How Microsoft abuses its users

I want to tell the story of work I just completed for a client to illustrate how I feel Microsoft and other big technology companies are actively hostile toward their users.

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Story

I got a call from my neighbor and she asked me if I would be willing to help her husband with his laptop problem. As the proud new owner of my own IT services company, I definitely agreed to consider it.

I talked to my neighbor’s husband and immediately saw that he was not technically literate. I learned to identify types while doing IT work for my previous employer. This made it difficult to understand his problem, but through conversation we managed to understand what the real problem was that he was experiencing.

What he was seeing was that he was no longer receiving email in Outlook, and there was an error message claiming he had ‘out of available storage’, or some other similar nonsense. He’s a very light email user, and he knows it. He was confused as to why he ran out of storage. At first I too was confused.

Through investigation I found out that the Outlook email service uses OneDrive for storage All Messages and attachments. It had 5GB of available storage, the amount that comes with its free account. It’s still unclear why he was seeing that error message, there was no way he could have consumed 5GB of storage with just his email usage.

Not surprisingly, his OneDrive storage wasn’t filled with his emails, it was filled with personal files from his Windows 11 desktop. Did he configure Windows to save those files in his OneDrive directory instead of his local home directory? Not at all, it was done by default. Did he even know this was happening? Not even. He didn’t know this was happening until he saw that error message, which helped him greatly to ‘solve’ his problem by offering him a subscription to additional paid storage capacity on the account.

He easily managed to understand what was happening, at least starting to delete files from his computer to make the error message go away. I was never able to confirm with him, but I suspect he deleted files (including family photos) for which he had no other backups.

I will say clearly, this makes angry Me. This was not the first time I had seen this. I saw this several times while working for my previous employer. Microsoft intentionally broke a fundamental assumption about how files are stored on computers running Windows. They do this without asking the user, and without adequately explaining what they have done. Microsoft is apparently using dark patterns to induce its users to pay for OneDrive storage.

I’m a computer geek, and if you’re reading this you probably are too. We can change that setting without thinking too much, and we probably have a backup of our important data if recovery is necessary. I will tell you that many people are extremely utilitarian about their computer use. They use their computers only to the extent that they should to pursue their other interests in life. they too faith that their PropertyThe equipment that cost them hundreds of dollars is not worth the effort betray them Like a back-alley con artist.

This is not a game. My client isn’t a number on a spreadsheet, he’s just an increment toward reaching some useless KPI. She deleted family photos to try to make that error message go away so she could get emails again. He may not understand what happened, but he understands No Idiot. She suspected it was a scam to get her to pay for something she didn’t need, she just didn’t understand how this scam worked.

Correct

First and foremost, I took a complete backup of her data. I took out everything I could find locally on the machine, as well as everything from the OneDrive account, including the Trash. It wasn’t much, just a few gigabytes, which I transferred to a separate USB drive.

I carefully moved all the files out of the OneDrive directory structure and back into its home folder. Windows File Explorer didn’t make this easy or intuitive.

I proceeded to delete everything from the OneDrive account via the web interface. I noticed that deleting the files only moved them to the Trash, which was still counting towards total storage usage. I assumed this was another subtle dark pattern.

I suggested changing the settings as a way to solve it. The approach we often took with my previous employer was to disable OneDrive in the Windows startup list. In this case it could have worked but I had a better idea. Delete OneDrive completely.

I have muscle memory at this point on how to do it, if you’re wondering this is the process I used:

Open an administrator terminal and load Chris Titus’ WinUtil.

1irm christitus.com/win | iex

1. open tweaks tab
2. In the Advanced Tweaks section, select ‘Delete OneDrive’
3. Press the ‘Run Tweaks’ button

This completely removes the OneDrive application from Windows, including all integrations into other programs like File Explorer.

I then proceeded to delete everything including the trash from the OneDrive account. Eventually the error messages in Outlook went away and he was able to receive email messages again.

take away

I may be preaching to the choir, but regardless I want to use this post as an opportunity to make these points in my own way.

1. Microsoft is actively hostile towards its users.
2. They have become a basket-case of an organization, where chasing irrelevant KPIs has become more important than product quality, or even basic respect for their users.
3. The exact same thing can be said, to varying degrees, for every other major consumer-tech company.

I see this as a result of bad incentive structures. A toxic game theory that has been allowed to run for many years without proper investigation. The leftist in me might think this is an expression of late capitalism. If so it feels like we’re about 30 seconds away from midnight.

I think a lot about possible ways to alter said incentive structures, creating a choice architecture that might also stop the first step of the process that caused it.

Days like today, when I’m thinking about it real real The way this shit impacts real real People, I can’t ignore the humans in this loop. People really need to take responsibility for their choices, not just turn their brains off when the number looks right in a spreadsheet.

conclusion

Let me know if you enjoyed this post! Email me at mail@lzon.ca, or contact me through one of my social accounts linked on the homepage.