A PR disaster: Microsoft has lost trust with its users, and Windows Recall is the straw that broke the camel's back
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.
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.
And businesses don't give a shit about their employees' privacy
They do care about keeping their company secrets and proprietary info though. Recall could make corporate espionage a cake walk.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
I think advertisers have made some impacts to the bottom line, too. I don't have any direct evidence for this, but I used to get ads for things like Pepsi. Now it's mostly things like Larry's Pillow Case Repair or pelvic floor steaming kits.
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.
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?
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.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/26/twitter-usage-in-us-fallen-by-a-fifth-since-elon-musks-takeover
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.
Bruh are you for real? The article linked is about "user departures". What does that even mean? It doesn't even have any sources for any of the information provided.
Is this how you respond when you have no idea WTF you're talking about?
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 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!
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.
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.
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
That's cool!
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.
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.
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.
Oh please it’s not watching everything you do. It’s just taking screenshots 🙃