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Comment by mg794613 | Hacker News Reader

My goodness, this has nothing to do with AI problems.

I don't understand that people still buy an OS from a company that actively hates it's customers.

The amount of things they pull should not even be succesful on a OS you get paid FOR to use.

Its not that it hates its customers , as much as it it a USA-based company that is run under the rules made by the administration.

Not that much different from running Red Star OS from North Korea, actually.

Well I will never ever buy something from Microsoft again because they do hate their customers.

I own an Xbox with an family account. Microsoft's account management is terrible. Their customer support is terrible (computer says no). Never again.

Exactly it is a legal requirement from lawmakers who either don't care or understand privacy implications to implement provenance metadata. California's act came into effect August 1 https://sd13.senate.ca.gov/news/press-release/august-3-2026/...

Microsoft is still the best Indian OS manufacturer. And as such, it's forced upon people throats by corrupt Indian IT department heads, so a few non Indian people who actually care don't have a choice.

You know, you're only supposed to drink the kool aid, not chug it by the gallon.

You never met anyone from the corporate IT?

Not that I love Microsoft, but they would get a lot of heat if they let anybody generate harmful content as well.

They can't win on that topic.

Now I would not want to appear to defend the mess they've created out of windows, that's not the point.

They have only themselves to blame for this. They've spent decades developing technology to spy on and micro-regulate what their captive customers can do with their property. Now that they have this technology, it's only logical that they be held responsible for misuse.

The only (and inevitable) solution at this point is for big tech to get micro-regulated like the banking industry. The same mindless greed that drove them to take control away from their customers will be responsible for the same control to be taken away from them.

Be careful what you wish for. I'm sure Microsoft and Google would love the kind of regulation we apply to big banks. It has become a moat that makes it impossible for other (snaller/foreign) financial institutions to compete because they don't have massive specialized regulatory departments.

The more complex the rules become, the more difficult it will be for alternative providers to exist, unless they have explicit carve outs. So far, with age verification and user id laws, there doesn't seem to be much appetite from politicians to create exceptions for open source and smaller projects. By comparison, in the US the regional banks have special exemptions for many of the really onerous regs, which is why they are still a bunch of them.

Oh I'm very away of the damage over regulation will cause to this industry and to humanity as a whole. I'm merely highlighting the irony. Humanity will never again have the kind of autonomy and freedom it enjoyed the past 50 years. We lost thanks to the unchecked greed of a few nasty players. What a shame.

You don't think that regulation would require everyone to embed watermarks and guids to make sure that nothing objectionable is being generated or created?

We'd be lucky if government stopped at this. General computing will likely end up be treated like cars and driving. Users and corporations will be highly restricted and over regulated. I don't want this but this is how it's going to go. I bet we will have fully lost our autonomy within the next two decades, sooner if AI gets misused or misbehaves in a significant way.

> Not that I love Microsoft, but they would get a lot of heat if they let anybody generate harmful content as well.

Nonsense. They let anyone draw any pic they like.

This has nothing to do with generating harmful content and everything to do with fascist surveillance. This is an OS level functionality that get utilized before AI even existed.

The guardrails that prevent generating adult/explicit/whatever content are a completely separate step. This has nothing to do with that.

This is a pretty privileged take, isn't it?

What's the alternative? What if you work at literally any Fortune 500 company?

"privileged take"?, sorry I am not from the US, so I don't compete in the sorry-o-lympics.

Nothing is stopping you from using it for free at home, everyone is privileged in that regard.

And it was obvious to everyone else, I was talking about decisions you can take yourself. I'll try better in the future to be hyper explicit about this, so people who are looking for a reason to feel hurt will have a harder time.

How many Fortune 500 companies require you to buy your own Windows laptop as opposed to them providing one?

Also, if your laptop is work provided, your laptop is going to have little to no privacy no matter what.

If you work at a company and it's a company device, then its not your privacy to worry about - you don't use your work device for personal matters, and the concerns are someone elses.

IBM, SAP, Capital One, GE, Cisco, Intel, Deloitte offer a Mac/Windows choice program. Better than just one choice, and arguably a bit better of a privacy record than MS (especially of late)

> I don't understand that people still buy an OS from a company that actively hates it's customers.

Do you really think this is a problem confined to those who buy the OS they use?

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