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Windows 10 nagging users with Bing advertisements (push alerts)

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Re: Windows 10 nagging users with Bing advertisements (push alerts)

#101

Post by dantondwa »

This is so stupid. I was wondering if I could recommend to less technically-skilled family members to just stick to Edge, but I've decided that I definitely won't, as I do not want to explain countless times how to switch back to Google from Bing, etc. Bing is simply terrible and Microsoft's push of it is ridiculous. I'll keep recommending Firefox + uBlock to everyone.

Also, I find it disrespectful to its customers. Windows is not free. If you buy a computer that already comes with it, you're paying for it. If you buy a license, you paid for it. It is not fair that its users are constantly nagged and mistreated in this way. And by the way, Apple started doing the same with Big Sur: when I open Firefox on macOS, a popup asks me to switch to Safari. This happens once in a while and there's no clear way to dismiss forever this notification. A user pays a lot for Apple hardware: can't they use it without being bothered? And of course Google does the same on their websites (even if luckily uBlock Origin allows me to avoid that).

If only Linux could support all the tools I need for my work, I'd switch to it in a heartbeat and be done with this intrusive and disrespectful nagging.

Re: Windows 10 nagging users with Bing advertisements (push alerts)

#102

Post by anm89 »

judge2020 wrote: post #44
anm89 wrote: post #43

Why would anyone even use windows at this point? This has always been the default operating mode for Microsoft. If you are still signing up for it after 30 years or whatever, I can't say I have much sympathy for you.

Game support is unparalleled, probably (partly) because you can use 10-20 year old design primitives and fully expect it to work on Windows for the foreseeable future (well, ARM desktop machines might be coming, so we'll see if that causes some pain in the industry).

Fair point.

Re: Windows 10 nagging users with Bing advertisements (push alerts)

#105

Post by grishka »

JasonFruit wrote: post #6

Why is this even surprising? Having your devices advertise to you, crying for your attention 24/7, is pretty much what push notifications are for . Why not leverage it to advertise Bing? It's not like people are going to stop using it , after all; we've proven that.

No, push notifications were invented for a very useful purpose — to notify you when something has happened. You know, emails, instant messages, social media interactions, all that kind of stuff. But then some bright minds figured out that they can also be used to try to manipulate you into doing something that would make the charts go up, since charts going up is apparently the single most important thing in the modern IT industry.

Re: Windows 10 nagging users with Bing advertisements (push alerts)

#106

Post by Doxin »

mlang23 wrote: post #98

I get the Edge-hate. I have my own experiences with lack of accessibility support in earlier versions. But, philosophically speaking, there is no difference between using Edge and Chrome. There are things which simply shouldnt be controlled by a single large company like MS or G. The difference between Chrome and Edge seems to be that Google managed to launch Chrome before they dumped their reputation. And some of th…

The problem here isn't "which browser is better?" but "Can software companies, for the love of god, stop trying to force choices on me?"

Re: Windows 10 nagging users with Bing advertisements (push alerts)

#107

Post by stinos »

reincarnate0x14 wrote: post #15

If you are forced to put up with Windows, do yourself a favor and use LSTC. Almost all of this garbage behavior seems to be restricted to the retail channel builds and major update packs. Sadly there is apparently no limit to what people will be conditioned to put up with.

While this is a good tip, there could be strings attached though; recently I was working on a machine like this (not mine, acquired by another company) and it didn't seem possible to apply updates, just saying 'contact your system administrator to update'. So I told the company they'd need to sort that out eventually but they also had no clue, and they called the shop wehere they got it but there also no sane response. This is just one data point of course, but does make me wonder: if you as a normale non-enterprise customer gets this, how would you deal with issues like this?

Re: Windows 10 nagging users with Bing advertisements (push alerts)

#109

Post by whyoh »

ridiculous_fish wrote: post #66

It may not be widely known that Gmail users on Windows get a popup telling you to use Chrome [1], and then also an email disguised as a security alert telling you to use Chrome [2]. Google is leveraging their properties to push their browser, and Microsoft is responding in kind. Or maybe vice-versa; either way it's all really obnoxious. 1. https://i.imgur.com/KsD9hFx.jpg 2: https://i.imgur.com/CDs1eIE.png

The difference is that ads on websites are somewhat expected and usually easy to block and contained inside a browser. Ads inside an OS are in a different category of annoying. Especially on Windows where it's not just one setting to turn them off, but they're scattered through the OS, they get re-installed with updates and it's a constant game of whack-a-mole to get rid of them.

I don't get the point of comparing Windows 10 to websites. How about you compare it to Windows 7? Somehow, Windows 7 managed to work just fine without nagging you with ads all the time.

Re: Windows 10 nagging users with Bing advertisements (push alerts)

#110

Post by tempodox »

The last two Windows updates I let happen force-installed Edge. I removed it afterwards with a helper tool. After it happened the second time in a row, I deactivated Windows updates. Microsoft can go whistle. Should I ever get into trouble for not having updated Windows, I'll trash the VM and restore from a backup. That's a suboptimal solution to be sure, but I don't know how else to fend off this shit.
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