Tell them "you may only refuse to answer this question 3 times a year".

It's totally worth self hosting files, it's gotten much better.

Almost feel like we are getting to class action or antitrust when you connect the dots. Almost all PCs come with Windows. Defacto you need to create a M$ account to use Windows locally. They opt you into one drive by default. They sync your docs by default. They upload all your photos into AI by default.

I assume this would be a ... call it feature for now, so a feature not available in the EU due to GDPR violations.

How hard it to turn it on? Does it show a confirmation message?

My wife has a phone with a button on the side that opens the microphone to ask questions to Google. I guess 90% of the audios they get are "How the /&%/&#"% do I close this )(&(/&(%)?????!?!??"

To prevent you from having the option to temporarily disable it, so you have to choose between privacy and the supposed utility

> When you turn it off, they have to throw away the index (they'd better be doing this for privacy reasons), and then rebuild it from scratch when you turn the feature on again

This is probably the case. But Redmond being Redmond, they put their foot in their mouth by saying "you can only turn off this setting 3 times a year" (emphasis mine).

Agreed, in practice for me there's no real issue.

But that's not necessarily true for everyone. And it doesn't need to be this way, either.

For starters I think it'd help if we understood why they do this. I'm sure there's a cost to the compute MS spends on AI'ing all your photos, turning it off under privacy rules means you need to throw away that compute. And turning it back on creates an additional cost for MS, that they've already spent for nothing. Limiting that makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is that I'd expect virtually nobody to turn it on and off over and over again, beyond 3 times, to the point that cost increases by more than a rounding error... like what type of user would do that, and why would that type of user not be exceedingly rare?

And even in that case, it'd make more sense to do it the other way around: you can turn on the feature 3 times per year, and off anytime. i.e. if you abuse it, you lose out on the feature, not your privacy.

So I think it is an issue that could and should be quickly solved.

If this is the true reason, then they have made some poor decisions throughout that still deserve criticism. Firstly by restricting the number of times you can turn it _off_ rather than _on_, secondly by not explaining the reason in the linked pages, and thirdly by having their publicist completely refuse to say a word on the matter.

In fact, if you follow the linked page, you'll find a screenshot showing it was originally worded differently, "You can only change this setting 3 times a year" dating all the way back to 2023. So at some point someone made a conscious decision to change the wording to restrict the number of times you can turn it _off_

> If you don't want the face recognition feature, then you'll turn it off once.

The issue is that is a feature that 100% should in any sane world be opt in - not opt out.

Microsoft privacy settings are a case of - “It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.”

Well, sometimes Microsoft decides to change your settings back. This has happened to me very frequently after installing Windows updates. I remember finding myself turning the same settings off time and again.

Assuming this reasoning is accurate, why not just silently throw a rate limit error and simply not reenable it if it's repeatedly switched on and off?

I wonder if it's possible to encrypt the index with a key that's copied to the user's device, and if the user wants to turn off this setting, delete the key on the server. When they want to turn it back on, the device uploads the key. Yes, the key might end up gone if there's a reinstall, etc.

If the user leaves it off for a year, then delete the encrypted index from the server...

The difference is whether you get locked into having it on or having it off at the end.

Yeah it is legitimately hard to avoid Google, if nothing else some of your emails will probably be leaked to Gmail.

But Microsoft is pretty easy to avoid after their decade of floundering.

I think the EU is flawed in more ways that just one. But every time I see „<AI feature> will be available starting now outside EU“ I am really grateful

And not just advertising. If ICE asks Microsoft to identify accounts of people who have uploaded a photo of "Person X", do you think they're going to decline?

They'd probably do it happily even without a warrant.

I'd bet Microsoft is doing this more because of threats from USG than because of advertising revenue.