[HN Gopher] Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users i...
___________________________________________________________________
Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for
storage?
Author : jpmitchell
Score : 120 points
Date : 2026-04-09 21:09 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lzon.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (lzon.ca)
| selectively wrote:
| Cloud Storage being enabled by default is not abuse, and the
| vibecoded slop from a YouTuber that is unwisely recommended in
| that blog post makes a bunch of negative changes to Windows
| installs, including disabling specific security policies.
|
| If you don't want OneDrive, uninstall it. That's available in all
| regions, for all users.
|
| If you are seeking to be able to uninstall Edge without hackery,
| forcibly enable Digital Markets Act mode. This is done by
| copying/pasting powershell.exe into the same folder it normally
| is (to bypass the User Choice Protection Driver), running it as
| admin and punching in:
|
| Set-ItemProperty -Path
| "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Control
| Panel\DeviceRegion" -Name "DeviceRegion" -Value 0x0000044
|
| Open Control Panel and you can uninstall edge. Bing will show up
| as a thing you can uninstall in Settings - Apps. Non-Microsoft
| Inbox apps will not download, Copilot will not download, etc. Ads
| will not show up. The user selected default browser will be
| respected. Laws: they work!
|
| Enabling DMA mode is massively safer than running some YouTuber's
| slop script.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| >uninstall it
|
| Go tell all our parents to navigate that process. Microsoft is
| _very_ insistent on their using onedrive.
| selectively wrote:
| Open the screen where you remove apps and click the uninstall
| button.
| ijk wrote:
| Show _me_ how to uninstall it, because I 've tried and
| failed.
| dev_l1x_be wrote:
| p99.999 user meets p50 users reality. If you don't like this
| post on HN close the tab.
| selectively wrote:
| When an awful post gets botted to the top of HN and I see it,
| I will call out the awful post if I so feel like it.
| asdefghyk wrote:
| RE "...Cloud Storage not enabled by Default ..."
|
| The issue is that Microsoft is moving users files to its cloud
| with out explaining to people CLEARLY what is happening. And
| getting their customers agreement. And this deception, in MY
| OPINION is obviously by design , meant to grow their cloud
| storage revenue thru upgrade offers
|
| If Microsoft was doing it properly, it would be CLEARLY
| explained to customer what was to happen and getting their
| agreement. to store files in cloud.
|
| Having used computers , since late 70s, Microsoft has a very
| long history of dodgy actions for their own benefit and at
| detriment to customer
| selectively wrote:
| OneDrive seems pretty clear to me. It works identically to
| the way the same functionality works under macOS.
| Fabricio20 wrote:
| I dont know if it works like macOS since I dont use macOS -
| but it's not a simple copy-to-cloud. It actively replaces
| file handling in those folders, which breaks a bunch of
| applications like games that save stuff in Documents/My
| Games..
| selectively wrote:
| The way iCloud Desktop works is that it uploads your
| stuff to the cloud, using your iCloud Storage quota.
|
| The way that OneDrive works is that it uploads stuff to
| OneDrive, using your Microsoft 365 storage quota.
| wtallis wrote:
| Is the "Desktop & Documents Folders" sync option in
| iCloud on by default? I've never used that feature, and
| it's a bit buried so it's hard to enable accidentally,
| but I haven't set up a new Mac from scratch in a long
| time so I don't know if it is a trap for new users the
| way OneDrive is.
| selectively wrote:
| It is on by default as of the last time I went through
| new Mac user setup, which was during....Sequoia, I think.
| Fabricio20 wrote:
| Somewhat related but I was talking about the OneDrive thing
| yesterday with a few non-tech friends and it has backfired so
| many times it's insane. OneDrive seems to take over the folder
| handling in windows for some reason, instead of just copying
| the data to the cloud. Any game you play puts stuff in My Games
| under Documents and you just installed windows? Yep, its gonna
| sync your entire FFXIV patch files into the cloud, that's 180gb
| of patches as the launcher downloads the game. tmodloader? Yep
| and then it's going to fail to launch the game. Skyrim and
| Starfield save data? Yep. Literally had to help someone
| troubleshoot that yesterday and the fix is just to uninstall
| OneDrive so the folder becomes a normal folder again. Had the
| ffxiv issue myself and the funniest part was getting a
| notification from microsoft to update my storage plan because
| it was full... I dont think people would be so much annoyed by
| OneDrive if it worked like other sync apps that just.. copied
| your file to the cloud. And maybe if it wasn't an annoying pop-
| up when you installed windows and didn't set it up (if we
| logged in, just set it up automatically and dont bother the
| user), etc..
| asdefghyk wrote:
| RE Uninstalling Edge. There will likely be some unintended side
| effect - is my experience
| selectively wrote:
| Nope. This is an officially supported function, required
| under law. Edge WebView remains present for functionality
| that requires it.
| sonzohan wrote:
| Your ad hominem attacks aside, The point the author is trying
| to make is that Microsoft is actively using dark patterns in an
| operating system to get them to buy things.
|
| If you simply disable OneDrive without correctly uninstalling,
| the system will blast notifications at you with an ominous
| warning "You could lose data your system isn't backed up!"
|
| PowerShell and most CLIs are terrifying to non-technical
| people. Literally Here Be Dragons. The layperson might be
| skeptical of a YouTuber telling them to run a dodgy script, but
| in the age of "delete system32" people sure as hell aren't
| going to run a command as admin that a user on a random forum
| recommends they run.
|
| Stuff like this is why I have moved all of my systems except my
| gaming PC to Linux.
|
| Edit: no seriously look at this notification https://learn-
| attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/f5907... Grandma
| absolutely does not understand what that means, She just knows
| she doesn't want to lose photos of her grandchildren.
| asdefghyk wrote:
| RE "....If you simply disable OneDrive without correctly
| uninstalling, the system will blast notifications at you with
| an ominous warning "You could lose data your system isn't
| backed up!"....."
|
| The implication here is, OneDrive is backup . It is NOT. Moe
| Microsoft dodgyness ....
| jmclnx wrote:
| >Cloud Storage being enabled by default is not abuse,
|
| I disagree, taking my data without explicit permission is
| stealing and abuse.
|
| >If you don't want OneDrive, uninstall it
|
| I heard if you do that, it gets reinstalled. Is that true ?
|
| > you are seeking to be able to uninstall Edge without hackery
|
| Per people I know. using Firefox you will be constantly nagged
| to use Edge. I never used Windows so I do not know if that is
| true.
|
| Taking my data sounds to me Microsoft is abusive. I liked M/S
| in the early DOS Days, but left when they started doing border
| line illegal things to grab market share. I say people using
| Windows should move elsewhere too.
| fhn wrote:
| Yes it is. You start your brand new computer and put files into
| it only to find out all that is stored on their Cloud without
| your consent. That's literal digital theft and fraud.
| Bratmon wrote:
| Email scammers often make their initial emails intentionally full
| of red flags to automatically filter out anyone smart enough to
| avoid the scam, and leave them with a pool of people willing to
| accept any amount of scummyness and abuse.
|
| Windows is the exact same thing but for operating systems. If
| you're still using it in 2026, it's because you want to be a
| mark.
| dijit wrote:
| 99% of people don't choose their OS.
|
| They buy "a laptop" and it has an OS on it.
|
| Or they go to work and are provided "a computer" and have very
| little say (or ability to change) what it's running, even if
| they had the impetus, know-how and knowledge that other things
| even exist.. you're always running the risk that things will
| break for you.
|
| This is the moat Windows has. Not Games like people think,
| that's a stronghold for sure, but _Gamers_ are inconsequential
| when compared to the amount of business computers and consumer
| systems people buy.
|
| Chromebooks were the answer for most consumers, but damn, that
| business moat is basically damn-near unkillable, especially in
| Scandinavia. (I'm currently subject to it myself).
| Bratmon wrote:
| Exactly! They've gotten very good at mark-identification over
| the years.
| fl4regun wrote:
| For real, the tools at my workplace either all work on linux
| already, or we just do most of our work on AWS linux VMs over
| VNC anyways, but our laptops are all windows. I'd rather have
| debian or fedora or whatever on my laptop but IT doesn't
| care, and they already have everything set up on windows. My
| laptop doesn't even matter, it basically only needs access to
| a web browser and it would be fine.
|
| The gaming moat is ever shrinking, at this point it's really
| only for games that explicitly choose not to support linux
| (very few in number), or have decided that kernel based anti
| cheat is the ONLY one worth using (few in number but some can
| be quite popular). Single player games have been working
| great for me for many years now, but I don't play stuff like
| apex legends, league, valorant etc.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| if using windows in 2026, it might be that you are leveraging
| the device driver maturity while running your favorite Linux in
| WSL2.
| mehdibl wrote:
| So to free up space you delete folders instead of moving your
| familyvphotos that you don't have backup.
|
| Can we stop a bit this all evil Microsoft fault?
|
| And the author have a solution. Yeah those headline are buzzing.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I had a similar issue. I ended my O365 subscription. Outlook kept
| complaining I had exceeded my free storage, which surprised me
| because I've never used OneDrive for anything, and my email
| storage was well under the limit.
|
| I deleted a ton of useless emails anyway, but that didn't fix the
| problem. Somehow I had more than 25 gigs of space being used on a
| cloud system I'd never used, tied to an email account which
| supposedly needed less than 500 Mb of storage.
|
| Eventually after a lot of searching I discovered the magic page
| that gave me direct access to OneDrive's actual storage - which
| was not, somehow, the page that gave access to the files.
|
| OneDrive was storing a lot of attachments, and deleting emails
| and clearing the trash didn't delete them.
|
| Or something like that. Whatever the magic words were, I did
| eventually find them and fix the problem.
|
| But it took a while, I had to resubscribe for free for a month to
| make it happen, there was a lot of confusing side information
| online suggesting I should open a ticket (good luck with that on
| a consumer account) and generally it Just Didn't Work.
|
| I can imagine people resubscribing for another year just to make
| it all go away.
|
| This has been my lifelong experience of Microsoft - shockingly
| poor, contemptuous, or downright stupid interface design, Kafka-
| esque indifference to the user experience, and constant unwanted
| friction and complication, around a suite of core consumer
| products that are mediocre to start with.
| asdefghyk wrote:
| My Suspicion - Microsoft would have put lots effort into their
| cloud storage trickery - it would be an enormous revenue item .
| ....
| asdefghyk wrote:
| I'm surprised their has not been a class action here, about how (
| unskilled , mainly ) people are tricked? / Forced ? into using
| cloud storage.
| fhn wrote:
| I'm all for suing MS but you're suggesting suing because of
| personal ignorance? The forced use of email for setup is
| probably sue worthy but I'd rather people just stop using MS.
| kn100 wrote:
| I got caught out by exactly this, and I'm not exactly tech
| illiterate. what made it even more annoying is by the time I'd
| realised what had happened, it was practically impossible to get
| the files back out of OneDrive (since I decided that this was
| enough Windows for me, and went back to Linux), since the webui
| does NOT handle downloading lots of small files well, and you
| just end up getting a partially complete zip file. I gave up in
| the end as nothing in there was particularly important. This is
| an incredibly annoying default.
| kn100 wrote:
| Oh and another fun thing! I eventually just emptied the
| OneDrive so Microsoft would stop bothering me. This was maybe
| six months ago or so. Microsoft confirms I am storing nothing
| there. Just a week or two ago I got yet another email begging
| for money because my OneDrive was apparently full. It was a
| genuine email, I went as far as checking the headers for
| SPF/DKIM. When I signed into onedrive, still empty!
| antonvs wrote:
| I suppose if you're not paying them, your storage limit is
| zero, so if you have zero bytes there you've reached max
| capacity.
| lumiukko wrote:
| I wouldn't use the webui for that. Getting rid of onedrive in
| favor for a self-hosted nextcloud, I used the native client to
| download all the files on the machine and then moved them out.
| This also removed them from onedrive after acknowledging the "A
| lot of files have been deleted from your onedrive account"
| warning. Actually deleting the onedrive application was also
| not as straight-forward as some other users may want you to
| believe. Even now, I'm not sure it won't just pop-up one day
| once again.
| Morromist wrote:
| I too have seen onedrive do this to people who aren't super-
| heavy computer users. Onedrive is a menace.
| fhn wrote:
| you mean Microsoft is a menace. Microsoft has been tricking
| generations of people into using OneDrive. I hope nobody is
| dumb enough to pay for it and I'd create a ton of fake emails
| and fill it up with junk.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Microsoft constantly tries to trick[1], annoy[2] and
| coerce[3] users into using their software.
|
| 1: https://www.theverge.com/23935029/microsoft-edge-forced-
| wind...
|
| 2: https://www.cloudcomputing-news.net/news/microsoft-
| tries-to-...
|
| 3: https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/windows-system-components-
| defaul...
| cromka wrote:
| I had same exact experience with macOS and iCloud. macOS by
| default enables offloading Documents to cloud, transparently.
| Problem is if you try to get those files back to store them
| offline, it gets very tricky very quickly with ambiguous
| verbiage and lengthy process that you never actually know
| status of. I ended up _losing_ some files as a result, which
| came as a total shock to me. I was already in the process of
| moving back to Linux (hence downloading of the Documents) and
| this was final straw.
| jmcphers wrote:
| Google is no better. My family mostly uses iPhones, and on a big
| extended family vacation, I suggested we use Google Photos to
| create a shared album to document the trip. Everyone installed
| the Google Photos app on their iPhone so they could contribute...
| which resulted in all of them _having their email accounts
| disabled_.
|
| What happened? Google Photos on the iPhone backs up all your
| photos by default, and, like Microsoft, Google "shares storage"
| between email and photos. The minute Google Photos was installed,
| it started backing up photos until the paltry free tier was
| reached, at which point it disabled the associated gmail account
| since it was "out of storage".
|
| Talk about an anti-pattern; I spent a good chunk of time on that
| trip helping people get their storage back so they could send
| email again.
|
| I'll never recommend Google Photos to anyone ever again.
| dwayne_dibley wrote:
| Drives me insane that to see my existing Google library and
| shared albums I must allow Google photos access to my phones
| photos - at which point it turns auto back on.
| antisthenes wrote:
| It also doesn't help that Google's free tier (15GB) is
| laughably small in 2026.
|
| HDD capacity and Google's profits grew many-fold since that was
| last increased (in 2012-ish?).
| bsder wrote:
| Apple does the same thing with iCloud. I had to go through a
| lot of hoops to get my wife's photos back down locally on the
| computer.
| OptionOfT wrote:
| Apple also by default backs up your apps to the cloud.
|
| But it backs up the WHOLE package / folder / whatever
| terminology they use, including cached and redownloadable
| data. So if you have a game that has 10GB of cached data, it
| WILL upload that. Edge for me was >3GB.
|
| And then they have the following user-hostile 'features':
| 1. They offer a paltry 5GB. Hasn't changed since inception,
| but app sizes have ... tripped? I have 2GB of health data
| now. 2. They don't tell you that you're backing up
| data that can be retrieved elsewhere. 3. The popup
| when storage is full shows only 'buy more' or ignore (no
| link/mention to disable individual app like described above)
| 4. No way to backup to a NAS 5. No way to backup to a
| computer automatically. You have to provide you passcode
| every time.
| kccqzy wrote:
| The Apple backup strategy is purposefully broken. I'm
| already paying for 50GB of iCloud and it often claims that
| it cannot backup my iPhone despite having multiple
| gigabytes free. It turns that that during the backup
| process it operates on a file level, so if you happen to
| have a large file it will require both copies of the file
| to fit within your storage limit before the backup can
| complete. And guess what, several third party apps I use
| store all their data in a single multi-gigabyte SQLite
| database that's written to every day.
|
| As for cached and downloadable data, I have long ago turned
| off backups for many apps where the data is stored on a
| server anyways. Backing up these apps never makes any
| sense.
| debugnik wrote:
| > it started backing up photos until the paltry free tier was
| reached
|
| How could _everyone_ fill their 15 GiB quota when IIRC by
| default it only backups the camera roll with lossy compression?
| Also I 've never heard of accounts getting _disabled_ for
| filling the quota.
| devindotcom wrote:
| Same thing happened to me and it did not default to lossy.
| Days later I got the "you will stop receiving email soon"
| warning in Gmail.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Disabled in the sense that you can no longer receive email
| (which for many is the primary purpose for a Google account),
| not that you can't login.
| dijit wrote:
| FYI I am notoriously bad at taking photos (as is constantly
| explained to me by family and my partner) and my Phone has
| 130GiB of Photos and Videos on it as we speak.
| devindotcom wrote:
| Happened to me too, almost identically. Clearly this is a
| pattern across the major consumer cloud app/service providers.
| liendolucas wrote:
| From the WinUtil screenshots presented in the article I'm
| absolutely shocked about all the things that you pressumably want
| to turn off or delete to have a "clean" Windows (to some extent
| if that's possible at all). It's also ridiculous that you need an
| external tool to easily disable/remove/uninstall every single
| thing you don't want .
|
| I haven't used Windows since many many years ago and the few
| times I sit down to interact with someone else's computer I
| suffer so much that after a few seconds I simply give up, I can't
| stand anything about it.
|
| If someone were to use Windows, besides WinUtil, are there a set
| of recommended open source scripts to clean up all the shit out
| of a fresh Windows installation?
|
| Just to be aware in case of emergency or extreme need...
| geophile wrote:
| From perusing reddit, I see some Windows users tempted to
| consider Linux, often because of Windows 11. But then, many of
| them won't move because: it doesn't work just like Windows; there
| is some Windows application they must have, or maybe they just
| don't want to learn the alternatives. Or they use
| word/excel/powerpoint and have to interact with others who do
| also.
|
| The brainwashing, high tolerance for pain and misery (and
| expense!), and lock-in makes it close to impossible for ordinary
| computer users to escape.
| bsder wrote:
| > maybe they just don't want to learn the alternatives. Or they
| use word/excel/powerpoint and have to interact with others who
| do also.
|
| If they're on Office 365, they could be on Linux.
| reddalo wrote:
| Linux Mint is super easy to use. I've personally battle tested
| it with my elder parents.
|
| Given all the nagware present in Windows 11, I'd even say Linux
| Mint is _easier_ than Windows.
|
| The most difficult part is probably the installation itself.
| scorpionfeet wrote:
| Not if you are coming from windows and are not a tech nerd. I
| don't want to end up being tech support for some non techie I
| coerced into Linux. It is nowhere near as seamless as zealots
| like to believe. Been having this discussion since 1997.
| p_ing wrote:
| > The brainwashing, high tolerance for pain and misery (and
| expense!), and lock-in makes it close to impossible for
| ordinary computer users to escape.
|
| Or opposite of the house, the arrogance and presumption.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| This is part of a broader, financialization-related push across
| the entire economy to convert one-time-purchase revenue into
| steady, predictable, ratchet-able recurring revenue.
|
| As an added bonus for them, they can sell laptops with less
| storage (= fewer chips in this tight market) with the expectation
| that the customer will store everything in the cloud, with plenty
| of overage fees.
| carodgers wrote:
| I don't use Windows at home. What happens if you don't have
| Outlook but your personal local files still fill up OneDrive
| storage? Do you get error messages that files aren't being backed
| up? Are you unable to save files?
| cute_boi wrote:
| even if you remove one drive in next update it will be installed
| automatically.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| > Microsoft is actively hostile towards its users.
|
| No shit.
|
| And I see some of the same pattern with Apple now, for instance
| by default files on iOS get downloaded to the iCloud. And phone
| get backed up too, same as photos. It just happens that the free
| 5gb of iCloud storage is slightly not enough for all this shit,
| and you quickly get a pop up showing you that you must purchase
| an iCloud subscription.
|
| I know that work because my mother almost fall for it.
| to11mtm wrote:
| I long ago learned to pay the 2$ a month or whatever the hell to
| just have 1TB of storage and remember to keep my user account
| drive small enough where I never hit the amount.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-04-09 23:00 UTC)