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.

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!

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.

I wonder if rclone would have behaved any better than the web UI.

I too have seen onedrive do this to people who aren't super-heavy computer users. Onedrive is a menace.

After Onedrive uploads all of your data to the cloud without your consent it sets all files as online only. Meaning the file will not live on your computer unless you click on it, then it will download a copy of that specific file to your system.

If we didn't have criminals in our government right now I would think that this would be a huge anti-trust violation worth perusing.

Call it brainwashing or whatever. But the reality is that even one single popular app not working out of box is enough barrier preventing people from switching.

I've tried to convince people to use Linux. The conversation usually ended when they realize Photoshop isn't natively support Linux. And after many attempts, I ended up being converted to Windows + WSL.

For me the apps that don’t exist on Linux are Fusion360 (3d printing modeling) and OneNote (shared notebook with my non-technical wife that syncs to mobile). I also have zero tolerance for needing to tweak settings to make a game work on Linux. So I’m stuck on windows for now.

Every month I have to spend an hour fighting some new asshole behavior concocted up by some ambitious Microsoft product manager. The latest one was them adding Windows Store results to the start menu search. I use start menu search to launch applications and suddenly some games from the store started showing up when I did my usual searches. The only way to stop it was to uninstall the windows store entirely using a power shell command.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

Winhance for removing things like OneDrive and the option to KEEP them removed even if a future Windows Update tries to reinstall them. You can also save your configuration to easily get all your preferences back on a fresh Windows install. I use this instead of WinUtil (which I haven't tried yet... is there any way in which it is better?).

Windhawk for quality of life improvements if you don't like some of Windows's defaults. For example, I use it to have two rows on my taskbar and smaller icons (which was disabled in Windows 11), always open Classic Notepad instead of the new one (it loads much faster), and add multi-step "undo" to the Classic Notepad (the only thing I didn't like about it), among other things.

It was the need to do increasingly more post-setup configuration with each iteration of Windows after Win7 that finally pushed me to using Linux as my daily driver a few years ago. Especially when a few of these settings would get switched back to defaults after a Windows Update.

These days, the amount of background services that Windows runs just makes it feel as if Windows itself is increasingly malware. You don't need a virus present for modern day machines, with massive compute resources, to be bogged down and running like a 486 back in the day.

And that is just a fraction of what WinUtil does ...

It has been a while since I booted Windows, but I am fairly certain you can still circumvent the OneDrive nonsense (which is what the article is about) by setting up a local account. There are likely simpler ways, since Windows still has the concept of local file storage. That doesn't excuse the dark patterns, but it does highlight that we sometimes over complicate solutions.

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.

> The minute Google Photos was installed, it started backing up photos

Just to be clear: It will ask you before doing it.

If you refuse, it will ask you again and again and again. Sometimes with a slightly different prompt. Until you accidentally say yes.

But it does ask you.

Even though I agree with your overall conclusion that people should avoid google photos, this moment should also be a learning experience for your family to be more careful what they agree to. Popup fatigue is insidious, we all need to remain vigilant!

>I'll never recommend Google Photos to anyone ever again.

I try to pry myself away from Google. I've given up the Google Maps app, for the arguably slightly-less-worse Apple Maps. I'm now 95/5 Firefox/Chrome, but I still need Chrome for some things that simply do not work well on Firefox. Gmail is nearly impossible, if I had 6 months I might try to host my own email... but I don't even know how to avoid it. I can't NOT HAVE email, ISPs don't offer that as part of their internet service anymore. You can't host it without jumping through spam hoops meant to keep everyone but Gmail out of email. And I try to use DDG, but it's just abysmal compared to Google search in its heyday... even now, Google search is often slightly better.

All of it's just some tarbaby trap, and now that I'm stuck I can't get unstuck.

To be fair, Google sends out multiple emails notifying that you won't receive new emails unless you upgrade or clear things out. If they read their emails even somewhat regularly -- which I acknowledge isn't a given for many people -- they'd know what's coming.

Happened to me too, almost identically. Clearly this is a pattern across the major consumer cloud app/service providers.

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.

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.

    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.

> 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.

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?).

My Suspicion - Microsoft would have put lots effort into their cloud storage trickery - it would be an enormous revenue item . ....

I still have the old Win11 ISO that I used during my previous job. It still supported the 'oobe\bypassnro' command. I've read that Microsoft is phasing that one out in newer builds. I'll have to cling to that file with a death grip, lol.

I remember so many times offering to my customers a clean setup with a local account and automatic login. I can't remember a single instance of anyone preferring to log in with an MS account.

Same for me. It was slow but now I've fully joined the hate parade. I only use MS products as necessary to support my business.

I have no idea what happened. I literally just copy and pasted my post title for the submission. I assume there's some form of active curation going on. I've only recently started posting my content to Hacker News so I'm not sure yet.

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).

if using windows in 2026, it might be that you are leveraging the device driver maturity while running your favorite Linux in WSL2.

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

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..

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.

p99.999 user meets p50 users reality. If you don’t like this post on HN close the tab.

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.

RE Uninstalling Edge. There will likely be some unintended side effect - is my experience

>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.

>uninstall it

Go tell all our parents to navigate that process. Microsoft is very insistent on their using onedrive.

Lots of people are not tech savvy. It’s entirely believable that someone who doesn’t understand why their stuff is in OneDrive in the first place also wouldn’t understand that they could move data somewhere else to fix the issue.

Most people I know who don’t work in tech have 90% of their stuff sitting in their Desktop and the other 10% in Documents. These people don’t know how to create a folder named “c:\stuffidontwantinonedrive”.

Forcing a cloud login for a desktop operating system is arguably a dark pattern.

Defaulting to uploading all locally saved documents to cloud storage is ABSOLUTELY a dark pattern.

The prompts every few months to "change back to recommended defaults" that make it easy to accidentally get into this state even if you made the correct decision previously to turn it off is a hellish black hole of a pattern.

All three are intentional, not incompetent.

This particular case isn't a dark pattern, but the fact OSes are written under the assumption that users want to create an account for cloud services is.

(Yes, by this definition Google, Microsoft and Apple are all dark patterners.)

Selective incompetence for fun and profit:

Pricing mistakes which make the supermarket money are unfortunate but low priority. Pricing mistakes which cost the supermarket money must be fixed immediately.

The problem is that this incompetence is the result of (bad) choices by Microsoft's management. I'm not even talking about middle managers but the C-suite, who only care about satisfying shareholders, not about creating good working conditions or making sure the product is good.

It's pretty obvious that Microsoft is forcing their cloud services on anyone that doesn't actively fight back. Whether this is because they deliberately expect that they will dupe people into paying for storage they don't need or just because the cloud services team needs to hit their user KPI doesn't really matter much.