this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2025
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Right, so when you said "forced it on everyone" you meant "the feature existing at all even if it's optional or disabled".
See, I don't have a problem with the latter, that's legitimate. But you implied the former, and the former is false.
Now, I don't like the feature and I absolutely turned it off the moment it (finally) got patched into my supported PCs. But it's worth noting that similar features are present on Android phones (from all the way back on Google Assistant to the upcoming Magic Cue), Apple phones (via Visual Intelligence and Siri) and other PC and phone manufacturers. I recommend turning them all off, but with the caveats you original omitted this isn't a Windows-specific thing, it's a pretty widespread fad.
Of course the reason people are latching on to the MS version is their initial implementation was hot garbage and entirely unaware of its own context, so now it's a meme, particularly in tech-savvy, Linux-friendly circles. The biggest lesson we've all learned is that Microsoft is bad at PR and marketing, which I feel we already knew.
Yes, that's exactly what I meant. It's malware on my computer against my will (or would have been, had I not switched). I'm not comforted that I can supposedly toggle the malware off. I don't like it on any platform. Your dismissiveness and attempted normalization of corporate spyware is disconcerting.
I'd argue I'm doing the opposite.
I was turning this stuff off when my Google and Samsung phones kept suggesting that they could do searches based on the content of my phone screen or my camera feed. It's only "normalization" in that it's... you know, actually normal and widespread. I don't think people are too alarmed now, I think they weren't alarmed enough when the first wave of "smart assistants" started doing this like a decade ago.