As much as I don’t like Microsoft, they are far from the first to create “updates” or “fixes” that have other crap bundled into them, and plenty of developers s

As much as I don’t like Microsoft, they are far from the first to create “updates” or “fixes” that have other crap bundled into them, and plenty of developers should be blamed for this anti-user practice. Still, it’s a shame. Technologically, near-instant software updates ought to be fantastic. In reality, developers have abused this power. And when there is abuse, you need a system that returns power to the users. For instance, an update protocol should probably use cryptography, with keys distributed across a web of trust that the user is part of. If the web of trust collectively distrusts an update (e.g. because several people had problems with updates signed by that key), it should automatically raise red flags for other users and not be installed automatically. For random 3rd-party developers, this would make it hard to push unwanted updates; and for big companies that don’t want to have a poor public image, it would be incentive to not push updates that aggravate a lot of users.