100% valid choice. I'd argue that it's even the correct one.
That said, those specific examples are all "solved". My issue is that the overwhelming amount of Linux pushers here tend to act as though those issues are literally unsolvable.
The ads are nearly all controlled from a single yes/no switch a single level deep into the settings menu. And that switch has not been reset by updates in at least four years. Since I've joined lemmy, every single "Microsoft is pushing more ads into Windows" article I've seen has been talking about ads controlled by this same singular switch.
Things like the pushing of the Microsoft account and Recall are mostly avoided by using their Professional SKU/License/OS version and using GPO to disable those features. Or to take specific steps during install. You have to use the tools they have for corporate customers that have specific legal guidelines that prevent them from being able to use whatever MS's new revenue extraction trick is.
Bullshit? Yes. Should anyone have to do this shit to have a decent OS? No.
But if you're savvy enough to navigate Linux, you're more than capable of navigating this shit on Windows. It's not impossible.
I work in this space profressionally. Systems administrarion, architecture, design, and integration. Please take your single sentence "hot takes" elsewhere.
Windows is far from "a shitty product" or "broken". It is developed by horrid anti-consumer motherfuckers out to extract as much profit as possible from their least profitable user base: home users. Evil as hell, sure, but so is nearly every large corporation that makes shit that fills your personal hovel you call home. If that makes them untouchable for you, that is a great choice. But that does not factually impact the usability or usefulness of the product.
Linux is awesome and necessary. Open source is the only way this whole mess keeps working far into the future, and I am no stranger to compiling shit from source and submitting pull requests.
My problems with the Linux community, specifically on Lemmy, are these: Linux is not "just easier" and depressingly still not ready for the average consumer unwilling to tinker. The overwhelming majority of complaints about Windows so frequently posted here are solved problems that people pretend are entirely unfixable, or refuse to learn how to fix. For many people venting about their computer, it would be easier to direct them how to fix what they have rather than try to use it as an opportunity to push your religion OS of choice.
If you can manage Linux, I promise that "fixing" a Windows install is well within your reach. Plenty of problems with it, but "broken"? "Unusable"? Take a look outside at the majority of the world, or even the fucking Steam user statistics and get back to me on that. More than good enough for the overwhelming majority.
Glad to see another voice of sanity regarding Windows.
If you haven't learned by now, on Lemmy the only valid option for dealing with Windows configuration and basic Windows admin tasks is to yeet Windows and go to Linux.
But that rollout doesn't make headlines like all the ones from the US government telling people to use encrypted messaging like WhatsApp or Signal. That's what got them to WhatsApp to begin with. FBI tells everyone very loudly to get off standard texting. They jump as a collective to where half of them already are.
As I've already alluded to: this has precisely zero to do with the technical aspects of security. Ease of use does matter (why pushing to Signal didn't work at the time the FBI spooked everyone), but only a little bit, and is overshadowed by momentum of where people already are.
I might be able to get my family off WhatsApp with the recent article about it being banned from (I think it was) Congress's phones.
But again, this isn't a technical problem where you can just point at what's obviously the better choice. There are complications of personal relationships, individual resistance to change, whether or not you're willing to train your family members, etc.
My grandmother is in her late 80s and it is astonishing that she can even manage WhatsApp to pariticipate in the family group chat. I'm not upending that and causing her the added stress, work, isolation if it fractures the family groip chat, and signing myself up for all that extra work to try and drag people to new platform and hold their hand through the bumps... just so I can be comfortably principled, using the best option, and trying to prevent Meta from getting info about me for a few more years that they likely are getting through other means.
I'll revisit as the elders age off.
I care about my privacy, but I've thought long and hard about my specific threat model and what is and isn't important enough for me to make a big deal out of. For me, this is an acceptable sacrifice.
Doesn't have to be that way for anyone else. Just has to work for me and my life. And it does.
Ultimately I'm just trying to give reasons why people are still on these platforms. I took the initial comment I responded to at face value. I'm not really looking to debate here, and my opinions don't invalidate anyone else's.
It's nice to be able to say "well they're not worth talking to then", but at some point I need to be able to reach my parents so they can babysit my daughter. Or be able to know that family will be in town and expecting me to be available. Or be able to have any way of knowing what life events are happening to my loved ones without having to wait for it to be brought up in casual conversation months later as if I should already know.
My extended family and friends do a poor job communicating on a good day. If I try to add another hurdle, I'm not the one who wins that fight.
If you take nothing else from this thread: That's not "just autism".
And the goal of working with a professional wouldn't be to "delete your autism" like holy shit lmao that is so off base I would think you were a shitposter if I hadn't met other people like you before.
There are dangerous thought patterns, shit that does nothing but erode your trust in the existence of an external reality. I don't have the proper words to describe the level of danger to yourself and those around you that you can cause if you don't believe foundational aspects of external reality.
This is really something you need to discuss with professionals.
Buddy, given your relatively basic questions and how you're posting to every single fucking vaguely relared community, I would highly suggest you do some studying on just... basic computer concepts and how to use them. Not sure what resources are out there anymore, but maybe some basic "these are the parts of a computer, these are programs and how they work" stuff from the 90s. They used to do middle school classes on how to properly use google and other seaech engines to find trustworthy information for citing in research papers. I seriously suggest you start there.
Then, after you understand the basics maybe you start trying to understand how all of that works in regards to security and the concept of trust in the software you install and run.
Spoiler alert: Computers are not designed with any sort of "zero trust" architecture like you seem to be shocked that they don't have. Things are not sandboxed, segmented, or otherwise prevented from accessing other stuff as a general rule.
This is why one of the bare minimum basics is "don't run anything you don't trust".
If someone's a piece of shit, whatever corporate mannerisms they do or don't pick up are not going to be what makes or breaks the fact they're a shit person.
You might have better results working with a doctor and getting perscriptions for the mind altering drugs that assist you.
Trying to trust your own brain to self assess what works and doesn't while actively messing with its chemistry it uses to do that assessment... it can work, but it's definitely choosing to do it on hard mode.
Harsh question: Do you have a real need to prevent this data from being collected, or are you investigating just for funsies best practice advice? There are a lot of posts like this where people overestimate the threat model they have and insist on needing to block things that are nearly impossible to, or at least have significant tradeoffs like you are dealing with now.
Javascript is also not the only source that sites can use for these pieces of info from your machine. Local time in particular can be estimated by looking up the rough location of your IP address then matching to a time zone.
Anyway.
I would assume you could technically fork localCDN (replaces remote javascript libraries with local copies) and then manually edit the local javascript library copies to remove the calls you are concerned about.
There's also options like uBlock Origin's methods of only whitelisting specific scripts. Much more flexible than NoScript. You can block scripts that are third party and only allow site specific ones fairly easily, without digging deep into the settings.
Bear in mind that your specific combination of installed extensions can also be a unique identifier though.
100% valid choice. I'd argue that it's even the correct one.
That said, those specific examples are all "solved". My issue is that the overwhelming amount of Linux pushers here tend to act as though those issues are literally unsolvable.
The ads are nearly all controlled from a single yes/no switch a single level deep into the settings menu. And that switch has not been reset by updates in at least four years. Since I've joined lemmy, every single "Microsoft is pushing more ads into Windows" article I've seen has been talking about ads controlled by this same singular switch.
Things like the pushing of the Microsoft account and Recall are mostly avoided by using their Professional SKU/License/OS version and using GPO to disable those features. Or to take specific steps during install. You have to use the tools they have for corporate customers that have specific legal guidelines that prevent them from being able to use whatever MS's new revenue extraction trick is.
Bullshit? Yes. Should anyone have to do this shit to have a decent OS? No.
But if you're savvy enough to navigate Linux, you're more than capable of navigating this shit on Windows. It's not impossible.