[ethbr1]

Do I trust Microsoft, in its current/recent form, to implement this feature, including the ways it is likely to evolve?

No.

Even if it's built in a fully-local, privacy-first manner, I have no confidence it will stay that way.

Microsoft has shown itself again and again to prioritize turning Windows into an ad platform, over sound technical decisions.

Why would this be any different?

[mrinfinitiesx]

It won't be any different. My guess is they'll pull some stunt like Mozilla is with the Anonym with the PII removed to send data over to further turn Windows and Office 365 in to more of an ad platform.

I could be ignorant. I could be paranoid. I could be wrong. I want to be wrong.

But I don't think I am. And you aren't either. That's what's scary.

[bsmartt]

i think you are wrong. they are trying to convince the average consumer that they need this new laptop with special hardware because they have exclusive magical features (read: OCR) like windows recall. theyre making it intentionally exclusive and locally computed specifically to brag about new capabilities.

[ethbr1]

Today.

And when this feature exists on all machines, and Microsoft has access to the codebase, you don't think other portions of the company will pitch a "+X revenue if we just used it for Y" re-use of the existing data?

Most of Google and Apple's recent user-hostile decisions can be traced directly back to too much potential revenue to refuse (ad tracking data, app store lock-in). Microsoft isn't immune to those same strategic marketing pressures.

Some data is too tempting to use for evil, that the only sane approach is to ensure there's no centralized manner to access it at scale.

[bsmartt]

i mean... no one is going to convince you of anything if youre speaking of some hypothetical future possibility. But at least acknowledge theyve improved on security. Defender is included with windows, theyve been steady shipping significant and effective protections like device guard and smartscreen. and maybe you hate edge, but it unquestionably better than IE. i can't defend the heavy marketing and ads in windows 11 other than to say power users can disable that shit entirely. If that isn't good enough, then i think youre right and probably won't ever be one of their customers. thankfully there are other choices though :)