Don't most people consider automatic updates a feature? It's rare to hear someone say say "Boy, I really hate that chrome has automatic updates". And, if you don't like it, you can disable it. If he's referring to phones, my Linux (Android) phone automatically updates itself, and, if you recall the CarrierIQ debacle, the spyware features were disabled on iOS devices and enabled and some Android devices.

The term "back door" is misleading and deliberately inflammatory. The "back door" into windows that causes security updates to be installed by default saves people who don't obsessively download security updates from having actual back doors installed on their machines.

How does Windows spy on users? Is he talking about crash reporting or perhaps the malicious website tracking that some browsers now do, something that prevents actual spyware from being installed?

I use Ubuntu on two personal machines, and I really wish that it had a "back door" as nice as Windows Update. I've upgraded Ubuntu three times and it's broken software that I use daily every time. In one case, I had to recompile something from source, and in two other cases, I had to edit some obscure config file. I like free software, both philosophically and practically, but you're not going to win over users by telling them that features that make it possible for non-technical users to have a secure system are handcuffs.

I dislike this sort of demagoguery because it makes it harder to convince moderates. There's a guy like this at work; he makes it almost impossible to convince people of anything that's even similar to what he believes, because you have to first convince them that you're not a radical extremist before they'll listen at all.