https://www.xda-developers.com/microsoft-wipes-out-evidence-of-real-ads-in-windows-11-start-menu/
Microsoft has backtracked on real ads in the Windows 11 Start menu.
People want companies to stop trying to exploit them in every little way.
We can be satisfied by respecting us and treating us as customers, even when advertisers are throwing money at them.
And that's what Microsoft has apparently done in this case, yet it's being spun negatively anyway.
Because they didn't come out saying they won't enable ads. They just quietly renamed the toggle to say something else, and that is shady AF. Why are you trying to spin it positively?
Give it a few more months and ads will be back. They dropped us in boiling water and expected us to just accept it. Microsoft will just slowly boil us next time.
It’s not about the current state of their OS, it is about the corporate attitude to users.
Microsoft are treating users not as valued customers purchasing a product, but as a resource to be manipulated and sold off to the cheapest bidder.
They may have backflipped on actual ads in the Start Menu, purely due to user backlash, but they still have game/app/bullshit recommendations and reinstalled garbage, unless you are a windows sysadmin and know jo to use a Profile Editor.