Wednesday, April 24th 2024
Windows 11 Now Officially Adware as Microsoft Embeds Ads in the Start Menu
Microsoft over late-Tuesday started distributing the KB5036980 optional update to Windows 11 users, which effectively makes the operating system adware (software that displays ads to support its author). The update gets the Windows 11 Start Menu to display ads in the "Recommended" section that suggests apps and games for you to download from the Microsoft Store, subscribe to Copilot Pro, etc. While the update is currently optional, the changes contained in it will be made part of next month's "Patch Tuesday" update.
This wouldn't be the first time Microsoft is advertising software, the OEM versions of Windows 11 can be customized by PC manufacturers to pre-install bloatware, or suggest apps or services for users to buy within the Start or Apps menus. You usually uninstall the pre-installed bloatware, and dismiss recommendations. Today's update is different, in that even the Retail versions of Windows (without the bloatware) start receiving ads. Luckily, these ads are not inescapable, you can disable them. Head over to Settings > Personalization > Start, and uncheck the toggle that reads "Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more."
Source:
The Verge
This wouldn't be the first time Microsoft is advertising software, the OEM versions of Windows 11 can be customized by PC manufacturers to pre-install bloatware, or suggest apps or services for users to buy within the Start or Apps menus. You usually uninstall the pre-installed bloatware, and dismiss recommendations. Today's update is different, in that even the Retail versions of Windows (without the bloatware) start receiving ads. Luckily, these ads are not inescapable, you can disable them. Head over to Settings > Personalization > Start, and uncheck the toggle that reads "Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more."
173 Comments on Windows 11 Now Officially Adware as Microsoft Embeds Ads in the Start Menu
No one needs to adapt to what corporations want, because all they want is money.
Edit: Also, lots of DLCs are optional. Do I need to spend £239.38 to get every single paint job and every single cabin toy in Euro Truck Simulator 2? Of course not, it would be insane.
When 12 is alive there probably will be a way to upgrade to it free again.
Yes, I agree that corporations want more and more... and we need to do what's needed to dodge that as much as we can.
On Topic:
In my own Win11 installation i have deactivated the recommended section of the start menu. I got that new update. But i didn't get that discussed advertising.
Strategically, it might help these companies with the next quarter or twos earnings, but medium and long term it'll be utterly destructive to their businesses.
So Microsoft adds ads, ok their software their wishes, I will remove it - problem solved.
People took a major dump on it, and then we eventually got a pretty decent Windows 8, and it evolved into a FREE W10 upgrade that went back to no nonsense, a vastly reduced Metro UI and more of a desktop experience while most of the touch-oriented bullshit was gone.
Our voices matter. Somehow in 2020 and onwards this new Gen Z social media infested crowd seems to think they can live in apathy and it'll all work out, or something. Just crying on social media every day is enough to them, they'll live in the illusion things change that way. Look at us being so invested in the social discourse... its hilariously short sighted, caught in the bubble as they are.
In the meantime though corporate realities encroach on them and they feel helpless, much like you seem to say, despite a history chock full of examples proving otherwise.
Let's look at gaming.
Did we not effectively kill pay to win by now? I think we did. Its an exception, not a rule to see that in games and where it does appear, its not exactly popular and it doesn't want to sell itself as pay to win, but rather 'a small bonus here or there'. Some % extra XP or gold. Barely anything that will allow you to destroy game enjoyment for others.
The lootbox is slowly moving the same direction, with several countries banning it altogether.
Now where do we see the most MTX-oriented games these days? Almost exclusively in the mainstream oriented, youngster crowd optimized dopamine cycle games. Gen Z and younger. They're falling for it hook line and sinker and have no perception of a world without this poison, until the penny drops and they start looking beyond that popular segment.
The bottom line is this: some people always choose the path of least resistance, lack the intelligence, or lack the motivation to do more. And then stuff escalates into a realm nobody wants to be in, people get a reality check, and start caring a little bit more. In the end: you care. We all do. Some just don't realize it yet, because the corporate truck didn't run them over yet. But it will at some point. The question is how deep of a rabbit hole you must climb out of at that point.
I simply do not subscribe to the idea humans have no agency or ability to make choices and decide the fate of the world around them. I do agree its an uphill battle though :) True. The problem there is the systems we live in. If you want to stop corpo getting bigger, you need to change the way our systems work, and the only way to get there is by voting for change.
Its not a business decision, its a political one that ties in closely with climate. I hope, sincerely, that the climate issue will become that problematic that we're forced to change, and effectively need to move to systems that thrive when we do less instead of systems that are built for growth. Everything gets bigger, not just corpo: the world population (even though there are signs it might stabilize in the next century, it won't be sufficient or fast enough), YoY global pollution and CO2 emissions... We have not managed to shrink anything yet. The energy transition is mostly today just a vehicle for more growth, because change is business and business must grow in our current perception. Everything has to 'make money' or its a bad thing to do in our current perception. In the meantime, all the things we care about that are NOT money, are eroding rapidly. That won't last. Its not a coincidence people started shooting all across the globe lately. We're starting to feel the squeeze.
I guess it's time to download the latest .admx files, update group policy, and go hunting for the stupid setting that disables this crap, org-wide. AGAIN.
F*CK YOU, MICROSOFT. When are the EU going to slap them with some more huge fines?
Two adds displayed in main screen, another add in Maps section, almost every other section features the same ad.
Search menu, Copilot ad comes back after each boot even if you dismissed it before.
Then there's the "Remind to setup Onedrive account" and all that. The constant requests to set default browser to Edge and so on.
They know they're awful
Not wanted
Are aging in dog years
And passing away after a quarter century (avg).
The trash takes itself out, just like Win11! (=゚ω゚)ノ Non-gamer detected. Literally everyone in my circles knows this arrangement as gacha. YUUUUUGE market. You know that's never going away. That is not some people. That is the human condition.
Oh, this thing with a bunch of meticulous moving parts or features works? Lets CHANGE that! (=゚ω゚)ノ
I mean this is a board for overclockers too...Every once in a while something happens. It's way too early for PL but every single one of these issues will not get any better. I've already yeet'd half the features from my tablet just setting up Win10 again and am still running into runaway threads, junker Atom CPU pinned 100%, excessive memory leaks and randomly dying on the charger again. I know with this CPU alone I'm asking for it but even at 4GB ram it should behave better than this.
Under Win11 the problems straight up explode. Not brave enough to try that again unless I start dumping WinPE to disk as a permanent boot copy and under these conditions I'd really rather not.
What i prefer is a more unified look that Win11 has, what i prefer is to run less 3rd party programs to get functionality and look that i want.
If you dislike constant change then no one is forcing you - go back to XP. You have zero change even with updates.
To me it sounds paranoid to "avoid constant change". ALL software changes to some degree all the time, not just the OS. Oh so now we're talking about some sort of "apple infused" corners. I did not know Apple invented round corners. Like i said XP, Vista and 7 all had rounded corners. Win11 merely returned to those. I wont bother arguing corner radius or such nonsense with you here. I have zero problems with information density in Win11. I run 27" 1440p at 100% scale. Win8 never got "pretty decent". 8.1 remedied some of the complaints but it was too little, too late. Win10 was a bugfest when it released on 2015. I moved to it in 2019 due to new hardware that no longer properly supported Win7. Then in 2023 i moved to Win11.
2004-2006: XP. Hated it. Hated the kids toy look and colors.
2006-2009: Vista. I had a very powerful system at the time so i had no problem running it and i quite liked it.
2009-2019: 7. By far the best one. I skipped 8 entirely and 10 by four years.
2019-2023: 10. It was ok but like XP i never really liked it. I only moved to it due to hardware requirements.
2023-????: 11. Ok so far after nearly a year of use. I get some of the criticism and have some of my own but overall i like it far better than Win10.
Can't wait for the "Harder! Stronger! More powerful org..." ads in my OS.
I think everyone is missing this little piece of information Its optional and can even be turned off if you install it. Or, ya know, uninstall it.
And unfortunately it also turned people into elitists who would spend hours ranting about every single bad thing in it when something they think it's "awful" is mentioned...
Also you missed this:
Dont launch Edge? If you launch any browser that is not the default, it will ask you if you want to make it the default.
Even after all that Edge Update remnant remains in the list of installed programs and cannot be removed. I swear they have made me hate edge like a piece of malware despite the fact that i dont even use it.
I would be indifferent to it, if it simply existed as preinstalled program that could be removed and did not run at startup by default.
If you are referring to center icons then these can be relocated back to the left with a simple change in personalization settings. The popups i assume refer to the notification center?
I have been using Win11 nearly a year, and not once have i felt like something has been moved (added/removed) so drastically that i felt things were "out of place".
I am only half-switched to Mac because of games. But maybe someday.
Runs as smooth as Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 did on my PC except HDR runs better and I can now use RTX HDR too which requires WDDM 3.1.