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by jevgeni 2311 days ago
You are deliberately conflating ads and suggestions. I don't see them and haven't seen them the 3 years I have my Surface Book with Windows Pro. Honestly, I don't remember what I did: either deleted the shortcuts or turned something off in settings. Maybe you should do that?
1 comments
alxlaz 2311 days ago
> You are deliberately conflating ads and suggestions.

Really? What's the difference? When I see nice, red, highlighted text saying "Try out the new Edge browser", should I think of it as "just a suggestion"? How is it different from one saying "Try out the new Coca-Cola"?

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jevgeni 2311 days ago
Well, as far as I remember, the suggestions in the start menu for me were implemented as .LNK files. Although I might be mistaken there, since I've encountered those years ago and never since. Obviously, in contrast to your experience, where by some mysterious, unfortunate circumstance and surely through no oversight of your own, you seem to be struggling with suggestions and/or ads (who knows which?) in your system on a daily basis, even though you seem to have a Win 10 Pro system.

In my experience, those links weren't intrusive, they weren't detrimental to my experience and I could get rid of them once and for all. And I'm pretty sure .LNK files don't track you if you don't call them.

So to answer your question, I draw the line at opt-out functionality.

But since you are so committed to materially correct use of words, you still have to explain your "astroturfing" comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22398478.

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alxlaz 2311 days ago
> So to answer your question, I draw the line at opt-out functionality.

Great! So any idea how you can opt out? Last time I've seen one of these "suggestions" was one or two weeks ago, when I ended up with a big red "Still using Firefox? The new Edge version is here" entry in the Start menu.

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jevgeni 2311 days ago
Settings > Personalization > Start and set the “Occasionally show suggestions in Start” setting to “Off”
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alxlaz 2311 days ago
Fair enough, that one comes through the suggestions channel., which is opt-out
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jevgeni 2310 days ago
The commitment to FUD and aversion to googling stuff was impressive, I have to admit.
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