Of course it is. It's invasive by design. The "recent tweaks" were because of backlash, but now that's died down
this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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I am surprised by how rabid the Recall backlash continues to be compared to similar features elsewhere. Apple's equivalent, in particular, seems to not be a concern to anybody. I don't have anything Apple, so I'm not sure if they ever rolled this out, but they sure announced it to a whole bunch of crickets.
In fairness they’re not the same thing - recall records everything you do making a nice single honeypot of all your actions. Apple’s thing is really just a search bar that can reach into apps like email, calendar, etc - it’s not recording your bank logins. Google Play Services tracks everything you do on Android and sells it to advertisers.
It's a centralized search that can dig through your activity cross-platform and parses it through a centralized AI. Whether the data is stored in a log or as screenshots is a difference, but not as big of a difference as people make it out to be. It just feels intuitively weirder because one is humanly readable and the other one isn't.
To be fair, that's my takeaway from a lot of AI backlash. A whole bunch of it is people finally getting an intuitive grasp on activities that big data has been doing for years or decades and it finally clicking into shock because they can anthropomorphise the inputs and outputs better.
No wonder the techbros have lost their intuititon for what will trigger backlash. In many cases they've been doing far worse than those things with zero awareness or pushback.
Don't worry, Microsoft is bringing semantic search to Windows too. That way you can have the worst of both worlds.
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Interesting, I hadn't seen news about that Apple feature before... There seems to be a lot more press around Recall, which in turn amps up the amount of consumer attention and backlash.
That said (and I wouldn't want Apple's "semantic search" even if I had an Apple device), I'd still trust Apple more to manage the dataset securely compared to Microsoft. The Apple ecosystem is far more strictly controlled, whereas in Windows it's more of a free-for-all (most people just used XP as an administrator, the UAC could be easily disabled on Windows Vista and 7, etc.). Especially with Microsoft's move to put advertising in Windows 11 and complete lack of security measures in the initial version of Recall, it is very hard to trust Microsoft in this regard.
that’s because “Apple Intelligence” is nearly 100% vaporware
And there's new rumours they'll give up and get Gemini
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It is a stereotype but Apple diehards seem to go along with whatever Apple pushes, and people who don't like them don't use them anyways. Meanwhile Windows and Linux seems to have more people who are nitpicky about what they use, so group that tends to complain is going to be complaining more loudly about the OS they use would be my guess.
I do think you have a point about how Apple users tend to live with Apple choices while everybody else mostly ignores them. I think this manifests in less of a taking sides thing. Linux activists definitely root against Windows, sometimes more than they root for Linux, and they certainly don't put the same amount of energy on Apple hostility.
I think this is wider than that, though. Linux and Apple users aren't nearly as focused on their own quirks and foibles, but everybody loves to dunk on MS. Not that I don't, necessarily, but sometimes the difference in attitude jumps at me.
It's not just them, either. There's a subset of companies, like Epic or Mozilla that get this a lot. It's more so in gaming circles (EA! Ubisoft! Activision!) but not just there.
Linux activists definitely root against Windows
That is at least in part because Windows has actively undermined Linux for years, and the older ones of us also remember M$ killing OS/2 (&Novell on tge server side) and learnt our lesson not to trust them even when it looks like they're playing nice
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It also probably helps that it is easy to ignore Apple and there might not be a feeling of missing out for those who don't care for the Apple ecosystem. As big as Apple is it is kind of niche in the sense that a Windows or Linux user can just ignore its existence and not feel affected.
But, when it comes to Windows there's lot of mainstream software, games, and even hardware compatibility that is affected by Windows dominance. Stuff like wine and proton being needed and not getting the same video card driver support leads to more resentment Windows actually having offerings people who tend to complain want.
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Nobody acturally expects privacy from Apple, if you use an Apple device they know Apple has all your information.
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on purpose. they announce something absurd, so people get mad, and they step down to something they wanted anyway (and even pass the impression they are listening to their users opinions)
The worst thing about it is, even if you switch to Linux for privacy yourself, you'll also need your friends to switch as well, otherwise if you message them on their desktop, they're a liability, as the damn recall will be there too, leaking your data.
It'll be hell for activists.
Funnily enough, Signal has circumvented the issue by marking their chat window as DRM content, making it invisible to Recall.
Lol
They used the invasion of privacy to destroy the invasion of privacy?
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The same has been true of email for years, but less bad. Activists will need to be even more careful in who they trust.
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Um, the core feature is privacy invasion. It does what it says on the tin.
It's fine if some people want that functionality, as long as it's not enabled by default.
One could argue that it's a feature that could be done on-client without sending to a server. Or with its server component doing nothing more than syncing with E2E encryption.
I have zero interest in Recall, but I thought it was already done on-device? IIRC it always was that way, which is why it's only available on new computers containing dedicated "neural coprocessors" I believe was the term.
Now given that it's closed source, you have to trust that they aren't silently sending data back to themselves - which is where my problem lies, I don't trust them in the slightest.
You can verify that nothing is being sent back by watching network traffic. I guess they could hide it in update packets, but thats pretty unlikely.
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Part of why i knew so-called "digital rights management" was fucking bullshit was because very little software ever came out that empowered me to manage MY OWN rights in the digital space.
I need there to be FOSS applications that allow me to root-level BLOCK applications from perceiving what I'm doing, to just fucking SANDBOX ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING BY DEFAULT and let me whitelist what specific things are allowed to directly access the hardware.
Sadly I am not as tech savvy as I used to think I was. I might've been technologically clever twenty years ago but I hadn't managed to keep up... I think what I've described might be referred to as a "hypervisor"? And I'm told it's an overbearing, clumsy, heavy-handed overkill measure that would be difficult to implement and make everything a pain in the ass to do. So ... shit, man, I dunno... i'm just so damn tired of my hardware being bossed around by people I didn't authorize.
I prefer the term Digital Restrictions Management.
Qubes OS ?
Maybe it's time you invested some time in finding alternatives that let you stay in control of said hardware. I know time is in short supply for all of us, so consider your priorities.
A "hypervisor" is more applicable to servers than anything else, but I agree with you on everything else. That first sentence, man... Big companies get DRM for their property, so where's my DRM, y'know?
Fucking maddening.
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Yes.
Worth it.
Honestly it's what drove me over the edge. I'm on endeavorOS and it has been great honestly. Would recommend 👍🏻
I've disabled windows update completely so I can pick and manually dl updates. Never going to put that recall shit on my pc.
How'd you do that? I've made registry tweaks, group policy tweaks, etc and my windows machine still eventually hits a limit where it forces updates around the 12 week mark. Granted it's still longer than before, it isn't completely disabled.
At that point it's easier to install Linux.
I run Linux too, but I have to use windows for some contract jobs.
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I've disabled Windows completely so I can be safe and sound. Never going to put that shit on my PC.
-- sorry, it seemed funnier in my head.
What I don't understand, is what I would need and use it for? Never in my life I thought "damn if only I had a screen recording of everything I did 1 week, 1 month or 1 year ago". Like I don't get the use case, ignoring anything else. There is no use case.
I can view my terminal history and my recently accessed files. I have version control with git where I want and need it.
There is no use case.
So you’ve never wanted to find an article/headline that you vaguely remember seeing? Or a product that you looked at? Or a picture that you looked at?
There absolutely is a use case for full reachability of everything you’ve done on your computer. Git commits and terminal history and “recent” files list don’t even come close to providing the same thing lol
It's true that there's some usefulness in recollection, but geez I find myself digging through my browser history and being absolutely lost... whether it's an article, video, online store product, anything. Then I usually just re-search for whatever it was from scratch 🤷♂️
OK, so... where the hell is Recall?
I have a Copilot + device. I am typing this in one, in fact. Recall does not seem to be anywhere to be seen. They added a deployable Google Lens-style "highlight a thing for us to review" thing. It was so intrusive and easy to deploy by accident I got a pretty good notification that I should go turn it off. Maybe that was part of the Recall rollout?
Incidentally, this piece is... a bit weird. Not only is it an ad, but the concerns they seem to flag as still existing (presumably to sell you their security subscription) seem to be that there is no biometric unlock and just the system PIN and that they don't trust Microsoft on principle. The second is up to you, but the first doesn't really work for me. Not only is the PIN a valid override to biometrics across the board in general (Windows defaults to that when biometrics fails), but it's more secure on principle, since it can't be entered by accident or by force.
I just don't think the featue is particularly useful for how much potential it has for accidental misuse (even if they never see the data and they keep it entirely secure). It's not the only one of this class, or even Microsoft's first attempt at this (a similar feature shipped with Windows 8). It's certainly become more of a meme than anything else at this point.
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Another great reason to switch to Linux. Fuck this shit
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