[hashim]

I agree that in-OS advertising for a paid product is dumb, but a) I thankfully still use Windows 10 which doesn't have those, and b) those are ultimately UX concerns, not ethical. And no, Microsoft doesn't sell your data no matter how many in tech subscribe to that conspiracy theory.

[WD-42]

Last time I installed windows 11 in a VM I had to agree to at least 3, possibly more, un-skippable Eulas that required me to agree to share my personal information. Maybe they aren’t selling it outside of MS, but MS is such a giant company if they are using it for ads I don’t see the distinction.

[hashim]

The distinction is consent, and it's a pretty big one, because it's the difference between Microsoft sharing it among their services (they don't need to sell it to themselves) for the reasons outlined in the EULAs, and companies that aren't Microsoft using it for whatever reason they want. You can be assured they're following the EULAs because the consequences of not doing so would make them vulnerable to millions if not billions in fines if only one sufficiently motivated individual, like an ex-employee, leaked the evidence. More targeted (i.e. relevant) ads are really not the evil many make them out to be. Ads in a paid product are also not quite evil, but they are incredibly idiotic and a step backwards. Either way, makes no difference to me because at this rate it seems my next OS will be a Windows-like Linux distro anyway.

[WD-42]

I appreciate the nuanced and intelligent analysis of the situation. Admittedly I haven’t thought about it very deeply because as it appears you agree Linux has made operating systems commodity at this point, at least to moderately technical users, so I really see no benefit to using any MS OS at this point.