Ahh, HN. I come for the articles but I stay for its cringe-worthy commentary.
What botnet? Take off your Tinfoil hat.
No need to get agressive, i just don't like microsoft forcing their telemetry stuff.
Calling it a botnet is meant to highlight that it's MS who is ultimately in control and a machine running W10 obeys them before the user.
If we're going for accuracy, it should probably be called spyware.
Spyware would be accurate if it was just the telemetry, botnet is correct since Windows Update essentially acts as a C&C system.
They report every executable you run to check against a malware database. If you're using any software that isn't licensed or have cracks, those get reported too. This occurs even if you turn off all the reporting on the initial account setup.