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

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

#101

Post by 4k0hz »

esseph wrote: post #90
reddalo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually tried a modern distro like Linux Mint? Seriously, you don't even need to touch the terminal, everything is neatly organized in a single control panel (unlike the messy >2 control panels situation of Windows). You can easily install all the applications you want; even games thanks to Steam and Proton. It's easy to use, there are no ads, no preinstalled adware, no nagware, everything is fast and clean…

> modern distro Let them cook... > Linux Mint Oh. :(

Modern != brand new shiny hipster thing. Unless you're a devotee of rolling release or unconvential things like Nix, Mint is not obsolete.

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

#102

Post by fg137 »

jmcphers wrote: post #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 Micro…

To be fair, Google sends out multiple emails notifying that you won't receive new emails unless you upgrade or clear things out. If they read their emails even somewhat regularly -- which I acknowledge isn't a given for many people -- they'd know what's coming.

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

#103

Post by 0x_rs »

Google Photos does the same thing, aggressively prompting the user endlessly until they give in. A solution to that is disabling the malicious application and installing Google's Gallery app instead, that possesses no ransomware capability from what I've last heard of it. Make no mistake: Google and Microsoft know very well this behaviour will lead to people subscribing to services they have, for the most part, no use for. It is therefore explicitly by design, deceiving tech-illiterate people threatening to delete files they never meant to upload.

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

#104

Post by rconti »

Office in the Mac is AWFUL about this.

By default, it saves to a OneDrive you never asked for and can never find. You can't permanently change the location of your saved documents-- just change it once, and the setting stays "forever", maybe, until a software update fucks it up for you again.

Auto-save is disabled if you're not using OneDrive.

Nobody asked for OneDrive. It makes it a goddamned nightmare to find your files. I was trying to make it easy for my partner to save their files to the same location every time, make it easy to find in the Finder, make it easy for mailing attachments. No such luck.

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

#106

Post by zb3 »

Thanks to obsession over KPI and metrics in general, we can no longer trust big tech corporations. It seems they've forgotten WHY you actually want to play fair, they can no longer be trusted.

We need to teach non-technical people that in this reality, a scam might come directly from the real seemingly "reputable" company.

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

#107

Post by trinsic2 »

lumiukko wrote: post #26
kn100 wrote: 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…

I have seen one drive silently reinstall itself, I think it does this as apart of an office365 update.

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

#108

Post by scorpionfeet »

surgical_fire wrote: post #85
scorpionfeet wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if you are coming from windows and are not a tech nerd. I don’t want to end up being tech support for some non techie I coerced into Linux. It is nowhere near as seamless as zealots like to believe. Been having this discussion since 1997.

I don't know the last time you tried - I made numerous attempts to migrate to Linux since 2003, until I finally made it for good in 2022. Modern beginner friendly distros are genuinely more user friendly than Windows nowadays.

I”ve been installing Linux desktops for decades (mostly Ubuntu, but in the day: Suse and RedHat, and Qubes, and FreeBSD and NetBSD, Nix, Arch, etc…) I always check out the latest LTS release of Ubuntu. I tried Mint and didn’t see a huge difference. Same sort of belly flops into the shell to make things work, but with a difference skin. It is not fundamentally different than any other distribution with a desktop in my opinion of staring at this for 30+ years.

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

#109

Post by mdavidn »

I recently helped my mother-in-law configure a new Windows 11 laptop. I knew Microsoft did this, I was deliberately looking to avoid OneDrive, and it _still_ burned me. It silently uploaded all of her personal documents that I had transferred from an older computer. I was livid.

Microsoft has permanently lost me as a customer. Every friend and family member who listens will upgrade to something else.

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

#110

Post by trinsic2 »

rcxdude wrote: post #95

What's also irritating is that onedrive will use some kind of 'smart' caching system to delete the local copy of a file. Which is all fine and dandy until you need said file when you don't have an internet connection. Explaining this to users is very difficult, they just know that something broke and usually when it was very important. (OK, what's even more stupid is IT departments who don't understand that onedrive…

After Onedrive uploads all of your data to the cloud without your consent it sets all files as online only. Meaning the file will not live on your computer unless you click on it, then it will download a copy of that specific file to your system.

If we didn't have criminals in our government right now I would think that this would be a huge anti-trust violation worth perusing.

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