It’s full of ads for Edge, OneDrive, Office and some more of their own services, and then it’s automatically installing and wasting the space you paid for on Candy Crush and other games, even if you tune the Start Menu so you don’t see the tiles.

I understand that you don’t see it if you don’t look but you certainly are paying for it.

I come across various Windows 10 machines and see Candy Crush adverts, Office 365 adverts, OneDrive adverts, Lock Screen adverts. I believe some have even documented adverts showing on File Explorer (!)

I did notice a subtle ad on a coworker's laptop once. I am a bit afraid of what happens if their Windows revenue goes down.

Also, they do operate on the other spectrum of this continuum, Windows 10 collects a lot of data, for what I presume is user tracking for ads & co.

Just as a logged in now it presented links to msn articles on the login page. Yes: it was really nicely and tastefully done but it really worries me.

I've also had the login background turn into an ad for a game.

That time I and a number of others reported it quite loudly IIRC and since then I can't remember seeing anything like that before today.

And yes, ads in the start menu are real as well.

I noticed ads on the lock screen when it was set to Windows Spotlight.

I can't edit anymore. It's probably because I live in Eastern-Europe, they don't target this region. Yet. Yikes :)