Technology

59390 readers

2569 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

996

Windows 11 Start menu ads are now rolling out to everyone (www.theverge.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

425 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Microsoft is starting to enable ads inside the Start menu on Windows 11 for all users. After testing these briefly with Windows Insiders earlier this month, Microsoft has started to distribute update KB5036980 to Windows 11 users this week, which includes “recommendations” for apps from the Microsoft Store in the Start menu.

Luckily you can disable these ads, or “recommendations” as Microsoft calls them. If you’ve installed the latest KB5036980 update then head into Settings > Personalization > Start and turn off the toggle for “Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more.” While KB5036980 is optional right now, Microsoft will push this to all Windows 11 machines in the coming weeks.

Microsoft’s move to enable ads in the Windows 11 Start menu follows similar promotional spots in the Windows 10 lock screen and Start menu. Microsoft also started testing ads inside the File Explorer of Windows 11 last year before disabling the experiment and saying the test was “not intended to be published externally.” Hopefully that experiment remains very much an experiment.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[+] [email protected] -6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

You could also disable all this shit pretty easily too, for about the same amount of effort as getting someone acclimated to a new OS.

Every single bullshit thing these articles bring up, there's simple controls built into Windows to handle. Most easily through Group Policy with a Pro license, easily bought from an OEM license seller for $20 or just spoofed.

For this bullshit in particular: Settings > Personalization > Start and turn off the toggle for “Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more.”

[–] [email protected] 29 points 6 months ago

That's the thing, she's getting tired of having to do all that bullshit and then getting a lot of it reverted during an update. The annoyances are starting to outweigh the convenience. She's not dumb, she knows her way around computers and is well aware of methods to disable this crap.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

for every person that figures out how to disable this stuff, there are many thousands of others who don't, don't bother, or don't even know it might be possible to... which is why they pull this shit in the first place--and (usually) get away with it.