It was not my intention to defend large corporations and their sleazy practices. I just wanted to say that the average user cannot be trusted with an easy optio

It was not my intention to defend large corporations and their sleazy practices. I just wanted to say that the average user cannot be trusted with an easy option to ignore updates, especially when it comes to security. Users will do things like ignore updates and then trash you on the internet or spam your support because the software no longer works properly with service xyz. We regularly hear about major hacking incidents where internet-facing software hasn't been patched for years. Things like this will give your company a bad reputation. I think the best compromise is to have automatic updates by default and a slightly hidden option in the menu to turn them off. If the user goes out of his way to turn it off, then it is his own damn fault, but if you make it too easy (like presenting it with every update prompt) you are courting disaster.