You seem to have a very confused view of the consumer role legally and historically.
Giving them money for a product does not give you a real voice.
Argue for that first. Otherwise you may as well argue you’re a stakeholder to a tree.
If no one enjoyed the shade of a tree, it wouldn’t cease to exist. If customers stopped paying a business, they likely would.
Customers used to have more choice, this made them highly valued stakeholders.
Before the era of permanent rolling mandatory updates and new releases customers (And IT managers) had to be convinced a new version had more value than the software it was replacing.
Windows Vista, DOS 4 And numerous other software failed to get traction because the value of new features was too low vs the pain points.
Now days the focus is on shareholder value not customer needs.
Locking in customers and maximising revenue is far more important than marking software better for the end user or IT teams.
I’d never be caught dead complaining about how I “got screwed over” by entering an arrangement I knew about up front.
I would complain about government deciding the way the world worked decades before I was born as if that’s how it must work forever.
You emit whatever syntax your limbic system pushes your cortex to supply motor agency to, what’s useful inside your little bubble.
I’ll argue in mine. Aside from time/place of our body, it’s all we can do anyway.
So, how many different word processors and spreadsheet providers does the EU bureaucracy itself use?
Lots of people complained. The EU did nothing. Truly - Microsoft office is as dominant as it ever was. It the EU has an anti-monopoly/dominance purpose, if MS Word/Excel/Powerpoint isn't its white whale, its hard to imagine what would be.
And the GDPR is being similarly defanged.
For GDPR you need to wait before you conclude, it is similar to laws that force companies to label the food and drinks, now the websites are labeled if they contained shit and how many tons of shit contain but some people instead of complaining that there is too much shit in the website they complain that the labels are too big and would prefer a cool shiny logo instead of informative text.
Did you even try to be honest? In no way Microsoft did ever prevent competitor browsers from being installed. Nobody forced, forces or will force you to use IE, no matter the EU. It was typical EU bureaucratic socialist bs, doing the thinking for the user and of course in the end just sucking rich American tit by fining because they create nothing and just want to run those who do. Just like Soviet Union.
Also, I don't need "Mother EUSSR" telling me who collects data/uses cookies and ruining overall browsing experience. It's funny how their efforts are actually counter productive, because it's near impossible to browse the net in private mode (the one thing that ACTUALLY prevents data collection, not the useless cookie agreement pop-ups).
So if I want to make a good video hosting platform I need to compete with Google, but Google is using their search dominance to offer YT for free so I can't compete fair with them. Same if I want to make an IDE or web browser, I am forced to compete with Chrome and Visual Studio Code, free stuff paid with money from other markets, so when all competition is killed you get the IE case where shit stagnates because there is no competition.