Microsoft will allow uninstalling Edge, Bing, and disable ads to comply with Act

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/microsoft-will-let-windows-11-users-in-europe-uninstall-edge-bing-and-disable-ads-in-eea-dma

by thunderbong • 3 years ago

161 68 3 years ago

windowscentral.com

ofslidingfeet• 3 years ago

*Only in regions where governments more responsible than the U.S. are forcing them to.

gumballindie• 3 years ago

Oh i see - brexit keeps delivering and the uk is still going to “benefit” from edge and bing.

But are they still going to collect people’s data and push ads on them?

Not that i’d care, linux distros arent in the spyware business.

wkat42424• 3 years ago

* Most Linux distros aren't.

North Korea even has one called Red Star OS. You can bet that has spyware.

deafpolygon• 3 years ago

You forgot Ubuntu. I doubt they've reformed much since the Amazon debacle- they're just looking for other ways they could.

mgerdts• 3 years ago

Will I need to move to one of these countries to benefit from this, or can I just visit?

That is, how long will I have to tunnel my traffic across the pond to keep this cruft uninstalled?

FirmwareBurner4• 3 years ago

Why not militate to your politicians and law makers to have your country also adopt consumer friendly legislation? Genuine question. I know using VPNs is a lot easier, but I feel like that's not the real long-term solution.

raincole2• 3 years ago

Most countries are not as powerful as EU. EU can do this and that customer-friendly regulation because they are a huge market that even MS and Apple cannot afford to lose.

sheepshear2• 3 years ago

Windows uses the region chosen by the customer during device setup to identify if the PC is in the EEA. Once chosen in device setup, the region used for DMA compliance can only be changed by resetting the PC.

https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2023/11/16/preview...

resoluteteeth• 3 years ago

So if you just choose a region in the EEA during setup can you benefit from this without any negative effects regardless of where you actually are?

theodric2• 3 years ago

It's ridiculous that it requires a law to make companies dial back the pushy advertising and user-hostility on a product the user has ostensibly paid for, but here we are

shiroiuma2• 3 years ago

If you don't like it, don't buy it or use it. There are alternative OSes that don't have these problems.

theodric2• 3 years ago

You're talking to me, specifically, or just the wind? I'm a Linux user who still owns a MacBook that won't be replaced when it quits. This doesn't affect me, but that doesn't mean I think everyone else who uses Windows because they have to, or don't know better, or aren't technical enough to deal with Linux, or don't have time to deal with its fiddliness and fragility, or aren't rich enough to buy a Mac should suffer.

wkat42424• 3 years ago

Of course but most people have no clue how to install an alternative OS. This law is not for us techies but for those people.

solarkraft2• 3 years ago

Oh, so I just chose one of the many equally compatible, usable and accessible operating systems!

"Just don't buy it" is inversely proportionately silly to how many options people have (and how educated they are about them). In this case they have 2 that are roughly similarly viable and the vendors of both are increasingly pushing their services.

Consumer protection has been invented because it has been found that consumers don't deserve some types of harm, even or especially if they haven't been able to educate themselves about it and the market hasn't been efficient enough to provide (viable) non-harmful alternatives.

pjmlp4• 3 years ago

Indeed, they have other problems though.

eviks2• 3 years ago

There are also alternative ways to effect change in addition to don't buy/use it.

Just like there are bigger issues with alternative OSes

maximus-decimus• 3 years ago

Sure, let me just tell my boss I now refuse to work on Windows.

ChrisArchitect• 3 years ago

[Dupe]

More: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38293303

alberth• 3 years ago

I’m surprised this isn’t getting more attention.

nacs• 3 years ago

Because it is only for certain European countries which leaves out US + UK.

If MS actually wanted to do the right thing, this would be global, not region locked.

FirmwareBurner4• 3 years ago

Ouf! UK consumers getting the short end of the stick again post Brexit.

psyclobe• 3 years ago

Man, this may make Windows a viable option; opens start menu, tons of mass shooting news articles... yeah nevermind.

dorkwood• 3 years ago

Just do what I do and never open the start menu.

hyperhopper• 3 years ago

Even aside from the hostility, it just lacks in usability. Every month I find myself frustrated at something it can't do.

Most recently: you cannot even change where notifications get displayed or their behavior.

What??? Why am I forced to have them in a place where they interfere with the input box for many sites that I use? In my arch install I have them in the center middle with a hotkey to dismiss one or all. And that's just a basic setup.

PhasmaFelis2• 3 years ago

How are you getting unwanted news articles in your Start menu? If I ever had that I removed it instantly, it's two clicks.

eviks2• 3 years ago

two clicks is too hard

Woshiwuja2• 3 years ago

2 clicks is too much. It should not be turned on by default.

garbagewoman2• 3 years ago

Clearly many people have a problem with it, and perhaps you aren’t understanding their reasoning

Joe_Boogz• 3 years ago

I the get the point of your comment, but the article does state that one of the proposed changes are that you can uninstall news and bing from the start menu / search.

mulletbum2• 3 years ago

Is Microsoft allowed to reinstall it after every update?

mock-possum• 3 years ago

Just remove the news widget if you don’t want to see it

People act like Windows is somehow the only software in the world that you can’t customize to fit your preferred usage /eyeroll

0xEF• 3 years ago

My own anti-Windows rhetoric and that of others I chat with almost never includes the sentiment that "Windows is somehow the only OS in the world you can't customize." On the contrary, it does have considerable flexibility.

No, what we don't like is the bloated, boggy UX, the built-in always-on spyware, and the product-on-rails BS masquerading as predictive features intended to ease use. It's the OS for the lowest common denominator, and we avoid it because of that.

raincole2• 3 years ago

OS is a bit different from other software.

"But iOS/Nintendo Switch/OS on your dishwasher..." ok there is a reason I don't use these as my desktop.

travoc• 3 years ago

I keep having to re-customize it after every update.

prmoustache4• 3 years ago

I don't understand how one can bear an OS where you need to start removing stuff before you can use it without suffering.

garbagewoman2• 3 years ago

Just remove it every time it unremoves itself too, whats the big deal!? /eyeroll

3seashells• 3 years ago

Sisyphos sure is a fool rolling up that rock, when he could reach the mountain top and just let go

firecall• 3 years ago

MS actually created a decent base UI for Edge.

But then whoever in the company ruined it by forcing awful start pages full of horrific news stories on new users.

Did they not understand what made Chrome and the simple Google homepage so popular?

MS seemingly can’t help themselves with the cheapening of every experience they present to users.

Working for MS as a dev must be so frustrating at times!

chfalck• 3 years ago

Just to raise awareness, you can absolutely disable all of this nonsense, they just make it a dark pattern to do so. Find the settings gear or however they disguise it and you can disable all news presentation. It’ll still show up if you scroll down, but uh… for your own sake just never do that

LeafItAlone• 3 years ago

Is the articles being about mass shootings vs some other subject part of the decision making?

xet7• 3 years ago

Will it be possible to disable all telemetry?

wkat42424• 3 years ago

Nope, the EU doesn't seem to have any issue with that unfortunately.

In fact they are trying to get a backdoor into our chats themselves.

Woshiwuja2• 3 years ago

They rejected the proposal

manuelmoreale• 3 years ago

There’s always the option to run a PiHole or even NextDNS and block telemetry at a network level. I know it’s not the same thing but still better than nothing.

FirmwareBurner4• 3 years ago

Just add these to your hosts file at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\

  127.0.0.1  data.microsoft.com
  127.0.0.1  msftconnecttest.com
  127.0.0.1  azureedge.net
  127.0.0.1  activity.windows.com
  127.0.0.1  bingapis.com
  127.0.0.1  msedge.net
  127.0.0.1  assets.msn.com
  127.0.0.1  scorecardresearch.com
  127.0.0.1  edge.microsoft.com
  127.0.0.1  data.msn.com

yourusername• 3 years ago

I've read Windows will ignore the hosts file for Microsoft's own urls. You will need to block them at network level.

solarkraft2• 3 years ago

Does the DMA still allow forcefully bundling services with purchases? If so, that'd be a big missed chance.

Reminder: It means that additionally to assuming the liabilities of a purchase you also assume the liabilities of renting, but lose out on most of the benefits of both: You pay "owning" price, but still have to rent the service, having to regularly pay and depend on the vendor doing well and supporting the product for it to be useful for you. They have a monopoly on the service and can thus do classical rent seeking in nearly unlimited ways. Many companies have explicitly announced that this will be their strategy going forward, so the problem will almost certainly grow bigger: What's the consumer gonna do? Return the device they already started to depend on? Get one of the many alternatives?Haha, sure! The potential for abuse is huge and the future for abusive companies bright. Not only will you own nothing, you will also still pay a big upfront price to not own things.

If there was a provision that forced interoperability between platform services (e.g. let me configure my own iCloud server), there would be a market and competition for these services, which would keep companies honest and mitigate a lot of e-waste.

Microsoft will allow uninstalling Edge, Bing, and disable ads to comply with Act

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