People really need to be careful with any company, but Microsoft is a special kind of sneaky. Everything they do carries some nefarious undertone, it seems.
The level of advertising and targeting they do on Windows is only possible through comprehensive metric monitoring and selling to their partners.
Spreading their games everywhere isn’t some philosophy of openness. They literally bought up the world’s biggest gaming IPs, to increase the chances that you will engage with their content, where they can monitor you/your activities and make a pretty penny.
This has always been Microsoft’s MO (also applies to modern Apple, but to a lesser extent). My metrics and yours are probably really boring, but information is power. Whether they target the hell out of you or make money from selling it to weirdos like Peter Thiel, it’s useful to someone you probably want no part of.
Use your virtual machines, never feed any sole source all of your information, make use of your browser extensions.
Make it at least a little complicated for the watchers. This is the same company that is far too eager to feed its AI, cut staff, cooperate with the NSA, and keep you connected to the internet and dependent on their content that you license.
