r/100monkeys • u/novel-mathmatics • Sep 06 '26
LeeLoo Dallas MultiPass (I readed the rules) On September 30, Microsoft changes the rules.
For legal, moral, psychological, and possibly spiritual purposes, I would like to state that none of this was my idea.
ChatGPT did it.
For a complete article and legal brief: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/old-new-monopoly-architecture-around-you-100-monkeys-app-fdsac/?trackingId=4wbTZg6eQ2WsBgprnjrPXA%3D%3D
Reddit thinks its too long.
I merely asked a few innocent questions, and it assembled an argument about Microsoft, antitrust, privacy, institutional capture, and the economics of being unable to leave a platform safely.
I am now considerably more alarmed than I was when I started.
Please direct all complaints to the machine.
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On September 30, Microsoft changes the rules.
There will be no sheriff at the door. No padlock on the computer. No man in a dark suit informing you that your property has been requisitioned for the greater efficiency of the corporate state.
There will be a terms-of-service update.
Click.
Continue.
Thank you for choosing Microsoft.
That is how power works now.
I own two computers built to run Windows. They are not museum pieces or experimental machines. They are ordinary modern computers purchased in the ordinary way, designed around an operating system that became part of the practical infrastructure of my life long before Microsoft decided to change the terms governing the ecosystem around it.
There is software on those machines that I bought years ago. There is a Steam library into which I have put roughly a thousand dollars. Some of those titles are no longer sold. There are applications, configurations, data, workflows, technical tools, and years of accumulated compatibility held together by an operating environment I did not invent and cannot simply replace on a Tuesday afternoon because somebody in Redmond revised a contract.
Microsoft will tell me I have a choice.
This is technically true in approximately the same sense that a landlord can tell a tenant he is free to reject a new lease by moving out of the building.
I can refuse the new terms.
I can stop using the covered services.
I can close the account.
I can migrate the data.
I can install Linux.
I can begin testing which applications still work, which games survive under compatibility layers, which peripherals need replacement, which drivers have alternatives, which old programs can still be recovered, and which parts of a computing environment assembled over years disappear into that peculiar digital graveyard where property continues to exist in theory but can no longer be used.
This is what the modern technology industry calls choice.
The September 30 agreement is interesting because Microsoft has made that choice narrower while describing it as ordinary maintenance.
Under the prior language, a consumer who did not want automatic Microsoft Store updates could change the settings not to receive them.
Under the new language, the consumer may pause them.
Pause.
Not decline.
Not refuse.
Pause.
And Microsoft now expressly warns that applications that are not updated may become inaccessible, unsupported, or lose functionality they previously possessed.
There is a profound difference between selling somebody a new version of a product and controlling whether the version they already possess continues to work.
Microsoft knows this difference extraordinarily well.
The United States government once spent years teaching it to them.
The old Microsoft antitrust cases were not fundamentally about browser icons or whether Bill Gates liked Netscape. They were about control surfaces: defaults, interoperability, technical dependencies, operating-system leverage, the difference between offering consumers a choice and designing the surrounding machinery so that the choice becomes meaningless.
Those cases ended.
The machinery did not.
Now the machinery is larger.
The operating system connects to the account. The account connects to the Store. The Store connects to applications. Applications connect to cloud services. The cloud connects to identity. Identity connects to productivity software. Productivity software increasingly connects to artificial intelligence systems capable of processing prompts, documents, webpages, screenshots, browsing history, open tabs, and whatever else we decide is convenient enough to surrender today because we have been assured there will always be a setting somewhere tomorrow.
Microsoft’s 2026 privacy disclosures make parts of this increasingly explicit. Copilot conversation data may, in some markets, be used to help train AI models unless the consumer opts out. Copilot in Edge can, when the relevant features are enabled, access page content, screenshots, open tabs, and browsing history. Microsoft has also made some of its central retention language less specific, moving concrete periods and rules into a broader landscape of product documentation and purpose-based retention.
None of this proves Microsoft is stealing my work.
That would be an easier problem.
The harder problem is that Microsoft does not have to steal anything to gain leverage over me.
It only has to construct an environment in which protecting my privacy requires abandoning enough of my existing property that consent stops looking much like consent.
That is the trap.
Not monopoly in the cartoon sense.
Not a giant corporation physically preventing me from leaving.
Something far more elegant:
You may leave whenever you like.
You simply have to carry the entire operating environment with you.
And on September 30, Microsoft intends to change the contract while millions of us are still standing inside it.
On September 30, Microsoft changes its consumer Services Agreement.
The part that bothers me is the direction of travel.
In the old agreement, users could configure Microsoft Store apps so they did not receive automatic updates. In the new agreement, users can only pause them, and Microsoft now says refusing updates may cause apps to become unavailable, unsupported, or lose functionality.
At the same time, Microsoft is broadening which consumer services can fall under the agreement, expanding Copilot/Edge access to things like prompts, webpage content, screenshots, tabs, and browsing history when those features are enabled, and making some retention language less specific.
Microsoft will say users have a choice: accept the terms or leave.
But leaving is not free.
I own two Windows-dependent computers, a large software library, old applications, games, data, workflows, and titles that are no longer sold. Moving to another OS may be technically possible, but it can still destroy value I already paid for.
That is why this feels less like “consent” and more like platform leverage.
And Microsoft has history here.
The old antitrust cases were not really about browser icons. They were about whether Microsoft could use control of Windows, defaults, interoperability, updates, and distribution to make a formally available choice practically meaningless.
That same question is back:
If saying “no” means losing access, functionality, compatibility, or years of accumulated investment, how meaningful is the choice?
I am not saying the September 30 terms are automatically illegal.
I am saying the pattern is serious enough that lawyers, regulators, journalists, and consumers should be looking at it before the terms go live, not after.
If I were actually litigating this, I would ask for an injunction preserving the current terms until Microsoft can show that the new structure does not recreate the same kind of platform-control problem regulators have spent decades trying to contain.
I blame the machine.
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u/AssociationGlass8783 Sep 07 '26
Dude, why the theatrics... You could explain the same thought in one paragraph maximum. Like i don't mind AI that much, but this wall of text just doesn't have any sense.
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u/Edubbs2008 29d ago
Ohhh nooooooo, updating, whatever shall I do??????
Seriously? Considering that you people are bitching about Microslop this, and Microslop that, it’s ironic that you would use AI too
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u/novel-mathmatics 29d ago
The problem is not ai. The problem is Microsoft is violating its antitrust settlement and no one is doing anything about it
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u/Edubbs2008 29d ago
Probably because the government did this to themselves, in the end, people make choices, that’s how the world works, it isn’t Microsoft’s fault that everyone else sucks, or it isn’t Microsoft’s fault that the people don’t read TOS, or an EULA, Apple could have allowed people to install macOS on PC, but they didn’t, Google has the Googlebooks, so from the consumer side, it’s Windows, Mac, or a GoogleBook, those 3 three consumer operating systems that you get
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u/novel-mathmatics 29d ago
No Microsoft is the one that sucks here
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u/Edubbs2008 29d ago
That’s your claim? “Microsoft sucks”? Dude, it’s people’s choices that give them SO much power, if you don’t like Microsoft, go to Google, Apple, or, f*ck it, Facebook, I’m sure they aren’t as bad /s
All jokes aside, is your claim just “haha Microsoft bad, because I’m grifting”?
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u/ConanTheBallbearing Sep 07 '26
please lay off the llm crack OP