from Hacker News

Microsoft only lets you opt out of AI photo scanning 3x a year

by dmitrygr on 10/11/25, 6:36 PM with 331 comments

by themafia on 10/11/25, 8:02 PM
"You can only turn off this setting 3 times a year."
Astonishing. They clearly feel their users have no choice but to accept this onerous and ridiculous requirement. As if users wouldn't understand that they'd have to go way out of their way to write the code which enforces this outcome. All for a feature which provides me dubious benefit. I know who the people in my photographs are. Why is Microsoft so eager to also be able to know this?
Privacy legislation is clearly lacking. This type of action should bring the hammer down swiftly and soundly upon these gross and inappropriate corporate decision makers. Microsoft has needed that hammer blow for quite some time now. This should make that obvious. I guess I'll hold my breath while I see how Congress responds.
by Aurornis on 10/12/25, 12:47 AM
They could have avoided the negative press by changing the requirement to be that you can’t re-enable the feature after switching it off 3 times per year.
It’s not hard to guess the problem: Steady state operation will only incur scanning costs for newly uploaded photos, but toggling the feature off and then on would trigger a rescan of every photo in the library. That’s a potentially very expensive operation.
If you’ve ever studied user behavior you’ve discovered situations where users toggle things on and off in attempts to fix some issue. Normally this doesn’t matter much, but when a toggle could potentially cost large amounts of compute you have to be more careful.
For the privacy sensitive user who only wants to opt out this shouldn’t matter. Turn the switch off, leave it off, and it’s not a problem. This is meant to address the users who try to turn it off and then back on every time they think it will fix something. It only takes one bad SEO spam advice article about “How to fix _____ problem with your photos” that suggests toggling the option to fix some problem to trigger a wave of people doing it for no reason.
by GeekyBear on 10/11/25, 8:40 PM
You can really tell that Microsoft has adopted advertising as a major line of business.
The privacy violations they are racking up are very reminiscent of prior behavior we've seen from Facebook and Google.
by rf15 on 10/11/25, 7:43 PM
> and follow Microsoft's compliance with General Data Protection Regulation
Not in a million years. See you in court. As often, just because a press statement says something, it's not necessarily true and maybe only used to defuse public perception.
by anigbrowl on 10/11/25, 9:44 PM
Truly bizarre. I'm so glad I detached from Windows a few years back, and now when I have to use it or another MS product (eg an Xbox) it's such an unpleasant experience, like notification hell with access control checks to read the notifications.
The sad thing is that they've made it this way, as opposed to Windows being inherently deficient; it used to be a great blend of GUI convenience with ready access to advanced functionality for those who wanted it, whereas MacOS used to hide technical things from a user a bit too much and Linux desktop environments felt primitive. Nowadays MS seems to think of its users as if they were employees or livestock rather than customers.
by smileson2 on 10/11/25, 8:55 PM
Microsoft in the past few years has totally lost it's mind, it's ruining nearly everything it touches and I can't understand why
by noisy_boy on 10/12/25, 2:31 AM
By each passing day since I switched from using Windows to Linux at home, with decreasing friction, I am increasingly happy that I took time to learn Linux and stuck with it. This not a come to Linux call because I know it is easier said than done for most of non technical folks. But it is a testimony that if you do, the challenges eventually will be worth it. Because at this point, Microsoft is just openly insulting their captive users.
by bayindirh on 10/11/25, 8:27 PM
Did anyone notice that Microsoft never replied any of the asked questions, but deflected them?
They are exactly where I left them 20 years ago.
It's very sad that I can't stop using them again for doing this.
by Nition on 10/12/25, 1:01 AM
Do you think the PR person responding here feels, underneath it all, the inhumanity of their responses? The fact that they're merely wasting everyone's time with their prevaricated non-answers? Knowing what they need to say to keep their job but hurting internally at the stupidity of it all.
Or do they end up so enmeshed with the corporate machine that that they start to really believe it all makes sense?
by LunaSea on 10/11/25, 8:31 PM
I was afraid for the EU economy, but after this declaration I'm reassured that Microsoft will pay for my grand kids' education in 30 years.
by syntaxing on 10/11/25, 10:30 PM
Growing up, Microsoft dominance felt so strong. 3 decades later, there’s a really high chance my kids will never own or use a windows machine (unless their jobs gives them one).
by bob1029 on 10/12/25, 1:01 AM
Microsoft gets a lot less difficult to reason about when we start to think of it as a statistical mean of human nature rather than the mind of one arbitrary evil bastard. They have 228k employees. The CEO has virtually zero direct influence on the end work product of any team.
Any organization this large is going to have approximately the same level of dysfunction overall. But, there are almost always parts of these organizations where specific leaders have managed to carve out a fiefdom and provide some degree of actual value to the customer. In the case of Microsoft, examples of these would be things like .NET, C#, Visual Studio [Code], MSSQL, Xbox.
Windows, Azure & AI are where most of the rot exists at Microsoft. Office is a wash - I am not a huge fan of what has happened to my Outlook install over the years, but Teams has dramatically stabilized since the covid days. Throwing away the rest of the apple because of a few blemishes is a really wasteful strategy.
by ajrouvoet on 10/12/25, 8:45 AM
Meta just lost a court case against bits of freedom in the Netherlands, because their instagram setting to turn off the attention grabbing feed would reset every month or so. The court ruled that this infringed on the user’s freedom.
Source: https://www.dutchnews.nl/2025/10/court-tells-meta-to-give-du...
by correlator on 10/11/25, 9:27 PM
Does this mean that when you disable, all labels are deleted, and when you turn it back on it has to re-scan all of your photos? Could this be a cost-saving measure?
by surgical_fire on 10/11/25, 8:12 PM
There's a great solution to this.
Just stop using Microsoft shit. It's a lot easier than untangling yourself from Google.
by thrownfjfkfmofn on 10/11/25, 7:54 PM
How is this not a revenge porn or something? If I upload sensitive photos somewhere, it is 5 years prison sentence! CEO of Microsoft can do that billion times!
by fishmicrowaver on 10/11/25, 8:23 PM
I was quite happy for a couple years to just use windows and wsl. Fully switched to Linux at home and Linux VM's at work. The thirst and desperation to make AI work gives me the creeps more than usual.
by leakycap on 10/11/25, 7:26 PM
Microsoft: forces OneDrive on users via dark pattern dialogs that many users just accept
Users: save files "on their PC" (they think)
Microsoft: Rolls out AI photo-scanning feature to unknowing users intending to learn something.
Users: WTF? And there are rules on turning it on and off?
Microsoft: We have nothing more to share at this time.
Favorite quote from the article:
> [Microsoft's publicist chose not to answer this question.]
by amiga-workbench on 10/12/25, 2:52 AM
Microsoft's understanding of consent is about on-par with that of a rapist.
by gessha on 10/11/25, 10:51 PM
This made me look up if you can disable iOS photo scanning and you can’t. Hmm.
by thaumasiotes on 10/11/25, 11:11 PM
> Slashdot: What's the reason OneDrive tells users this setting can only be turned off 3 times a year? (And are those any three times — or does that mean three specific days, like Christmas, New Year's Day, etc.)
> [Microsoft's publicist chose not to answer this question.]
by lawcomingfyms on 10/12/25, 1:12 PM
What happens to the faces in photos that do not belong to the photo owner?
Do they get scanned as well without the person's permission?
by CGamesPlay on 10/12/25, 1:52 AM
This doesn't feel like a problem at all. I only need to turn the setting off once, right? My immediate question to seeing that verbiage was, "how many times does the setting turn itself on in a year?"
by teekert on 10/12/25, 7:47 AM
"It's not your data citizen, you should be happy we made this OS for you. You are not smart enough to do it your self, we know what is best."
I can never help myself from hearing this inside, and am just incredibly thankful that we have Linux and FOSS in general. That really gives me hope for humanity at this point.
I type this in FireFox, on NixOS, with all my pics open in another tab, in Immich. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
by drumhead on 10/12/25, 3:24 PM
We created this oligopoly because they were convenient, free, powerful, and now its time for us to pay the price.
Or find services that may not be as easy to use, may cost something and may not have all the features you want, but which wont make unreasonable demands for your data.
In light of the way the US government is carrying on, I'd rather not give Microsoft any of my images.
by A_D_E_P_T on 10/11/25, 9:55 PM
It really seems as though Microsoft has total contempt for their retail/individual customers. They do a lot to inconvenience those users, and it often seems gratuitous and unnecessary. (As it does in this case.)
...I guess Microsoft believes that they're making up for it in AI and B2B/Cloud service sales? Or that customers are just so locked-in that there's genuinely no alternative? I don't believe that the latter is true, and it's hard to come back from a badly tarnished brand. Won't be long before the average consumer hates Microsoft as much as they hate HP (printers).
by api on 10/12/25, 1:23 PM
Why does anyone still run Windows?
Games I guess.
Both Mac and Linux desktop/laptop machines are better and less loaded with shit. If you don’t need or want a full featured PC you have Android and iOS which are also better. Android you have to be careful of but if you pick well it can be customizable and less loaded with shit.
Steam is available for both Linux and macOS. Are there just not as many game titles? I just saw Cyberpunk show up in the Apple Store for Mac so there seems to be an effort to port more games off Windows.
I have a Windows VM but use it less and less. Only need now is to test and build some software for Windows.
Also: I realized what I do kind of like about Apple and how best to describe their ecosystem. It’s the devil you know. They are fairly consistent in their policies and they are better on privacy than others. Some of their policies suck, but they suck in known consistent ways.
If I left Apple, Linux (probably on Framework) is the only alternative.
by more_corn on 10/12/25, 12:36 AM
That’s not opt out. Opt out is the ability to say no. If you’re not allowed to say no there’s no consent and you’re being forced.
by anarticle on 10/11/25, 9:34 PM
Year of the Linux desktop edges ever closer.
by einpoklum on 10/11/25, 10:45 PM
> I uploaded a photo on my phone to Microsoft's
That's your problem right there.
> Microsoft only lets you opt out of AI photo scanning
Their _UI_ says they let you opt out. I wouldn't bet on that actually being the case. At the very least - a copy of your photos goes to the US government, and they do whatever they want with it.
by fancyfredbot on 10/11/25, 8:04 PM
Seems obvious they actually mean to limit the number of times you can opt in. Very poor choice of words.
by r0b05 on 10/12/25, 4:45 PM
Disabling offline accounts is one thing but scanning and labeling your files to profile users is a whole other can of worms. This trajectory leads to zero privacy for the user and I feel like switching to Linux/Mac will be the only option sadly.
by sombragris on 10/12/25, 9:14 PM
Obviously the whole point is to make AI overreach avoidance as painful as possible.
Of course, that's also the reason why Lens was deprecated despite being a good, useful app, forcing one to deal with the bload of Copilot 365.
by getnormality on 10/12/25, 1:29 AM
> You can only turn off this setting 3 times a year.
Who's making the t-shirts? Don't forget the Microsoft logo. They're proud of this!
In my head it's sounding like that Christmas jingle. It's the most wonderful time of the year!
by jonas21 on 10/11/25, 8:03 PM
I don't really see the issue. If you don't want the face recognition feature, then you'll turn it off once, and that's that. Maybe if you're unsure, you might turn it off, and then back on, and then back off again. But what's the use case where you'd want to do this more than 3x per year?
Presumably, it's somewhat expensive to run face recognition on all of your photos. When you turn it off, they have to throw away the index (they'd better be doing this for privacy reasons), and then rebuild it from scratch when you turn the feature on again.
by resheku on 10/12/25, 5:04 AM
EU please whack them and whack them good
by bigbuppo on 10/11/25, 10:04 PM
This is once again strongly suggesting that Microsoft is thoroughly doomed if the money they've dumped into AI doesn't pan out. It seems to me that if your company is tied to Microsoft's cloud platform, you should probably consider moving away as quickly as you can. Paying the vmware tax and moving eveyrthing in house is probably a better move at this point.
by mk89 on 10/12/25, 7:02 AM
So the message is: if you can, don't use OneDrive.
If you can't (work, etc.) try to avoid uploading sensitive documents in onedrive.
I always wondered who uses OneDrive for cloud storage. Hell, I think even Google Drive is better.
Microsoft has really pivoted to AI for all things. I wonder how many customers they will get vs how many they will lose due to this very invasive way of doing things.
by superkuh on 10/12/25, 4:43 PM
I'm kind of surprised that it is Microsoft leading the field in this. It seems like something that'd be much more at home on an Apple or Google smartphone. But I suppose smartphones don't have the hardware or network power or resources to pull this off without noticibly degrading the smartphone performance.
by mbf1 on 10/12/25, 6:54 AM
I wonder if you can write a program to make pictures with face tattoos be the normal for Microsoft AI to train on, like see if enough people did this, if Microsoft's facial recognition started generating lots of face tats...
by christophilus on 10/12/25, 12:01 AM
Fedora with vanilla Gnome is excellent for anyone looking for an alternative.
by exe34 on 10/11/25, 9:06 PM
Makes me want to download and install windows, and store a picture of my hairy brown nutsack with googly eyes on it.
by immibis on 10/12/25, 11:17 AM
503 service unavailable - did Slashdot get HNed? Ironic. (Probably not - it's probably unrelated)
by Lio on 10/12/25, 7:52 AM
This sounds like the next level of the nauseating “maybe later”.
i.e. You’ll do what we tell you eventually.
by wkat4242 on 10/11/25, 9:50 PM
Microsoft is such a scummy company. They always were but they've become even worse since they've gone all in on AI.
I wonder if this is also a thing for their EU users. I can think of a few laws this violates.
by chris_wot on 10/11/25, 8:36 PM
I think a call to Australia’s privacy commissioner might be in order.
by dsign on 10/12/25, 5:33 AM
Microsoft gets most of its money from big corporate customers. Some of those customers are obligated by law to not leak sensitive personal data to servers in USA soil, because those customers have the missfortune of being in countries with strong privacy laws, functioning civil societies and sometimes even left-winged governments. I know for a fact that the product in question, "OneDrive", it's sometimes mandated in those companies as a backup solution for the company's computers. All it takes is a whistle-blowing incident or a chat with a journalist for this to become a major blow-up for Microsoft, with companies forced by tribunals to back off from contracts with Microsoft.
by _wire_ on 10/11/25, 7:05 PM
Crossposting slashdot?
Heaven forfend!
by ptrl600 on 10/11/25, 9:32 PM
Presumably you just need to turn it off once, right?
by taylorius on 10/12/25, 1:15 PM
It's enough to make a man consider Linux...
by yencabulator on 10/11/25, 11:35 PM
Reminder: Microsoft owns Github and NPM.
by drnick1 on 10/12/25, 1:55 AM
Why would anyone use this crap at this point? Buy a (possible used) mini PC or thin client, install Linux and Samba on it, and voila, your own private "cloud" completely free of corporate interference, spyware and recurring fees. This works best with a static IP for remote access via Wireguard but it can be made to work on a residential connection.
With a little more effort you can deploy Nextcloud, Home Assistant and a few other great FOSS projects and completely free yourself from Big Tech. The hardest part will probably be email on a residential connection, but it can be done with the help of a relay service for outgoing mail.
by unixhero on 10/12/25, 5:35 PM
To believe I was paying for this yearly
Unbelievable
by pessimizer on 10/11/25, 9:54 PM
Isn't it cute when there's absolutely no rationale behind a new rule, and it's simply an incursion made in order to break down a boundary?
Look, scanning with AI is available!
Wow, scanning with AI is now free for everyone!
What? Scanning with AI is now opt-out?
Why would opting-out be made time-limited?
WTF, what's so special about 3x a year? Is it because it's the magic number?
Ah, the setting's gone again, I guess I can relax. I guess the market wanted this great feature, or else they wouldn't have gradually forced it on us. Anyway, you're a weird techie for noticing it. What do you have to hide?
by ziofill on 10/12/25, 5:22 PM
Slashdot: why opt-out rather than opt-in?
Microsoft: it's just a shit as Microsoft 365 and SharePoint.
by LogicFailsMe on 10/11/25, 8:32 PM
I've never seen a better case for uploading endless AI slop photos.
by buyucu on 10/12/25, 7:09 AM
This is your daily reminder not to use Microsoft.
by mkrishnan on 10/12/25, 1:17 AM
fuck microsoft