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.
I dont hate your original post, its just somewhat confusing and disjointed.
Could you expand on your first paragraph? I feel like I’m missing context there especially to connect the first and second sentence.
Also, what is your overall point?
The point of the first two sentences is that because there is a large gender divide on whether porn is acceptable, a lot of times men and women don’t discuss porn because the subject will lead to conflict. This isn’t true of all members of both genders. Since corporations often have a mix of genders, bringing up the topic of porn and how a feature could alienate porn viewers would be an uncomfortable topic that would be easier to avoid because men and women find the topic uncomfortable often for different reasons. In Microsoft’s case, it seems like no one at Microsoft brought up how male porn watchers might not like AI watching their pornhub history and recording it to a file, despite it seeming like it would be an obvious concern to any male at Microsoft who watches porn, and likely many do. These means their corporate culture is so selfish on their own career protection and focused on not offending others that they let a really bad feature that many hate go to market instead of talking openly how this would be a disaster out of fear that it could cause workplace conflict.
So instead of saving millions of dollars in costs and damage to the brand, everyone at Microsoft aware of this problem just said nothing. That’s a terrible corporate culture. If a product isn’t going to work, even uncomfortable discussions should be had if it saves millions.
My point overall was that it’s shocking this made it into the product. It’s such a bad idea for a feature on multiple levels, that it seems like employees did not openly talk about this.
My other point was that if Microsoft employees didn’t drop the ball, then this feature may have been forced into the project by a government order of some kind, which can and does happen in closed source software. Although hidden backdoors are often secret, the government could equally compel a large unlocked window at the front be added as well.