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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

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.

Clbull , (edited )

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.

NutWrench ,
@NutWrench@lemmy.world avatar

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.

EnderMB ,

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.

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

And the annoying thing is, this tech can be exceptionally useful when it’s actually been implemented thoughtfully.

Effortlessly cleaning up audio recordings using AI tooling is incredible, for example. There are audio recordings that I’ve been able to make sound great that previously would’ve required me to make some calls and ask for a bunch of re-recordings and added days of delays to a project.

AI in image recognition to vastly speed up medical imaging diagnosis, or analysing lab work? Amazing. Asking unpaid medical students to laboriously pore over thousands of images sounds like a nightmare.

Better offline translation? Sign me the fuck up.

Image description for the visually impaired, like my sister? Genuinely life changing. A lot of content online isn’t properly tagged, or has zero attention placed on accessibility.

The list goes on. Unfortunately, with big tech being as they are, their first thoughts turn to “which implementations of AI will aid us the most in scraping userdata and showing ads?”

octopus_ink ,

The list goes on. Unfortunately, with big tech being as they are, their first thoughts turn to “which implementations of AI will aid us the most in scraping userdata and showing ads?”

Don’t forget making sure the peons can squeeze out more productivity for the 1%.

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/200a6cad-b8d4-42eb-95fa-93e2fd8e783c.jpeg

szczuroarturo ,

Wait what has the Amazon done with kindle and ai ?

EnderMB ,

There have been several instances where people have released ebooks that are fully AI generated, and are basically scams with no real content or information.

peregus ,

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
Lancoian ,

Yeah bur for the non tech oriented user it’s still difficult . Most devices bought come with OEM install.

Even for a regular user it’s going to sound like There is a virus that reads and remembers everything on your computer but you can turn it off and trust us it would be off.

peregus ,

Even for PCs that come with Windows preinstalled, there’s still the need to set it up at the first start (account, privacy and such), so I think that the option to enable Recall will be there.

FangedWyvern42 ,
@FangedWyvern42@lemmy.world avatar

And no one is going to trust them on this. They’ve burned that bridge.

rxin ,

Oh, the bridge will be rebuilt soon. People forget easily.

lost_faith ,

Or are trapped in their ecosystem, some never forget

Katana314 ,

I guess if you want to verify the truth of this statement, look at Unity. They walked back their per-install system, but the indie community still moved away from them because it seemed clear they might try to do that at some point in the future.

d00ery ,

Who needs trust when you have a monopoly.

LiveLM ,

It’s what they should have done from the beginning, there must be a horde of MSFT employees holding back the urge of saying “told you so” to their boss right now lol

peregus ,

there must be a horde of MSFT employees holding back the urge of saying “told you so” to their boss right now lol

🤣

anon_8675309 ,

I really hope the damage is done. They need to be knocked down a peg. This all should have been done first. Whoever thought this was a good idea is horrible.

moon ,

Gamers will literally install root kits on their PCs just because an update pop up tells them to. They really don’t care lol.

hikaru755 ,

Companies and their legal departments do care though, and that’s where the big money lies for Microsoft when it comes to Windows

elias_griffin ,
@elias_griffin@lemmy.world avatar

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.

kilgore_trout ,

Linux is not dependent on money, they have no influence over it.

Warl0k3 ,

While the influence is much smaller than with windows or apple, it’s still there. Linux is hardened against capitalism, but if we start believing that it has no influence we set ourselves up for Debian Pro+ in the future. Just because it’s good now doesn’t mean it capitalism can’t shit all over it faster than we believe possible…

NutWrench ,
@NutWrench@lemmy.world avatar

This. “Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.” has been Microsoft’s mantra for a long time, now. Folks need to recognize the signs that their favorite things are being targeted before they get ruined.

bluewing ,

Oh you sweet innocent. Major distros like Ubuntu and RedHat already are peddling open source AI for their enterprise customers.

Debian Pro+ is here and has been for a while…

kilgore_trout ,

But Debian still stands, and is not going anywhere.

bluewing ,

So does Slack. But while they are 2 of the foundational distros, neither is the first go to choice of the average user. Neither distro caters to the mainstream user. If you are choosing either of those two distros, you are definitely old school and/or are looking for a solution to problem that is perhaps more of an edge case.

ysjet ,

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.

n0m4n ,

As much as I liked Visual Studio, its privacy intrusiveness was my final straw.

JasonDJ ,

You know what would be a nice thing to put into windows?

A fucking decent way to search for files.

Also, grep and tail, as implemented in Linux. It’s 2024 and there’s no native equivalent to tail -f *.log. How embarrassing.

Tamo240 ,

<span style="color:#323232;">Get-Content <path> -wait
</span>

Or do you mean in cmd not powershell?

JasonDJ ,

IME this doesn’t work for multiple files. Not nearly as well as tail -f *.

Plenty of times I’m troubleshooting something without knowing which log file I should pay attention to. So watching everything happen in realtime with the error helps, a ton.

explodicle ,

Windows Search used to be awesome, and then they decided to over-complicate it.

grrgyle ,

I distinctly remember that once it has indexed everything, it was pretty fast, yeah. Back in the 00s anyway

letsgo ,

I doubt the majority of MS users need to tail a log file. And of those of us that do, how many don’t know that Notepad++ does it?

e8d79 ,

File search is really awful on windows for no reason at all. Your complaints about commandline utilities is not accurate though. Windows has native powershell equivalents to both grepand tail. You use https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.utility/select-string?view=powershell-7.4 instead of grep and https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.management/get-content?view=powershell-7.4#-wait instead of tail.

JasonDJ ,

IME Get-Content doesn’t work for multiple files. Unless maybe I put it in a foreach loop or something. But that’s way more keystrokes then tail -f *

e8d79 ,

Nobody ever accused powershell of being concise. Its uses a completely different philosophy, object oriented rather than string based. This makes powershell nicer to write scripts in but also makes it worse at bash style one-liner commands.

snailfact ,

get listary it’s freemium (i use free version forever and it works fine) you can search by double tapping control and it instantly gives you the files you search for

joe_cool ,

Get everything: www.voidtools.com (the alpha version can also index the content of files). It’s search is instant. As in < 1 second for any file on any of your harddisks (even ones not connected right now).

For base linux cmdline tools I just install Git for Windows it includes tail, sed, grep, tee, iconv, less, scp and tons more. I need git anyways so win-win.

elucubra ,

I do small business support. Everytime I do a windows install I do a ninite install of a bunch of things. Everything is always in the set. The fucntionality should have been in windows since NTFS was introduced

joe_cool ,

Yeah, even XP had Rover, the search dog.

Ninite and Chocolatey helps a bit. But then you get to the point where there is no automation for a start menu entry for some packages. It’s a bit of a mess.

A colleague installed Python from the MS Store on Windows 11 it messed up all python software, PyCharm, the other python versions and some file associations. Quite a mess.

oo1 ,
MacNCheezus ,
@MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

Have you heard of WSL?

grrgyle ,

As someone who does product dev support, unfortunately I have.

retrospectology , (edited )
@retrospectology@lemmy.world avatar

You can do a commandline “dir /s *.log” to search an entire directory it works better than the normal file search generally. Unless I misunderstand what you’re asking.

grrgyle ,

-f follows the file so you can see updates as they come in to the bottom of the file. I wasn’t aware this worked with globs, but that’s neat.

Is that what /s does? I haven’t used Windows in years.

retrospectology ,
@retrospectology@lemmy.world avatar

Oh, perhaps not. I may’ve just understood how you’re using the search. /s is just a straight search if the directory, I don’t know that it can be used to generate dynamic results like that. Go figure.

VirtualOdour ,

Isn’t that one of the things this does? It was in the advert wasn’t it?

EmperorHenry ,
@EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

you can use O&O shutup10++ to disable recall now

JustARegularNerd ,

The fact that we need a third party program to make our computer respect our privacy should say it all for Windows.

EmperorHenry ,
@EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

You still need to configure things in every linux distro to make it work. And apple doesn’t allow you to configure anything that matters at all

jaschen ,

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

piecat ,

It’s like some of the Pokemon games where it tells you what you did. Seriously amazing, but yeah needs to be FOSS and secure.

jaschen ,

Then be able to query it. That would be amazing.

palordrolap ,

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.

BigDiction ,

What would you use this feature for?

jaschen ,

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.

Hadriscus ,

Screencap and screencapture programs have existed forever, just use any, it’s not a new idea

jaschen ,

I think you misunderstand what Recall actually does. It takes images of your screen 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.

Hadriscus ,

Oh my… Ok right I didn’t realize the extent of it. It’s a total nightmare

jaschen ,

Well, supposedly the data is stored locally. Like I said. It’s a good idea. I wouldn’t mind a FOSS version.

Cosmicomical ,

I don’t want to be the guy that always says Linux, but… …Linux

dumpsterlid ,

It is okay to be the person that always recommends Linux, especially if you are a kind person with the patience to explain things to people in approachable terms (and you don’t just scream at people SOMEBODY ALREADY ASKED THIS QUESTION USE SEARCH whenever a newbie walks in the door and asks the obvious questions a newbie would ask).

Now is the time, Linux is pulled up out front waiting to pick us up (with bags packed) and Microsoft is loudly shitting the bed upstairs, NOW is the time to walk straight out the front door, jump in the car with Linux and never look back. We owe it to Microsoft’s long relationship with consumers to leave Microsoft sitting confused on the porcelain throne wondering why they were abandoned and where all the toilet paper is (we are the toilet paper in this metaphor).

FilthyCheese ,

Most people aren’t going to bother when the specific software they want to use aren’t supported.

explodicle ,

Microsoft has been relying on that for >20 years now and it’s starting to show signs of strain.

FilthyCheese ,

I’ve heard this before.

explodicle ,

So you don’t think there’s a straw breaking the camel’s back?

FilthyCheese ,

I think people are happy to eat shit. They’ll complain about it, sure. But they’ll slurp it up like ice cream.

Otherwise, MTX heavy games wouldn’t be rewarded so heavily.

Early on, you’ll see some movement. Some people will transfer to Linux - most will go back. A bunch of outraged threads.

But it will die down. People will just accept it. They always do. They always will.

dumpsterlid , (edited )

But it will die down. People will just accept it. They always do. They always will.

I understand the frustration and cynicism that comes from wanting something to happen and waiting a good stretch of your life for it to do so but I am sorry, this is not reflective of reality.

Don’t mistake your own fatigue for the behavior of people in general.

Support for software on Linux or Wine is now orders of magnitude more complete and functional than it was 5-10 years ago. There are fundamental changes going on, just because we operated in a paradigm that suffocated the possibility of Linux adoption in the past doesn’t mean that paradigm will continue indefinitely.

There is a difference between being permanently powerless and being powerless under a certain arrangement of forces and actors.

We are entering a period of the status quo being smashed for better or worse in almost every dimension of our lives, what was likely to happen in the past 20 years does not reliably predict what is likely to happen in the next 20 years.

There is actually a true opening for Linux here in a way there never has been.

Cosmicomical ,

Well they said the same about AI and at some point it became true enough to be a problem

FilthyCheese ,

I’m trying to see a correlation.

Cosmicomical ,

True but there is less and less stuff that you cannot do properly on linux.

dumpsterlid ,

I mean… how big really is the category of software tasks that you can’t properly do on Linux in 2024? I feel like it is getting to the point where you do genuinely have to be specific about what Linux can’t do that is a dealbreaker for you rather than just falling back on “Linux can’t do what people need to do” as a general criticism of it.

Windows can’t do what people need it to do, and it fails to do so while sucking up your private data (which if you work at a business with confidential information IS a dealbreaker). At least when Linux fails it usually isn’t simultaneously violating the IT security structure of your organization….

The funny thing is businesses and government entities can’t even claim with a straight face that they can trust Microsoft to adhere to the meager insufficient data privacy laws that do exist when there is zero evidence Microsoft would behave that way based on the track record even if the financial penalties for failing to do so were actually real to the ruling class and not just theoretical thought experiments that involve a slap on the wrist or more like a light tickling with a feather on the nose.

Cosmicomical ,

Oh i totally agree with you. I have a feeling that the only real obstacle on the way out from windows is proprietary software, especially adobe and some custom apps for specific hardware.

Cosmicomical ,

SOMEBODY ALREADY ASKED THIS QUESTION USE SEARCH

I don’t understand this approach, if you don’t want to answer, just don’t answer. Why would you waste time writing that you won’t answer?

Sawzall ,

I will not answer this. Just search.

Cosmicomical ,

I thought you were a search engine.

piecat ,

HISTTIMEFORMAT="%d/%m/%y %T "

Then

history | grep -i “09/06/2024”

I_Miss_Daniel ,

Yeah but there’s like 20 of them, and many are half-baked. How is a n00b to choose one?

Cosmicomical ,

Ubuntu is fine for all uses, and so are some of the others

I_Miss_Daniel ,

Not sure about that. They try to get you to sign up for services, and they deliberately broke something with installing from certain file types.

Cosmicomical ,

It’s still perfectly functional and easy to use, just say no if they ask you to sign up to a service, if you come from windows you’ll ve surprised of how easy it is to dismiss those offers

NutWrench ,
@NutWrench@lemmy.world avatar

The switch to Linux will have to come from the bottom up. Corporations will NOT switch until Microsoft costs them serious money.

mypasswordis1234 ,
@mypasswordis1234@lemmy.world avatar

TL;DR:

  • Windows Recall, part of Microsoft’s new Copilot+ PC initiative, has sparked major privacy and security concerns.
  • The feature uses AI to capture and store screen data locally, allowing users to search for past activities using natural language.
  • Despite assurances that data is not uploaded to the cloud or used by Microsoft, user trust is lacking.
  • Microsoft has a history of practices that have eroded user trust, including obtrusive ads, ignoring user preferences, and requiring Microsoft Accounts.
  • Users are skeptical, fearing future misuse of the collected data for advertising or AI training.
  • Windows Recall reportedly stores data unencrypted, making it vulnerable to access by third-party apps and potential malware.
  • The open nature of Windows amplifies these risks, unlike more secure systems like iOS and Android.
  • Users have compared Windows Recall to spyware, with many threatening to switch to other operating systems like Linux or Mac.
  • Microsoft’s attempts to keep the development of Windows Recall secret did not help build trust.
  • Windows Recall will only be available on new Copilot+ PCs, requiring specific hardware not present in existing PCs.
  • Users will have the option to disable the feature, but there are concerns about it being enabled by default.
  • Despite security issues, the feature is effective in helping users find lost or forgotten data.
  • It could improve productivity if trust and security concerns are resolved.
Epzillon ,

Windows Recall does NOT require NPU hardware to run. Currently Recall has been tested on Windows 11 with only a CPU and it seems to be fully operational. Of course performance is not as good as with an NPU. I believe Microsoft will try to push AI to local computing by only enabling on computers with NPUs to begin with. In the future it will most likely be able to be enabled on PCs which does not have an NPU but with a warning of bad performance in front of it.

secret300 ,

In the future most CPU’s will prolly have an NPU built in. We already seeing it with ryzen

NutWrench ,
@NutWrench@lemmy.world avatar

I finally switched to Linux Mint a week ago. I’ve just had enough of Microsoft and I couldn’t think of any more reasons why I shouldn’t switch.

I’ve got Libre Office for all my productivity needs. All my Steam games work under Linux. My VPN works just fine. Firefox for web browsing. Thunderbird for email. And Wine to run those 1-2 Windows programs that I just can’t do without.

mypasswordis1234 ,
@mypasswordis1234@lemmy.world avatar

You might try OnlyOffice 😄

bluewing ,

Hey, I replace LibreOffice on my Linux installs every time with OnlyOffice. I don’t really need a full up office suite anymore. And I find OnlyOffice is a bit simpler and easier to use. But it’s not for everybody.

Plus, it keeps me away from trusting Google Docs…

secretlyaddictedtolinux ,

There’s no reason to run Windows unless there’s specific software that won’t run in a virtual highly contained environment of Windows within Linux.

Friends don’t let friends use windows.

joe_cool ,

vpn with network manager is amazing. All my client’s vpn solutions just work. On windows I needed 5-6 different vpn clients that bluescreen each other on Linux I need zero proprietary software.

constantokra ,

Wireguard with systemd is even better. You set it up and then literally never touch it again.

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