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.
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.
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.
that’s because “Apple Intelligence” is nearly 100% vaporware
And there's new rumours they'll give up and get Gemini
So was/is Copilot+ and Recall (seriously, how do I turn it on to test it?) and that didn't stop people.
Apple dropped a whole lot of vague shit that they “promised” would have some sort of holistic and on-device/private benefit to users if they pulled a full data profile of you together, kept it on-device, kept it secure, etc, etc.
Windows stealthed an update onto PCs that suddenly started capturing and processing unsecured screenshots of everything that users were doing without ever telling anyone why or what it’s for or how it would work. People found out that it was unsecured by looking in its unsecured folder. It wasn’t the same thing.
That said, obviously, Apple Intelligence is bullshit and doesn’t work or do anything of any use other than making Siri slightly prettier.
Your characterization of both of those events is inaccurate and aggressively framed in opposite directions, and I'm very curious to know why.
I mean, forget the MS bashing, go nuts on them. Why treat Apple any differently? Back in the day they at least were the underdog, but now? What's with that?
You asked, and the author of the article asked, by proxy “buhwhy no one mad at apple for same thing” and I’m saying they weren’t the same thing. Apple deserves distinctly different shit. It’s not only my “characterization,” it accords with reality, and is why the author and you don’t see people as mad at apple for doing a different, differently shitty thing.
it’s also funny how you can tilt an average lemmy user by somehow saying bad shit about MS and Apple at the same time, I guess
No, it's an argumentative take that underplays the issues with Apple's proposed implementation and overplays the issues with MS's.
Apple's semantic search stores what you do inside an app (via an API) and they offer a feature that records everything you do and feeds it to an AI.
MS's Recall was on their insider program, and then only for a subset of their devices, so not so much "stealthed" as up for testing. They always made the same on-device promises (and since the relaunch they also have encryption for the data). I don't like either implementation, but I don't think the discrepancy in reaction matches the discrepancy in implementation.
Note that it's not a MS vs Apple thing. Chrome and Pixel phones have or are planning some Recall-adjacent features, too, that nobody ever brings up.
I'm not interested in taking sides or having an argument about it, I'm calling out how atrocious MS's PR is and how surprisingly not atrocious Apple's is. I'd argue the Pixel brand and Samsung in general also get WAY too much of a pass.
I'm curious as to why. I mean, I know why, it's because MS sucks at managing their image and always have. I'm curious as to why they don't drag everybody else down with them. I genuinely thought for a moment Recall would be the death of onboard AI features looking over your shoulder, but it clearly wasn't. Apple's slow rollout seems to have much more to do with them being incapable of a good implementation with the tech that is available and much less with them having an image issue in this area.
Also, is Recall live? I keep asking. How do I turn on Recall in my Copilot + PC? Does anybody know? Has anybody here touched Recall with their fingers? I am getting really paranoid about the whole thing being a collective prank like Santa Claus.
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
Corporations aren't people. Brands aren't people.
I feel like in these online conversations where everybody is mostly just viscerally reacting to a headline people forget that a lot, and that worries me about as much as the underlying subjects of conversation.
I'll be honest, I'm about as exhausted with both sides of that argument. I use both Linux and Windows daily and I have zero patience for people parading out this type of train of thought. I care about what works and, for obvious reasons, I'd much prefer if the effective default was free and open source, but the "We root against Windows because it was mean to us" thing is a borderline non-sequitur as far as I'm concerned.
Setting aside the fact that legally a corporation actually is a person, there is such a thing as a corporate culture, and a corporate ethos.
Let's start with an old microsoft ethos: embrace extend extinguish
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
Now don't try to tell me I made it up, there's enough evidence for it to have its own wiki page.
Similarly there's FUD an approach they most certainly didnt invent but did an excellent job of weaponising to a fine art.
And so on and so forth. Those of us who have been around a while know the true shape of it, and that leopard has never changed its spots.
I got my MCSE on NT4 back when CNE was much more respected. I still work in IT so yes I too use both windows & linux, that doesn't stop me having a clear eyed view of them.
They're also not the worst by a long chalk, google, meta, palantir are all far less principled and far more detrimental to society.
M$ still arent good though, and its woven into their culture
I've been around since MS-DOS 3, let me put that out there.
Also, a corporation isn't a person where I'm from. You guys can sort your garbage legal system in your own time. (alright, so it's a juridical person, which is a collective form of personhood where you can hold some rights, but you definitely do NOT have a physical person's rights and you CERTAINLY don't have an actual personality).
So besides repeating common tropes of online commentariat, which are by and large memes more than arguments, I'd point out that it's not just that they aren't the worst offenders, it's that the conversation is about why they get that exact set of tropes waved in every conversation where other companies that do those same things do not.
The example I'm using is Apple, just because they've deployed the closest example to this, but they work because... well, you didn't list them.
You seem to think that this is about being "for" or "against" companies. This is about why people would think it's one or the other, and why they assign different attributes to corporations that largely operate in similar ways.
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.
I think there's something to the idea that Apple walls its garden so well people outside the wall don't care about what happens inside it even when they disagree with it on principle.
I think you're underplaying how big the garden is, though. You are thinking about this just in terms of PC OSs, but that's not where Apple's biggest presence is.
I got apple devices, but it is more a take or leave it type situation where I wouldn't feel like I'm missing out if I didn't have them. Its just one of those nice options, but not irreplaceable tech to me.
Linux activists deficiently root against Windows
Have you seen Linux users whenever anything controversial happens? Like rust in the kernel, C devs being jerks, Wayland, Pipewire, Flatpaks, or tbh anything else that causes Linux users to loose their minds?
Oh, they love to chew each other up.
But, you know, it's in that left-of-centre, obnoxious-software-engineer way where they all think they have the right answer to whatever the issue is, they're going to save the world and make Linux the One OS and everybody else is an idiot. That doesn't count.
Well you see my distribution of choice is the perfect choice, my window manager is the best one, and my specific choice of utilies (ex: Terminal, shell, text editor, file manager, toolkit, etc) are the best ones. Clearly you're the one trying to divide Linux users :3
(And of course my standard is the best one, yes there are thirty other universal standards but mine is better)
That's because when it comes to Apple, hypocrisy is the way of life.
Nobody acturally expects privacy from Apple, if you use an Apple device they know Apple has all your information.
You may want to have a conversation with Nobody, I don't think he got the memo.
Regardless, the point is Apple gets more of a pass. If I say "nobody actually expects privacy from Microsoft" that's undeniably true, but hardly works as an excuse, does it?
Sure but Windows users are far more likely to demand privacy while Apple users just accept thats not a thing on Apple.
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
The same has been true of email for years, but less bad. Activists will need to be even more careful in who they trust.
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.
I'll admit I've not looked into it. My computer won't even upgrade to Windows 11 if I wanted it to, thanks to MS's artificial restriction on compatibility. Maybe it is all on-device. But if so, whence all the privacy complaints? And does it not allow syncing between devices?
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.
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.
Qubes OS ?
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.
I've disabled windows update completely so I can pick and manually dl updates. Never going to put that recall shit on my pc.
Yes.
Worth it.
Honestly it's what drove me over the edge. I'm on endeavorOS and it has been great honestly. Would recommend 👍🏻
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.
No shit.
For windows users
To the surprise of nobody… 😆