If MS had blocked these type of things people would be in here complaining about antitrust and MS is evil.
While the hate is valid in many cases, I've observed that the cribbing about it has also been unwarranted or unjustified a lot of the time (also no other corp is held to the same standard) - and this is a prime example.
MS cannot legally restrict third party kernel. Apple can, bc they didn't get struck down like MS did.
MS has an option to not bundle Defender with their OS, which would let them lock the kernel to avoid the anti-trust restrictions, but that would be an insane decision to make.
Damned if they do, Damned if they don't indeed
Our EU friends really enjoy having all the regs on everything... but then demand to be treated as-if the regs don't exist. It's amazing to see...
I work in big tech, and unfortunately we frequently need to have conversations about the smallest features because we have evidence about us giving users an inch and they taking a mile.