3 ms·

I'm going to make a few statements here to address the parent and children; but let me put the normal disclaimers here: I ONLY can speak for myself, I do not s

I'm going to make a few statements here to address the parent and children; but let me put the normal disclaimers here: I ONLY can speak for myself, I do not speak for MS or any of my coworkers. Simply put, the sort of behavior implied (vote brigading) doesn't mesh with my understanding of how I or any of my coworker/HN reader peers tend to behave. I could be totally off the mark with this but it just doesn't mesh with the culture I've been exposed to. More relevantly however, and more in line with how I typically approach HN threads regardless of topic, let me try and pose a more "occams razor" explanation: MS has been gaining a lot of positive press lately. The tech community WANTS to see our biggest entities succeed and "do good". We hate seeing suggestions that a "new convert" to the good side might have changed face again. Realizing that a company can do both good and "evil" simultaneously is a degree of mental dissonance I don't often see handled "cleanly" so to say. Long and the short; I am not happy with the forced upgrades. I am still using 7, and would be rather irked if they broke everything for the sake of forcing through content I do not want. However, I do tend to attribute much more naïve explanations for the patterns we're seeing, over some sort of PR conspiracy. There was a wonderful quote a while back, "we're not organized enough to be that evil" :) I don't mean to be any sort of MS apologist in this, my comment is entirely directed at the discussion regarding some degree of astroturfing, if I got asked about my opinions on the updates, well, that's a whole can of worms on its own and the remaining comments in the thread seem to speak to the resounding sentiment in that respect.

shostack 11y ago
Out of curiosity, are you an engineer there? If so I'm wondering how close you are and how much visibility you have into the marketing and PR side of things over there. This strikes me as the kind of thing that engineers might be kept in the dark about, but some PR agency somewhere may have outsourced something like this and done so in a way as to provide plausible deniability. A quick googling shows this wouldn't be the first time MS has resorted to astroturfing [1]. So while I don't doubt the sincerity of how you or any of your immediate coworkers/HN reader peers tend to behave, I think the facts speak a bit more clearly to the possibility of other parts of the MS organism being willing to do this sort of thing. [1] https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=microsoft%20astroturfing https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...
- existencebox 11y ago
  I am, yes. My visibility has shifted depending on different orgs I've been in (I've been in orgs where I'm entirely disconnected from the PR side of things, and in others where I get regular mails from the marketing teams); I read some of the links on the search you provided but they seem to denote "what I'd expect", a worst case where a vendor goes too far in accomplishing a PR objective, and while it's plausible that this is ongoing (as you say, I CERTAINLY don't know what totally distinct marketing teams on contract are doing) I'd note one thing: That in the well documented occurrences in the past, it's typically been the more "standard" sort of native advertising dark patterns that are becoming prevalent. I don't say this to excuse it in the least; but to say that I tend to see "patterns" even in the more questionable actions of a given entity, and even when I looked more deeply in said googling I didn't find many concrete occurrences of that sort of truly grassroots astroturfing. Enough accusations to raise an eyebrow for sure; but I'd point out a few things on that as well: in some of the well documented cases, MS has come forward and accepted accountability for the occurrence. While this could absolutely be a post-factum face saving, the cost/benefit of enacting those sorts of campaigns seems misaligned, at least to my eyes, that I'd be hard pressed to think of any of the Marketing/PR people I've met taking that sort of risk. Again, there could certainly be degrees of separation, and as you accurately state I can't in any way speak on that. My main goal was just to speak to the best intentions and actions of the peers I've had the opportunity and privilege to work with.
capabit 11y ago
> I am still using 7, Was in a similar boat as you, until a new build more or less forced me to use 10 (motherboard only had USB 3. yes, you can slipstream drivers into a 7 installer - but when I tried this, the machine kept bluescreening to high heck). After a few months, I'm perfectly fine with it. Don't get me wrong, there are problems - but there have always been problems. The two competing but not quite feature matching control panels for example. I also turned notifications completely off, as they were all for trivial BS (in my case). But overall, I am now just as happy as I was on 7.

shostack 11y ago

Out of curiosity, are you an engineer there? If so I'm wondering how close you are and how much visibility you have into the marketing and PR side of things over there. This strikes me as the kind of thing that engineers might be kept in the dark about, but some PR agency somewhere may have outsourced something like this and done so in a way as to provide plausible deniability. A quick googling shows this wouldn't be the first time MS has resorted to astroturfing [1]. So while I don't doubt the sincerity of how you or any of your immediate coworkers/HN reader peers tend to behave, I think the facts speak a bit more clearly to the possibility of other parts of the MS organism being willing to do this sort of thing. [1] https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=microsoft%20astroturfing https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...

existencebox 11y ago
I am, yes. My visibility has shifted depending on different orgs I've been in (I've been in orgs where I'm entirely disconnected from the PR side of things, and in others where I get regular mails from the marketing teams); I read some of the links on the search you provided but they seem to denote "what I'd expect", a worst case where a vendor goes too far in accomplishing a PR objective, and while it's plausible that this is ongoing (as you say, I CERTAINLY don't know what totally distinct marketing teams on contract are doing) I'd note one thing: That in the well documented occurrences in the past, it's typically been the more "standard" sort of native advertising dark patterns that are becoming prevalent. I don't say this to excuse it in the least; but to say that I tend to see "patterns" even in the more questionable actions of a given entity, and even when I looked more deeply in said googling I didn't find many concrete occurrences of that sort of truly grassroots astroturfing. Enough accusations to raise an eyebrow for sure; but I'd point out a few things on that as well: in some of the well documented cases, MS has come forward and accepted accountability for the occurrence. While this could absolutely be a post-factum face saving, the cost/benefit of enacting those sorts of campaigns seems misaligned, at least to my eyes, that I'd be hard pressed to think of any of the Marketing/PR people I've met taking that sort of risk. Again, there could certainly be degrees of separation, and as you accurately state I can't in any way speak on that. My main goal was just to speak to the best intentions and actions of the peers I've had the opportunity and privilege to work with.

capabit 11y ago

> I am still using 7, Was in a similar boat as you, until a new build more or less forced me to use 10 (motherboard only had USB 3. yes, you can slipstream drivers into a 7 installer - but when I tried this, the machine kept bluescreening to high heck). After a few months, I'm perfectly fine with it. Don't get me wrong, there are problems - but there have always been problems. The two competing but not quite feature matching control panels for example. I also turned notifications completely off, as they were all for trivial BS (in my case). But overall, I am now just as happy as I was on 7.