is a prime example of why big tech companies need to stop promoting AI leads to a position where they are able to have influence over initiatives outside of AI.
The worst thing to happen to basically every product/service in tech right now is AI. It’s made Google unreliable in the eyes of normal people for the first time in decades, it’s destroying trust in Amazon content across reviews and Kindle, it’s adding features to Facebook that no one ever wanted, etc.
Microsoft has already taken a step back: Microsoft implements drastic changes to Recall after criticism
- Recall needs to be enabled during installation
- Windows Hello is needed so that only the users can view it’s own screenshots
- Recall database will be encrypted
Apple ensures its operating systems are clean, polished, and without bloat.
Except for all the uninstallable Apple bloat such as Apple Music, Apple TV, etc. And the numerous bugs and issues, such as still not being able to have the touch pad and mouse scroll wheel have different settings.
Gamers will literally install root kits on their PCs just because an update pop up tells them to. They really don’t care lol.
you can disable recall in regedit by adding a key and a DWord 32 bit value
Yeah … regedit should not be considered a solution for the user base. In fact any time the user base knows that regedit exists we in IT have failed.
Woof you must absolutely loathe linux
OH, it was been a long time coming seeing this type of headline again, it’s…glorius!
Microsoft is most years a #1 and sometimes a #2 Funder of: Rust, Python, and Linux. Are those destined for an E^3 “rug pull” too? Will it ever stop this kind of behavior, consistently conforming our behavior to itself with the money and industry position it leverages?
Don’t forget in calculating that industry position that OpenAI is now able to contract to the DoD for offensive capability.
As much as I liked Visual Studio, its privacy intrusiveness was my final straw.
you can use O&O shutup10++ to disable recall now
Ya, a PR nightmare for the next 15 minutes until the next unbelievable thing comes along and the ADD nature of people forgets windows is watching everything they do.
That’s usually what I think too, but after watching how Twitter’s gone to shit since the two big user departures, I think this could legitimately affect Microsoft’s bottom line.
That will rely on businesses moving away from Windows. That is where they make a ton of their money with Enterprise licenses and Office 365 subscriptions.
Yup. It’ll depend on how they handle Recall at the institutional level.
It’s a given that hospitals and law firms will have to turn it off, as they’re required by law to honor privilege. We’ll see what choices they make.
I find the nosedive in Twitter’s stock price these last few years encouraging. It seems for many there is a red line.
And businesses don’t give a shit about their employees’ privacy
We handle a lot of IP on our Windows PCs so it’s debatable. However, in recent years, Microsoft has taken over most of our services with SSO, office 360, teams, etc so who knows.
They do care about keeping their company secrets and proprietary info though. Recall could make corporate espionage a cake walk.
If you look at sysadmin forums and groups it seems like most recommend disabling recall. Just about every enterprise will have confidentiality, security, or legislative requirements that recall is simply inconsistent with. It’s understandably been a hot topic.
I believe the biggest thing that will hurt MS is moving to subscription. The vast majority of users aren’t gonna wanna have a forever fee when they buy a laptop/PC
That’s definitely going to be a problem for them, yes, because it’s also going to drive a ton of traffic to Linux and Linux is going to get even better.
Twitter is a great example of the exact opposite being true. Are people upset? Absolutely. Did they leave the platform? Nope. Maybe a small percentage.
Respectfully, it’s not.
The user departures, and response to further enshittify, have driven their stock price into the ground.
What user departures? The platform has barely dipped. Stock prices are meaningless.
Number of users doesn’t matter because most people don’t close their accounts. Twitter’s actual usage and traffic is down by 20% since Elmo took over and their revenue is also massively down.
Who said anything about “number of users”? “Monthly Active Users” (MAU) is the industry standard.
Are you serious? The comment you replied to explicitly says “user departures”. And the article I linked is about active users.
Is this how you respond when you’re proven to be blatantly wrong about something? Totally pathetic.
X is the one telling the number of X users. Do you really trust Melon to tell the truth?
You’re assuming my source is Musk.
So far in this thread only one person has actually shared a source of any kind. Care to share with the class?
It’s X.
Stop deadnaming X.
Anyone still clinging to the remnants of its former existence, please close your account. Stop kidding yourself.
I’ll stop deadnaming Twitter when Musk stops deadnaming his trans daughter.
And for the record, I’ve never used Twitter. It’s always kinda sucked. Now it really sucks.
Musk is a complete shithead and that’s not gonna happen.
Calling it Twitter is only going to accommodate the people that refuse to get off that nazi network.
Cause you know Musk gets off on the hate of people still calling it Twitter, exactly because how he treats deadnaming.
I’ll never NOT call it Twitter, and you can’t make me.
You say that but deep down you know it’s Elon Musk’s X now. The dream is no more. You’re an X’er Harry!
What’s X? Is that the older version of Wayland or something?
It’s a shittier version of Mastodon but for right wing lunatics and russian bots.
Twitter definitely lost a ton of users and tons continue to leave. That’s why advertisers have pulled out and their stock price has tanked. Twitter is a bad example
Twitter definitely lost a ton of users and tons continue to leave.
Define “tons”? As a percentage, it is miniscule, and it remains the place where politicians, companies and other entities make public announcements. It’s also, for some reason, the only platform supported for customer support from various companies.
lol, literally just making stuff up. Their number of active users dropped by 15-20% since Elmo took over: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/26/twitter-usage-in-us-fallen-by-a-fifth-since-elon-musks-takeover
A lot of people would have huge bursts of negativity about this, but at the same time remain stubborn enough to not even consider evaluating alternatives. Microsoft and Apple spent decades making sure this would work
For now at least, I block as much telemetry at the network level (DNS level) using pihole.
Annoys my wife and kid at times. I try to explain why and what it means but convenience is king unfortunately.
My mom only really browses the web, writes emails, and edits and occasional document. I’ve given her my old XPS 9350, with Fedora installed on it, and she’s been very happy with it. Keeps saying that everything just makes sense, and when she needs something, it’s easy to find. She’s far from tech savvy, but not completely clueless either
I’m swapping to Linux finally because of it. Few things are black and white but these things do have effects and some additional percentage of users are shifting over because of it.
Ok fine, I’ll repeat it again:
You’re right - many consumers will likely forget about it and just use it anyways. But enterprise customers absolutely, categorically will not. Even with their damage control, this is still going to hurt them a lot. Moreover, it’s going to hurt hardware sales from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm, all of which have dumped MASSIVE amounts of capital into this tech. This is going to slow the rollout of NN-optimized chip tiles, and that is going to directly hit their bottom line. Microsoft hurt themselves AND the three most important hardware partners they have.
I agree with your point, but I think it’s important not to forget just how shitty tech media is a holding these companies to account. Half the shit most mainstream tech journalist publish borders on hagiography for these companies.
