Next up, "Major television broadcasters spy on soccer players during Champions League games".
The alarmist headline is warranted, and the fact that it's common doesn't make it acceptable. I welcome more awareness of this kind of lopsided ToS that enables such user hostile actions.
You don't have a 'right' to use the services. So the answer to your question is "It depends if the service lets you, so 9/10 cases, no. Rightly so"
Edit : I can see a lot of people don't like this. But like it or not, right or wrong, that is how it is. Expecting anything else is just fanciful.
I don't have a Windows machine and didn't check, but I'm guessing it's a lot closer to the second than the first.
In principle I don't think anything is "wrong" with keeping a record of AI chat sessions, but you do need to know about it so you can modify your behaviour as you see fit (i.e. ask different questions). If there's a camera pointed at you then some might decide that the nose is best left unpicked and those balls will have to remain unscratched.
This is really the problem with a lot of these things: not that they're doing these things as such, but that it's so hidden and obfuscated that you need to spend an hour or more trying to understand it, and even then you only know what they "may" do, not what they "actually" do – a lot of these privacy policies are so vague and full of qualified language that they "may" do almost anything.
And even in recording conversations there's nuance. Is this recorded with your full account detail, or is that information stripped? Are all conversations recorded or only some? Etc. etc.
sounds nice
He'a referring to an idea that sounds nice in theory and doesn't work in practice.
It's a common English phrase.
And the phrase works well, the concept of informed concept sounds good in theory and never works in practice.
Anyone who has observed tech companies for decades knows they don't ask for your consent before they make any consequential changes. Tech companies do whatever they want until they get sued or regulated. It's always been this way.
Informed consent to me (take the example of a phone or many apps), based on the level I have to break it down to people for them to understand, is something like "we will see you whacking it to hentai, we will know when you take a dump, we have enough of your data to derive private information you never gave us, we have all the data necessary to totally ruin your life socially and economically, and it will all be leaked to criminals that will profit from your demise, dont worry though, we will give you a 1 year sub to mcafee antivirus as a consolation prize."
I think we can at least agree that ^^that happens to people. So, whos going to be the first company to not veat around the bush and just admit that reality? That, is why I say informed consent sounds nice, every company that can keep a skilled contract lawyer on payroll has an incentive to downplay their spying. I dont know in what version of reality informed consent could exist, because the incentive is fairly obvious.
That is often a crucial issue in these discussions around big tech, enshittification, and so on.
But "simply don't use Windows" is already a lot more tricky, because so much of the world runs on it. You and I can get away with just running Linux, but we're not normal people in this regard.
By analogy, consider mental arithmetic vs. electronic calculators and spreadsheets.
Being able to do mental arithmetic is an important skill, arguably the only way to have a profound and deep understanding of many things. At the same time, calculators and spreadsheets allow an individual to do things that just would be totally out of reach without these tools.
Some people argue that generative AI has already reached this point, and I think that's plausible in a few narrow domains. It's also plausible that the domains to which it applies keep broadening.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...
I strongly agree with you that this story is a nothingburger.
But as I note your reaction, I take a different interpretation. The implication that statements like "Microsoft spies on X" are truisms, is the news. We obviously all now accept as a given that these are tautologies.
In other words "Spies spy on X" -> (is to say) "Microsoft = spies", not just in this sentence/context, but in all contexts.
Terms, conditions, legality, illegality, hostility or friendliness all recede into irrelevance hereafter.