Now admittedly my workaround ended up being uh... Google Drive.
Despite stuff being placed on the drive, it decides to upload them and only have a cloud copy. I thought maybe it was me that caused this, then it happened to a family member overnight.
It’s painful.
Apple has something similar. One has to delete out of the hidden deleted items area — unless they want to wait a full month!
I then went and deleted more stuff, but my money would be on a reporting glitch than a malicious money campaign.
iPhoto does this the best. Its default is to upload every one of your photos to its cloud and delete the original from your phone. Then if you want it back, you can just click on the one photo you want and like magic, it's back on your phone. Want it on you PC? No problem. Open the web interface, click the one photo you want, and there's even a download button.
Want all your photos? Oh. Well, you can just click each one of them then click the download button.
I mean, sure, there's also this icloud app that will slowly download your entire photo collection into a single folder on your computer, slowing down the entire time before eventually grinding to a halt by the time it has put 10000 of your 250,000 photos into that folder. Of course, you can restart it, but it'll start again at the beginning.
But yeah, that's the business model. Put your stuff on the cloud, make it hard to get it back, charge you to keep it there.
Microsoft is just one of the companies that routinely does stuff like that.
So you are completely stuck if you have too many files. Like I had. I used to keep pictures on onedrive, and used 6 user license. When the license expired, they locked me out completely. I couldn't download my own files! And the web UI is a crap.
So had to pay again for a year, this time I backed up all files locally.
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...
The brainwashing, high tolerance for pain and misery (and expense!), and lock-in makes it close to impossible for ordinary computer users to escape.
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.
I have a long backlog of games that I finally have time to play, and for now they all just work on Windows. They probably 95% just work on Linux too, but it's that 5% that gives me pause.
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.
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.
Perhaps not. But it's still more seamless than Windows these days. Microsoft keeps lowering the bar.
Seriously, you don't even need to touch the terminal, everything is neatly organized in a single control panel (unlike the messy >2 control panels situation of Windows).
You can easily install all the applications you want; even games thanks to Steam and Proton.
It's easy to use, there are no ads, no preinstalled adware, no nagware, everything is fast and clean.
Let them cook...
> Linux Mint
Oh. :(
Mint is a steady distro like Debian is. It certainly hasn't changed much in the last 15 or so years. For better or worse, depending on your POV.
Modern beginner friendly distros are genuinely more user friendly than Windows nowadays.
Or opposite of the house, the arrogance and presumption.
(OK, what's even more stupid is IT departments who don't understand that onedrive has any problems at all, and insist on it and refuse to set up an actual backup system for user devices because 'onedrive will back everything up')
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.
With a 2 terabyte SSD I'm unlikely to ever run out of space.
Automatically opt in and make the settings deliberately vague and obtuse- companies that have FAITH in their product don't need to do this.
I suspect I'm just one of today's lucky 10,000 and everyone else here is already in on the joke, but I can't not share.
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...
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.
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.
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.
Me: "Can I do alphabetical and perhaps by creation time?"
Onedrive: "NO! Absolutely not! I will sort everything based on the last time you opened the document."
:|
Since I couldn't afford Apple at the time, I jumped into Red Hat years age. What a nightmare! But I didn't give up because it was kind of fun. A lot of folks didn't think so. Linux and Apple have made tremendous strides, of course, but if tech stuff is not your thing, you keep financing MS.
On this great site, there's a lot of complicated things discussed, some of which I admit I don't grasp. Many outside this sphere are mostly lost on any tech that is slightly complex, sometimes even if they are helped. One could argue, correctly, that they learn their smartphones and smart TVs just fine. These devises are computer like, but still not a computer. Changing people's minds on operating systems is as hard as politics and religion I've found.
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.
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 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.
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.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.
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.
HDD capacity and Google's profits grew many-fold since that was last increased (in 2012-ish?).
Only Mega offers more for free (20GB).
Microsoft offers 5GB.
Ente.io offers 10GB.
Proton.io offers 2GB (if you jump through some time-limited hoops, most of which defeats the purpose of using a privacy cloud, you get a whooping 5GB free instead)
Filen.io offers 10GB, but you can get 30GB if you do a similar dance to proton and spam your referral code everywhere.
So while I would say 15GB is pretty typical, I would not say it's competitive. I would say the competition died in 2013.
People designed "gmail-as-storage" apps to take advantage of this.
20 years later and we get a pathetic 15GB for mail, photos and everything else combined.
The limit used to cost a whole dollar of hard drive space (plus redundancy), sometimes more than that. If they kept that up with adjustment for inflation then 100GB would be the free tier today, not a $20/year tier.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...
Yes, because companies design products with dark patterns to ensnare users, it's not uncommon for people to win these kind of lawsuit.
> I'd rather people just stop using MS.
Ah yes, just like we're all going to stop using Apple and Google too. How about we have organizations that have teeth and protect the consumer
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.
By default, it saves to a OneDrive you never asked for and can never find. You can't permanently change the location of your saved documents-- just change it once, and the setting stays "forever", maybe, until a software update fucks it up for you again.
Auto-save is disabled if you're not using OneDrive.
Nobody asked for OneDrive. It makes it a goddamned nightmare to find your files. I was trying to make it easy for my partner to save their files to the same location every time, make it easy to find in the Finder, make it easy for mailing attachments. No such luck.
Also, there is no good way to download all photos and videos for backup. they have to be manually selected. the ui is super frustating. and since the storage is shared with email, emails are blocked due to this
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.
Fuck those guys.
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.
Microsoft has permanently lost me as a customer. Every friend and family member who listens will upgrade to something else.
Windows is remarkable in that it is constantly editing itself, revising terms of service without notice, nudging, cajoling, and end-running you and at every turn.
Update cannot be stopped, yet updater messages make it seem like you are initiating work and responsible for its successful completion:
"You're 90% there...",
"Don't turn off your PC",
"Something didn't go as planned, don't worry your data is safe",
which is eternally followed by "Welcome" lets arrange a few things...
Apple's dark patterns are far lower key as they supply the total stack, it's feels more custodial.
Linux if it says anything-- which it usually doesn't say much-- will say these changes are well-known to wreck things but you're at our mercy, them your system is put into some polluted state associated with a bygone era and all your config and data is your problem hope you're skilled at IT.
Just today we had a guy who got similar messages from one drive as one in the blogpost, and made the mistake of asking chatgpt about it. After renaming, moving, deleting and even doing regedit as llm instructef, some of the files went missing, some we managed to find.
Few weeks ago I had to explain over the phone how to setup windows without ms account, and we had to resort to turning off WiFi in the house lmao
Reading the article, I still feel the same way.
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.
We need to teach non-technical people that in this reality, a scam might come directly from the real seemingly "reputable" company.
> Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?
That Microsoft is employing dark patterns is neither surprising nor a question. Can you explain this gross departure from the actual title jpmitchell[1]? Here is the original for reference:
> How Microsoft abuses its users
This is much more interesting and accurate.
Separately from that: can you please stop posting so aggressively to HN? You've repeatedly crossed into personal attack. We ban accounts that do that, and I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. We can't have users throwing elbows like this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47526685 (March 2026)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47512697 (March 2026)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47512669 (March 2026)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47480879 (March 2026)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47434614 (March 2026)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47373748 (March 2026)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47342398 (March 2026)
All of those comments are in serious conflict with the intended spirit of HN, and unfortunately you've posted many more of those than I've listed here. In fact, it's been a problem for years:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31393023 (May 2022)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17832778 (Aug 2018)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11781469 (May 2016)
Not cool.
"Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
However, when we do that, we always try to find a representative phrase within the article itself. We try not to make up our own wording but rather to let the article speak for itself. In this case, we found this sentence:
> Microsoft is very obviously employing dark patterns in order to goad its users into paying for Onedrive storage
However, since that's also a provocative claim, we added a question mark at the end. This is also a standard moderation edit; it's basically shorthand for "the article argues for controversial claim X, but whether that's true or not is something each reader can decide for themselves". In this way the title that appears on the frontpage becomes more neutral, which is what we're going for.
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.
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).
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.
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
The way that OneDrive works is that it uploads stuff to OneDrive, using your Microsoft 365 storage quota.
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.
The implication here is, OneDrive is backup . It is NOT. Moe Microsoft dodgyness ....
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.
Go tell all our parents to navigate that process. Microsoft is very insistent on their using onedrive.
[Older family member] has gdrive AND onedrive running, she has no clue which is which and is terrified of removing either for fear of losing years of stuff. I have tried to break it down for her but she doesn’t know all her passwords, doesn’t know what is a duplicate, etc.
For me to fix this it would take days easily. Because for years onedrive was humming along and demanding more money to store more. I take a few cracks at it every year and make it better, but we’re so far from solved because it’s just so damn messy by design. And because I don’t know what matters and doesn’t, what is on which service, what she has backed up on random HDD’s, I can’t just start purging things. All of that is complicated enough without onedrive mucking it up further and constantly trying to scare her into buying more space. Transferring to a new computer is always a whole thing.
Can we stop a bit this all evil Microsoft fault?
And the author have a solution. Yeah those headline are buzzing.
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”.
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.
(Yes, by this definition Google, Microsoft and Apple are all dark patterners.)
Pricing mistakes which make the supermarket money are unfortunate but low priority. Pricing mistakes which cost the supermarket money must be fixed immediately.