Mozilla slams Microsoft for using dark patterns to drive Windows users towards Edge in a new Research Report
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/11483626
Here's the detailed report from Mozilla Research: Over the Edge: How Microsoft’s Design Tactics Compromise Free Browser Choice (PDF, 5MB, 74 pages)
And the announcement post from Mozilla Research referenced in the The Register's article is here:
Over the Edge: The Use of Design Tactics to Undermine Browser Choice
In order to be able to choose their own browser, people must be free to download it, easily set it to default and to continue using it – all without interference from the operating system. Windows users do not currently enjoy this freedom of choice.
To investigate Microsoft’s tactics and the impact on consumers, Mozilla commissioned Harry Brignull and Cennydd Bowles, independent researchers and experts in harmful design. Today, the researchers have published a report detailing how Microsoft prevents effective browser choice on Windows. In the report, they document how Microsoft places its own browser — Edge — at the center of its operating system and weaponizes Windows’ user interface design to undermine people selecting rival browsers.
In some cases, the use of harmful design tactics is contrary to Microsoft’s own design guidelines. In many cases, it can lead to (and exacerbate) consumer harm and undermine competition from rival browsers. This kind of behavior is particularly concerning for an independent browser like Firefox, which is reliant on the operating systems provided by companies who are also rival browser vendors.
Self-preferencing from operating system/browser providers is an area Mozilla has previously highlighted, for example, in the Five Walled Gardens report. Recently, details of many issues Mozilla experiences competing on major operating systems were published on the Platform Tilt dashboard.
Now, with the implementation of the Digital Markets Act in the European Union marking the start of a wave of global competition regulation, we hoped that the barriers to browser competition would be dismantled. However, even where there is movement in the right direction, improvements have been incomplete and are grudgingly offered only in markets where regulators have forced platform owners to make changes to respect browser choice. For example, Apple’s decision to allow alternative browser engines is only effective in the EU.
Similarly, Microsoft recently pledged to stop some of the actions it takes to force Edge on users who have selected other browsers. Unfortunately, these changes only address a small number of the tactics outlined in this report. And, to make matters worse, they will only be deployed to users in the EEA.
Windows users everywhere, especially in the rest of the world, continue to have their choices inhibited, overridden and undermined by Microsoft’s use of harmful design. Regulatory action around the world is needed to restore browser choice and competition across all of the major platforms.
Member that time when Microsoft got dragged in federal court for ten years before they eventually decided Microsoft was a monopoly for forcing their browser on everyone and then sweet fuck all happened to them for it?
Well the judiciary sure has changed - now they're way more computer savvy and they . . . checks earpice . . . I'm sorry, that should be: they're just as fucking clueless as they were thirty years ago if not even more so. We're screwed, goodnight.
The point where we learned how useless the judiciary is, is when they couldn't even pin down Zuckerberg. The media made it all sound like "Ohhhh, Mark is getting grilled now! he's going to face time and penalties!"
And...nothing came of it. Because the judiciary is too dumb to even understand Facebook.
it's some anomaly that one of the biggest companies in the workd does advertising and not something tangible
The EU forced Microsoft to offer a browser picker dialog. I've been wondering where that went and according to Wikipedia that judgement that compelled Microsoft to make the browser picker has expired. And thus... Microsoft dropped it immediately.
either clueless of paid for
MS realized that the more clueless people are, the less it gets punished. So it made its stuff as chaotic as possible, in the best traditions of porn\warez\phishing sites and Chinese software. It's a win for them, cause it worked for them and Google\Apple... .
Dear God, not a slamming. Anything but that. Please don't. Please.
Just for once I want to see a journalist run up and suplex some tech CEO or whoever. Just once.
Bam. "Slammed." Accurate headline.
Suddenly I'm reminded of an incident in 1999...
You mean Hell in a Cell in 1998 when the Undertaker choke slammed Mankind through the roof of the cage to the arena floor 16 feet below?
Who was your history teacher?
Something about a prison room in hell... A mortician? I don't remember too well.
For me, slamming means you take your slammer down on their stack of pogs.
ALF REFERENCE
Microsoft IN SHAMBLES after being SLAMMED by Internet Article.
you WON'T BELIEVE what MOZILLA said about MICROSOFT 🚨 (watch to the end)
It's such a forceful word that's lost all meaning in this day and age. Every time I see the word 'slam' in a headline I know literally nothing has been done about the problem.
Like, thanks Mozilla. You pointed a finger. What now?
kimjongunderdog claps back at at media by grilling them over their use of 'slammed'
"Slamming" has definitely been enshittified.
MSN.com refuses to allow reader mode. Microsoft answers captures your fucking back button with a redirect loop, like it's fucking 2000 again. Fuck microsoft.
I feel like that's solvable at the browser level.
Like if I get redirected without clicking anything, pressing back should take you back to where you last clicked.
Yes exactly, for both redirect loops and those dumb infinitely scrolling article pages where you have to back through each article you scrolled down to. It's like a punishment for being interested in the next article the site has. You scroll up to reverse scrolling down, not hit the back button.
Damn I didn’t even know this. Just usually got fed up and closed the tab
They don't even work properly half the time and you have to click twice for some of the articles. Assuming that wasn't by design because shitty web dev managers think you can force people to stay on their site that way.
I assumed it had been solved since it's been two decades since I last remember seeing it.
Friend are you sure you haven't been damned into the worst timeline? Think back a bit, have there been any child sacrifices or deals with a demon in the recent past?
Because I'm pretty sure I've been in the worst timeline all along, and I've certainly never stopped seeing that behavior
GET SLAMMED BOIII
Phew thank goodness they weren't blasted.
Newer windows machines won't even let you install non-microsoft-store programs without checking a one-time-no-way-back-box of liability. So much for being an end-user...
Edit: And without a tertiary google search, the dialogue window language is designed to make users think "other" programs are not compatible.
Straight up due to Microsoft's methods lately I've been shifting everything I can to Linux
My goal is by the time support is dropped for Windows 10 to have seamlessly switched to Linux (I'm feeling Linux Mint TBH)
I switched to Linux years ago, and have never looked back. Every computer in my house except one (my mandatory work laptop) runs some flavor of Linux, and my kids have never been forced to use Windows at all. And if I have my way, they never will.
That's the spirit
Get them used to FOSS now so that they never have to switch to it later
Did that about a year ago. It's a giant pain in my ass but not bigger than MS's incessant begging or not being in control of my own computer.
Pretty much the only thing holding me back right now is Fusion 360 (really good CAD modelling software)
As soon as I can find a good alternative that does what I need it to do I can jump ship pretty painlessly
Are you paying for a seat to use Fusion or just the freebie hobby licence? You can switch over to OnShape if you want something commercial. It's totally OS agnostic because it runs in a browser window. Otherwise you can don the sackcloth and ashes and switch to FreeCAD like I did, (it's not as hard to learn as it gets made out to be), and be free of controlling corporations.
OnShape is something I think of as really cool but their terms for using it for free are a bit meh IMO
Now if I could selfhost something like OnShape that would be ideal but it doesn't look like anyone is working on something like that (and my coding skills are non-existent in the the face of such a challenge of making one)
That is a price to pay for universal accessibility I guess. But I find it's not particularly onerous in practical application - I teach it to high school students because it will run on a simple school issued Chromebook. And since the majority of CAD users are 3D printing, most are only working on single part items anyway. Very few are trying to create multipart assemblies anyway. YMMV of course.
I use FreeCAD because where I live, the internet connection can be iffy, (along with electric service and mail period), and I prefer the local install vs the half-arsed local/cloud install of Fusion or the total cloud base of OnShape for my personal use. YMMV for your needs of course.
Ever considered running Windows in a VM, with hardware pass through if needed for performance?
I have a dual boot. There are plenty of Linux or browser-based alternatives. Or you can run it through Bottles or even Steam (Proton works for all exe's, not just games).
Exactly the same boat, except I'm aiming for OpenSUSE. Yast, BTRFS with snapshots out of the box etc.
Bruh just do it. It will take you maybe the weekend. No reason to spend the next few years thinking about it.
Add to that - Windows 11 requires UEFI boot... Which is heading in the direction of locking the OS to the hardware, for "security".
Nevermind UEFI has a pre-boot execution capability, "for security" (supposedly to enable location/anti-theft), that's already been shown to permit a system being hacked.
Anything that runs code can be hacked. That's also true of Bios. Efi has more capabilities though.
's mode' is the 'no way back' wall you can disable.. stupidly requiring a microsoft account to do--in order to install stuff on your pc without needing a damn microsoft account in the first place. 's mode' is becoming more common on higher-end hardware now, too, not just the cheap atom-based crap with emmc and 4gb ram. i've seen it on i5 laptops, ffs.
the other is a setting, which is just a scary 'warning' about installing programs from outside the garden, that you can change.
You can actually disable it without an account! You have to edit a simple bios setting, something like disabling secure boot.
soon you'd need to root windows laptop in order to install non-store software, not to mention gasp reflashing something else in its place
Oh god I could see that happening.
Then they’ll put a chip in that un-reflashes your firmware so you have to disable THAT before flashing like the HTC G2 did. Loved that phone but that was some bullshit.
Probably a feature of TPM 3
Are the patterns really dark, when installing windows it HOUNDS me to switch to Edge at every turn, or to sign into MS incessantly, for "security reasons"? Lol.
No, I'm sure there are plenty of dark patterns too, but holy cow, Win10 setup has driven me, more than any other version, to build my own windows automated installer setup (using MS tools).
At least the tools are a lot better than they used to be.
I have a spreadsheet of hundreds of changes a new system needs when first installed.
I really appreciate the devs of tools like Winaero Tweaker, Bulk Crap Uninstaller, O&O Shutup, and PrivacyZilla.
That said, get yourself a copy of Tiny10, available on archive.org.
Yeah, you type "chrome" into Edge, and it's like YOU DON'T NEED THAT!
Hahaha, so true
I have a folder with notes about what needs to be done. It's not even 20 things. Can you share your list so I know what I'm missing?
Could I see your folder of 20 things?
It's not much: https://file.io/PYHlCpv2LgdE.
The Nowar thing is from a GitHub repository and there's probably a newer version. I pick parts from it to run rather than running the entire thing.
Obligatory, use Linux. With companies you vote with you money. The more you use it the worse it will get. They believe they have a stronghold on the market
Linux sucks.
There, I said it. And I use it every day
It's as bad as Windows in its own way.
The reason windows is the de facto OS is it all works out of the box. Users don't have to muck around with things.
One example of many: I need to remote into another machine... What do I use? RDP is available immediately on Windows and just works.
Fine, go find an RDP client. Which one? Well, fortunately my version of Linux (wait, "my version" of the OS? Oh, cause there's a million flavors of Linux), anyway, my version has an app store, fortunately. Now, which RDP client? Well, Remmina seems prolific. Wait, which version of Rrmmina, there's like 6 in the app repository. OK, fine, I'll use this one.
Wait, there's extensions for it. Do I need any of them for RDP? Hard to tell, because documentation is all over the place. Some things have practically no description, so I'm not sure what they're for/if I need them.
OK, ok, got Remmina installed. Punch in the IP address of the machine I need to RDP to. No go - bad security. What? I RDP to this box 20 times a day. OK, fine, Google the error message. Oh, you need downgrade TLS in Linux, because current versions have deprecated TLS 1. OK, fine, I have a link to the repository for that package. Run it. Fails to install. Gotta go make another change to permit reverting to a lower security standard.
Walk away, got other shit to do.
Two days later, come back. Reboot, because it probably needs it.
Try RDP. No go, same TLS error. Start thinking about it.. Wtf- RDP doesn't use TLS. But Remmina defaulted to using TLS even though I selected RDP as the connection type.
Why would I even think to dig into sub menus to change security from TLS to RDP when I chose a fucking RDP connection type in the first place?!
This is one of dozens of issues I run into when running Linux. Fucking printer notifications with no way to turn them off short of a command line, wtf? And this is on a supposedly user-friendly version?
Note I had Unix classes 35 years ago... Before Linux existed. I'm no neophyte. Now imagine trying to help a regular user with shit Iike this. I can't imagine.
This before we look at app/file compatibility. People don't have time to play fuck-fuck with word docs getting whacked because someone uses open /Libre office. Then there's Publisher, PowerPoint, OneNote and SharePoint. User management via the domain, Group Policy, Exchange, SCOM.
Since Linux lacks a single unified system, trying to manage it via something like SCOM is a nightmare, unless you build everything the same. And if you're going to do that, may as well use windows where this all works right out of the box.
Linux takes as long to install as restoring a windows box. The difference is windows works on first login, even with the annoyances. And let's not talk about video or sound drivers on Linux. People still fight that (it's way better, but nothin like windows).
And THAT is why Linux can't compete with Windows on the desktop, even with the current BS of Windows.
So please, stop with this simplistic, naive bullshit of "just switch to Linux". It's tiresome to hear, it's unrealistic, it ignores real-world limitations, requirements, and concerns.
It's different, not easier - it comes with it's own set of issues.
TANSTAAFL
Edit: some more garbage from Linux. Grab any "easy" version today, put it on a laptop. What's the power management look like? Oh, yea, it doesn't. By default most Linux distros will hammer on cpu and battery, and even drive a laptop to ZERO PERCENT, with no shutdown or suspend at any point. Every Linux distro I've loaded runs like this. YOU have to manually make it not do this.
Windows is (annoyingly) super conservative on cpu and battery while unplugged, by default. You'll never wake up to a dead laptop with windows unless you actively change power management.
Linux has its place, but it's still got a loooooong way to go as a desktop replacement. Just the number of shells available makes it problematic for users. Imagine you have to ask a user which UI they're using (this was a thing in the early 90's, before MS developed Chicago, as other vendors offered better shells for Windows, like Norton. Doing support at the time, it made it challenging occasionally).
People are already busy getting work done. It's our job to make sure their tools don't get in the way of that.
I only boot windows every once in a while (every couple months more or less) but it's certainly gotten very aggressive in the past couple years. And I'm not in the US. I can't even imagine what it's like over there since the users are typically considered as walking wallets by companies.
SUUUPER SLAAAAAMMMM
OFF THE TOP ROPE!
STRAIGHT TO POUND TOWN!
I would very like to learn this slam for dark pattern use martial technique.
When I see dark patterns, I can't help but think the designer is antagonistic and is not interested in engaging me but manipulating me. It puts into question the good faith of the whole website / application / web-browser / operating system.
I feel insulted every time Windows has some sort of pop-up or notification that is obviously manipulative, like making it appear that I HAVE to make Edge my default browser and putting ads for Edge and other Microsoft products on the lock screen disguised as 'fun facts'. The people making these decisions don't respect the autonomy of people, they want to force us into habits that benefit Microsoft to the detriment of the user.
I got an ad for finding new jobs on LinkedIn on a work computer lock screen
Report that to your boss! Recruiting is time-consuming and expensive. If companies protest Microsoft doing this, that will disappear real quick. Though I realize we'll still be stuck with the rest of Microsoft's bullshit...
I hope my company burns to the ground so
Me too, bud. Me too...
If only Microsoft relied on making edge a worthy competitor and focused on the UI/UX instead of these dumb head games.
Back when edge wasn’t just a chromium skin it was a neat idea, EdgeHTML was different at the very least and more options are always good compared to chrome monopoly bs. But at this point it’s just Microsoft branded chrome with a (kinda shitty) GPT agent baked in.
it's not just windows, and not just edge. i just installed firefox mobile on a guy's android phone because even on msn.com (which he reads for 'news' daily. it's about his only online activity) via chrome they hide the annoying 'continue reading' button and have an even more annoying 'continue reading in the app' one in its place. added a firefox link directly to that page on his home screen. he's a happy camper now. the less-annoying one is back and he (for the time being, anyway) is no longer pressured into installing yet another app-that-just-shows-a-fucking-web-page app. also having a ublock-origin enabled browser now is just the icing on the cake.
Today I was playing a JRPG on Game Pass Ultimate on my phone and a banner like ad appeared advertising a new game over the subtitles
IM A PAYING CUSTOMER FFS MICRO$HIT
Link to the PDF
https://research.mozilla.org/files/2024/01/Over-the-Edge-Report-January-2024.pdf
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Mozilla on Thursday accused Microsoft of forcing its Edge browser down the throats of Windows users through "dark patterns" – design elements geared to push people towards certain decisions.
"Windows users everywhere, especially in the rest of the world, continue to have their choices inhibited, overridden and undermined by Microsoft's use of harmful design," Mozilla wrote in a post about its report.
The salient regulatory action here is Europe's Digital Markets Act (DMA), a set of rules intended to promote fair competition across the bloc.
Mozilla cites the implementation of the DMA – enforcement is set to begin in March – as a reason to hope that the barriers to browser competition will come down.
"With this message Microsoft is taking advantage of the trust gained by their custodial role as OS provider and using it to misdirect users, implying that compliance is necessary for security reasons," the report alleges.
In our view, these designs coerce, manipulate, or deceive users and are therefore unjustifiable, with the potential to cause a variety of consumer, society, and market harms.
The original article contains 747 words, the summary contains 177 words. Saved 76%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This happens for Chrome too. Windows prevents .ics files from being opened by Chrome.
I guess I hadn't really thought about it much because I consider using edge on windows the best choice, but the choice should not be interfered with, even if it is the wrong one.
The best choice is whatever works for you. Edge is most certainly not the best option for me.
Yeah but I think the point is that users should have a choice, then of course they are free to choose whatever they like - in your case Edge.