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A PR disaster: Microsoft has lost trust with its users, and Windows Recall is the straw that broke the camel's back (www.windowscentral.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

487 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (8 children)

Um.... I actually want this feature. Maybe if its FOSS and I own the data. But the idea is amazing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What would you use this feature for?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

It takes images of your screen and stores it with context and then you can query it. Images, text, graphs, etc.

“Hey, I was working on an automation for my home assistant and it stopped working. I had an automation that worked about 6 months ago. Can you pull that automation up and show me”

“My boss showed me a slide about a month ago talking about the TPS report, can you pull that up and show me that slide deck?”

The use case is endless.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Borrowing from something I saw elsewhere: Set up a task / cron job / whatever it is on your OS that takes a full screenshot every minute and then sends it to Microsoft's AI team.

Or save it to a drive or something, I'm not the boss here. And neither is Microsoft.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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. Cheap (even 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.

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