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Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

lzon.ca

21–30 of 255 posts

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#21
post #4

Email scammers often make their initial emails intentionally full of red flags to automatically filter out anyone smart enough to avoid the scam, and leave them with a pool of people willing to accept any amount of scummyness and abuse. Windows is the exact same thing but for operating systems. If you're still using it in 2026, it's because you want to be a mark.

if using windows in 2026, it might be that you are leveraging the device driver maturity while running your favorite Linux in WSL2.

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#22

[flagged]

Your ad hominem attacks aside, The point the author is trying to make is that Microsoft is actively using dark patterns in an operating system to get them to buy things.

If you simply disable OneDrive without correctly uninstalling, the system will blast notifications at you with an ominous warning "You could lose data your system isn't backed up!"

PowerShell and most CLIs are terrifying to non-technical people. Literally Here Be Dragons. The layperson might be skeptical of a YouTuber telling them to run a dodgy script, but in the age of "delete system32" people sure as hell aren't going to run a command as admin that a user on a random forum recommends they run.

Stuff like this is why I have moved all of my systems except my gaming PC to Linux.

Edit: no seriously look at this notification https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/f5907... Grandma absolutely does not understand what that means, She just knows she doesn't want to lose photos of her grandchildren.

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#23

I had a similar issue. I ended my O365 subscription. Outlook kept complaining I had exceeded my free storage, which surprised me because I've never used OneDrive for anything, and my email storage was well under the limit. I deleted a ton of useless emails anyway, but that didn't fix the problem. Somehow I had more than 25 gigs of space being used on a cloud system I'd never used, tied to an email account which suppo…

My Suspicion - Microsoft would have put lots effort into their cloud storage trickery - it would be an enormous revenue item . ....

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#24
Google is no better. My family mostly uses iPhones, and on a big extended family vacation, I suggested we use Google Photos to create a shared album to document the trip. Everyone installed the Google Photos app on their iPhone so they could contribute... which resulted in all of them having their email accounts disabled.

What happened? Google Photos on the iPhone backs up all your photos by default, and, like Microsoft, Google "shares storage" between email and photos. The minute Google Photos was installed, it started backing up photos until the paltry free tier was reached, at which point it disabled the associated gmail account since it was "out of storage".

Talk about an anti-pattern; I spent a good chunk of time on that trip helping people get their storage back so they could send email again.

I'll never recommend Google Photos to anyone ever again.

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#25
post #20

I got caught out by exactly this, and I'm not exactly tech illiterate. what made it even more annoying is by the time I'd realised what had happened, it was practically impossible to get the files back out of OneDrive (since I decided that this was enough Windows for me, and went back to Linux), since the webui does NOT handle downloading lots of small files well, and you just end up getting a partially complete zip…

Oh and another fun thing! I eventually just emptied the OneDrive so Microsoft would stop bothering me. This was maybe six months ago or so. Microsoft confirms I am storing nothing there. Just a week or two ago I got yet another email begging for money because my OneDrive was apparently full. It was a genuine email, I went as far as checking the headers for SPF/DKIM. When I signed into onedrive, still empty!

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#26
post #20

I got caught out by exactly this, and I'm not exactly tech illiterate. what made it even more annoying is by the time I'd realised what had happened, it was practically impossible to get the files back out of OneDrive (since I decided that this was enough Windows for me, and went back to Linux), since the webui does NOT handle downloading lots of small files well, and you just end up getting a partially complete zip…

I wouldn't use the webui for that. Getting rid of onedrive in favor for a self-hosted nextcloud, I used the native client to download all the files on the machine and then moved them out. This also removed them from onedrive after acknowledging the "A lot of files have been deleted from your onedrive account" warning. Actually deleting the onedrive application was also not as straight-forward as some other users may want you to believe. Even now, I'm not sure it won't just pop-up one day once again.

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#27

[flagged]

Your ad hominem attacks aside, The point the author is trying to make is that Microsoft is actively using dark patterns in an operating system to get them to buy things. If you simply disable OneDrive without correctly uninstalling, the system will blast notifications at you with an ominous warning "You could lose data your system isn't backed up!" PowerShell and most CLIs are terrifying to non-technical people. Lite…

RE "....If you simply disable OneDrive without correctly uninstalling, the system will blast notifications at you with an ominous warning "You could lose data your system isn't backed up!"....."

The implication here is, OneDrive is backup . It is NOT. Moe Microsoft dodgyness ....

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#28
post #20

I got caught out by exactly this, and I'm not exactly tech illiterate. what made it even more annoying is by the time I'd realised what had happened, it was practically impossible to get the files back out of OneDrive (since I decided that this was enough Windows for me, and went back to Linux), since the webui does NOT handle downloading lots of small files well, and you just end up getting a partially complete zip…

I too have seen onedrive do this to people who aren't super-heavy computer users. Onedrive is a menace.

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#29

[flagged]

>Cloud Storage being enabled by default is not abuse,

I disagree, taking my data without explicit permission is stealing and abuse.

>If you don't want OneDrive, uninstall it

I heard if you do that, it gets reinstalled. Is that true ?

> you are seeking to be able to uninstall Edge without hackery

Per people I know. using Firefox you will be constantly nagged to use Edge. I never used Windows so I do not know if that is true.

Taking my data sounds to me Microsoft is abusive. I liked M/S in the early DOS Days, but left when they started doing border line illegal things to grab market share. I say people using Windows should move elsewhere too.

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#30
From the WinUtil screenshots presented in the article I'm absolutely shocked about all the things that you presumably want to turn off or delete to have a "clean" Windows (to some extent if that's possible at all). It's also ridiculous that you need an external tool to easily disable/remove/uninstall every single thing you don't want .

I haven't used Windows since many many years ago and the few times I sit down to interact with someone else's computer I suffer so much that after a few seconds I simply give up, I can't stand anything about it.

If someone were to use Windows, besides WinUtil, are there a set of recommended open source scripts to clean up all the shit out of a fresh Windows installation?

Just to be aware in case of emergency or extreme need...

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