Technology

59429 readers

3058 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

995

Windows 11 Start menu ads are now rolling out to everyone (www.theverge.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

425 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Microsoft is starting to enable ads inside the Start menu on Windows 11 for all users. After testing these briefly with Windows Insiders earlier this month, Microsoft has started to distribute update KB5036980 to Windows 11 users this week, which includes “recommendations” for apps from the Microsoft Store in the Start menu.

Luckily you can disable these ads, or “recommendations” as Microsoft calls them. If you’ve installed the latest KB5036980 update then head into Settings > Personalization > Start and turn off the toggle for “Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more.” While KB5036980 is optional right now, Microsoft will push this to all Windows 11 machines in the coming weeks.

Microsoft’s move to enable ads in the Windows 11 Start menu follows similar promotional spots in the Windows 10 lock screen and Start menu. Microsoft also started testing ads inside the File Explorer of Windows 11 last year before disabling the experiment and saying the test was “not intended to be published externally.” Hopefully that experiment remains very much an experiment.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago

Yeah I think we're in violent agreement to an extent

as I said in my last graf, if it's effectively changing the user agreement, absolutely not ok. But if it's a shitty product to begin with, then I'm just not going to buy it in the first place.

So yeah, Windows doing shitty things for users who have already paid for the product is definitely not cool. But for all users going forward to have a shitty experience? That's... shitty, yeah, but I personally don't think it should be illegal?