Technology

59197 readers

2668 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

1651

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 lemmee_in@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world

479 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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] secretlyaddictedtolinux@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

There needs to be a way to have an inclusive corporate culture that celebrates cultures and backgrounds but also allows brutal honesty about products without people being afraid of accidentally offending others or being too indifferent to the corporation's success to speak up.

A lot of it probably relates to how often people are fired and how short tenures are with companies. If you have a short tenure with a company or are expecting to, does it matter if Company A does well instead of Company B or Company C? It probably doesn't, and with social media capturing one wrong offensive faux paus for eternity (by which I mean until the planet becomes uninhabitable 300 years from now), workers have every incentive to let disasters like this go to market.

I am judging Microsoft employees but likely would have said nothing if I were there too. With all the layoffs in tech, why risk it to say something controversial? Even my initial post on this got down-voted into the depths of an abyss just for mentioning that men and women see pornography in different ways sometimes, which should hardly be controversial. I don't know whether the votes were from men or women, but actually I imagine more women than men down-voted it, and even this guess will probably lead to additional down-votes.

I dislike people like Elon Musk for his cruelty towards transgender people (despite his admirable intelligence), and I dislike Donald Trump for his cruelty towards those who are different in any way, but I also feel like people should be able to have discussions about actual uncomfortable subjects without it being automatically offensive. The fact I was so heavily down-voted immediately tends to illustrate my point.