this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025
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Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 99 points 6 days ago (3 children)
[–] laz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 35 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] muhyb@programming.dev 25 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

🐧~🐧~~🐧~

[–] nailbar@sopuli.xyz 15 points 6 days ago
[–] bigchungus@piefed.blahaj.zone 104 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago

and its so long! we must have stuck in the eternal september of 1984

[–] hOrni@lemmy.world 77 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Well that's not ominous at all.

[–] Twanquility 44 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Someone wrote that code. I like to imagine that they know it's wrong, so they frame it as clearly as they can, without being fired. Guy could have written "Gaming Copilot is invading your privacy", or something like it, but that wouldn't pass.

[–] voytrekk@sopuli.xyz 5 points 6 days ago

With Microsoft, that code could have been written by AI too.

[–] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Its frankly fucking comedic. Someone seriously thought that was a good way for it to communicate that its turned on 😂

I mean, it's apt. But companies are usually better at pretending they're not up to anything nefarious 😅

[–] dev_null@lemmy.ml 31 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

It box says "Gaming Copilot is watching YouTube", where "YouTube" is the name of the browser tab that was open when that screenshot was taken.

The dialog basically says "Gaming Copilot is watching [your currently opened app/tab]".

The text being cut off is making it look funny, but sadly no, no one wrote that message.

[–] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago

Ahh, thank you for correcting me, I appreciate it

Have a good one!

[–] pyre@lemmy.world 21 points 5 days ago (1 children)

stop calling everything copilot, Microsoft. it's pathetic

[–] Michal@programming.dev 7 points 5 days ago (3 children)

It's their AI brand 🤷‍♂️ like Samsung calling their android devices Galaxy, and Apple adding i to everything

[–] SaraTonin@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

FWIW, the last time Apple released a new product with the prefix “i” was the iPad in 2010. They favour “Apple” now, as in “Apple Watch”, “Apple TV”, and “Apple Vision Pro”.

They found that you can’t copyright/trademark “i” as a prefix in and of itself. That means that while nobody else can bring out a product called “iPhone” or “iPod”, they absolutely can bring out a product called, say, “iLaptop”. And that’s what people did for all kinds of products, hoping that people would buy them, mistakenly thinking they were Apple products.

So Apple abandoned it as branding on everything that wasn’t already well-known for that branding.

Your point is right in spirit, but wrong on that one specific point.

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[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 54 points 6 days ago (5 children)

Anything involving Copilot makes me happy to be a Mac user.

If you have a machine that runs Windows and the hardware is still good, it’s time to give Linux a chance. Look into Proton for gaming (it’s a translation layer, like WINE I suppose). And let’s stop acting like Macs are the odd one out. Macs run UNIX. Windows is the odd one out! ;)

[–] BaroqueInMind@piefed.social 60 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (7 children)

We may collect information such as occupation, language, zip code, area code, unique device identifier, referrer URL, location, and the time zone where an Apple product is used so that we can better understand customer behavior and improve our products, services, and advertising. We may collect information regarding customer activities on our website, iCloud services, our iTunes Store, App Store, Mac App Store, App Store for Apple TV and iBooks Stores and from our other products and services. This information is aggregated and used to help us provide more useful information to our customers and to understand which parts of our website, products, and services are of most interest. Aggregated data is considered non‑personal information for the purposes of this Privacy Policy. We may collect and store details of how you use our services, including search queries. This information may be used to improve the relevancy of results provided by our services. Except in limited instances to ensure quality of our services over the Internet, such information will not be associated with your IP address. With your explicit consent, we may collect data about how you use your device and applications in order to help app developers improve their apps.

This is from Apple's privacy policy

It seems to me like they collect telemetry just like Windows, and of course some Mac apps do have advertising which is personalized according to the beginning.

Apple has been doing extremely invasive telemetry tracking of your usage since before the release of Big Sur. Gee, I wonder where Microsoft got the idea to invasively gather all this telemetry from the user in the first place?

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 7 points 6 days ago (2 children)

This is stuff they collect when you are interacting with Apple services. The problem with windows copilot is that it collects info about everything you do, even when it has nothing to do with Microsoft.

[–] pogmommy@lemmy.ml 9 points 6 days ago

Does "our other products and services" not include macOS? I mean, you don't stop interacting with their product when you open other programs. You're using their product as a means of accessing them.

[–] BaroqueInMind@piefed.social 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

This is stuff they collect when you are interacting with Apple services.

Since you are being vague, I am assuming you are saying thats it's only exclusive to Apple-made stuff.

You don't know that, and can't say bullshit like this as if you are an authority on this subject working at Apple.

Please provide sources for your claims.

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[–] bizzle@lemmy.world 48 points 6 days ago (2 children)

MacOS or whatever they call it now is "unix-like" but it's still ultimately a closed environment and definitely not the same, ethically, as a real FOSS OS. Apple doesn't care about you any more than Microsoft or Google, they're also in it for money.

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[–] loutr@sh.itjust.works 32 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (6 children)

Proton is WINE, it's a fork maintained by Valve and Codeweaver with DXVK (Direct X -> Vulkan) on top. If you use Steam for gaming it will set up proton automatically for you.

And yes macOS is a step up from Windows, but it's still a walled garden. Want to develop an iOS app? You must buy a Mac, you must buy a developer license, you must use the worst IDE ever created, and you must distribute it through the app store (except in Europe in theory, but they worked hard to make the experience so miserable that almost no one bothers).

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 8 points 6 days ago

Xcode for iOS apps is the shittiest IDE

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[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 22 points 6 days ago (2 children)

If you have a machine that runs Windows and the hardware is still good,

Linux is often more forgiving on hardware requirements. I recently put Mint (with xfce) on a like 2013 laptop and it's fine. That's not even an especially lightweight distribution.

[–] ignotum@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago

Can confirm, I had a laptop that took multiple minutes to boot and was sluggish as hell, installed linux and after that it booted in 5-10 seconds and felt snappy again

[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yes, it is. Mostly what Windows 11 won't run on is not a matter of the machine's capability of running the software, it's more about the hardware security to back Microsoft's DRM shit.

Even if Linux Mint isn't especially lightweight, there's a Linux distro for just about everybody out there. You could probably find one that runs on 00's or maybe, possibly, even 90s hardware, it would look like shit, it might look like OSes from back then, but it still could have modern support for whatever you want to tack onto it. I will never underestimate the versatility of Linux and its community.

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[–] AnnaFrankfurter@lemmy.ml 13 points 5 days ago

~~Big Brother~~ Copilot is watching you

[–] DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 28 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

"Windows 11 is the best OS since XP"

🗒️ COPILOT IS LISTENING🗒️

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 25 points 6 days ago

Ceiling cat is watching you masturbate vibes.

[–] Codilingus@sh.itjust.works 14 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Avoid all this with W11 IoT Enterprise LTSC

massgrave.dev

[–] Zeon@lemmy.world 23 points 6 days ago (4 children)

No. Avoid this by switching to a free operating system such as Debian. Windows is proprietary, there is no hope for privacy there.

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[–] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Windows IoT can have compatibility issues with software because they're not the latest version of Windows (think Debian vs. Arch, but without Debian being the presumed default). Also you can't get a license for it legally.

This is all stuff I've heard second-hand, but it turned me off Windows IoT. So now I main Linux and have Windows 10 on my old Laptop (AND FFS WINDOWS STOP CHANGING MY FIREWALL SETTINGS).

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[–] utopiah@lemmy.ml 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Reposting from my comment https://lemmy.world/post/37758804/20109240 which I recommend to check, as someone did a test with Dark Souls 1 and IMHO was unsurprisingly disappointing, namely it does recognize the game (honestly, not bad) and get the right boss (which name is literally on screen) and make kind of sometimes useful suggestions. But like... what's the point? Who would play a game and... NOT know its name? Or not be able to search based on a boss name or a weapon name with existing dedicated good online guides?

Anyway... if you still want to try yourself WITHOUT relying on Microsoft consider :

"If someone somehow wants to test this locally I suggest

  • install locally a vision model, e.g. Moondream (which Ollama supports but alternatives too), then
  • take a screenshot of your game,
  • write a prompt like "How can I play this game better"
  • query the vision model with the image and your prompt

marvel at how pointless and costly the whole setup is and how a basic query on e.g. DuckDuckGo with "game name" + prompt would yield way WAY better results from actual human, uninstall the whole, keep on playing with your actual brain.

At least now you can say you tried before you complain, rightfully, that it sucks.

For more check https://fabien.benetou.fr/Content/SelfHostingArtificialIntelligence

PS: I didn't actually try this, I'm too lazy for that right how but feel free to report back if you do!

Edit : 2 potential optimization (despite not being sure it ever makes sense in the first place!)

  • do so automatically, e.g. ~/gaming_screenshots directory (via e.g. Spectacle shortcut) monitored via inotify then notify-send the suggestion, thus stay in game during the whole process
  • fine tune on specific visual datasets, e.g. rely on fextra as mentioned in https://lemmy.world/post/37758804/20113877

" and again feel free to share back results.

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[–] itkovian@lemmy.world 19 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Big Brother is watching you. To sell you ads.

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[–] f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyz 5 points 5 days ago

Someone should create CoPirate for Linux, that saves a DRM-free local copy of everyone else's data that goes through your machine. For training purposes, of course.

[–] Mwa@thelemmy.club 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

And then 9/10 they would probably train that footage on AI.

[–] atrielienz@lemmy.world 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Not 9/10. They literally say in the article they will use the collected data to train their AI.

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[–] Infernal_pizza@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Is there a way to disable this? I still need to use Windows sometimes

[–] Lfrith@lemmy.ca 9 points 6 days ago

I think if you uninstall the xbox app gaming copilot goes away. Might just be for the ltsc version though, which comes with a regular game bar and no Xbox app and only gets that ability from the Xbox app.

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[–] nuko147@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

I know many will tell you to move to linux, and they are right, but if for some reason you can not then use the O&O ShutUp10++: Free antispy tool for Windows 10 and 11 and enable blocks for Copilot Cortana and many other shit.

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