I swear people do not understand the point of what microsoft does.
There isn’t a team tasked with making teams worse. They’re tasked with extracting all possible value out of their product. Part of that value is infromation like where you are, what you’re doing, what you’re talking about, what you search for, what you actually do for your job, who is around you, what they talk about, where they are, what they are doing, what they search for, and what they do for their job and how everyone spends their money.
All of this is incredibly valuable data to governments, businesses and private individuals that want to advertise, suppress dissenting political voices, enhance useful dissenting political voices, and otherwise manipulate global influence.
They just don’t want you to think about declining any permissions, triggering regulatory action, or switching to another platform.
That’s true. Their mission is not explicitly to make it worse, but to continually maximize value at all costs. Eventually, software usability has to be one of the costs.
”Eventually”
As if Teams was ever a usable product.
Same thing with extra steps.
Which is what LinkedIn is for by the way. In terms of data gathering. And to keep you on the platform.
I thought LinkedIn was for 50 year old middle managers to post their opinions on the evils of socialism.
The various news sites out there that want to spread their own version of influence and generate their own revenue take this kind of information and use it to see how you click on things, what drives your engagement, what you will go on to share with others, and how you talk about all of it. It’s all tied together.
Big money interests run basically everything in this world. We are just cattle, we will always be just cattle. I’m in countless databases like all of you, and we’re all fucked by the system we think we might some day to cheat our way above the other rats. The noose is tied tight though… there’s not much room left to struggle. It’s too late to escape it. Palantir and Flock are here to close the loop and they aren’t going anywhere, even if the street cameras are likely to be hidden in the future and more tamper proof rather than obvious to the public. Doesn’t matter if the laws change to ban it or you can convince local government to not get involved with it - it’s way too easy to hide cameras with modern technology. Just give it time and your credit score and auto insurance will incorporate flock data ;)
Insurance is already pushing in-car monitoring for discounts.
They’re already paying all the manufacturers for the driver telemetry anyway, probably through third party brokers because everything must be obfuscated.
I think they like having multiple layers of confirmation that way if one is regulated away for some reason like ‘privacy’ or ‘technically anyone could be driving’ then they have fallbacks and legal deniability for the data being inherently flawed.
“Tenant admins will decide whether to enable it and require end-users to opt-in.”
If you require someone to opt-in, they’re no longer “opting in”
But you clicked the terms and conditions popup, so you are our slave now.
So glad I only use Teams in a browser, fuck this bullshit.
Don’t install Teams.
Teams comes pre installed with windows these days.
I recommend KDE Plasma on any linux distribution that comes with it for people interested in recovering their digital sovereignty.
If people moved to Linux and used FOSS software, these privacy violations wouldn’t even be a problem.
Most people who use teams do so on work devices, I can’t just install Linux on it.
I cant even delete a shortcut on my work microslop machine
Yeah, of course.
If people moved to Linux
When users connect to their organization’s WiFi…
You think my employer would let me use Linux? Creeping on employees is how management feels important.
I wouldn’t use Teams personally unless under extreme duress. Unfortunately professionally it is the norm.
Disable your laptop webcam and microphone, use headset instead. I’ll be looking to see if I can switch to Teams web.
I remember how a subcontractor’s company called me with a lot of private information I assume the subcontractor had spoken to them about. The subcontractor had no clue about it, which completely changed how I had been perceiving the situation. The problem is companies are using the excuse of keeping tabs on their workers to perform outright continuous surveillance on them and try to see how they can exploit any and all information they can salvage for their benefit, which becomes a problem when there is no clear division between personal and professional space.
I’m starting to feel like everything I do at work is under duress.
That’s the point, under capitalism.
For the next year or so.
State law in California (and soon, Colorado), as well as UK and EU laws, are beginning to require OSs to spy on users and developers. Privacy-focused Linux and FOSS software will soon be deemed illegal in these jurisdictions. Which will make it a liability for companies, and force them back to shitty commercial offerings.
There is a difference betwen the version for corporate (MS365 Business) and the consumer version.
Yes, they have the same name.
Yes, it’s confusing.
You can’t even install it on Linux, they killed the native app years ago and now tell you to use the browser version
And then every link asks if you want to open in app, three extra clicks but worth it
The Linux client never worked in my experience anyway. In no coincidence, their Teams in browser never seemed to work in Linux either until a little after they killed the native app. I wonder if there were enough important clients that needed support for it and they caved and made it work.
I don’t install anything that’s not FOSS anymore. Pretty much all of it is spyware at this point, because they can monetize it, and because users don’t give a fuck.
Good news is, most of the time, you don’t have to.
I’m glad my work PC only operates in flight mode.
God damn it, at work they pay us to put that stuff on our personal phones… maybe I’ve been a bit too lenient on that, maybe I should get a work phone.
Never, ever, cross the personal/work barrier. I have seen so much abuse when those lines cross.
I agree, but some places there’s simply no option. I have a state job, they will under no circumstances provide a phone, but you must have Authenticator. If you won’t or can’t use a smartphone, you simply don’t have a job.
State jobs are interesting. 3/4 the pay of a regular job, but job security like none other, and you barely have to do anything. I spend most of my time doing my moonlighting job to supplement my income.
but you must have Authenticator
FYI, Microslop does support Aegis (fully open source, no spyware) authenticator.
It is buried in the options, but the option is there when adding another MFA device. It won’t say Aegis, but just look for the “fuck you, Microslop, I brought my own” option at each stage of adding MFA.
They don’t want to support it, but if they drop support, they will drop support for various hardware token vendors at the same time, and they should get thoroughly sued by those vendors, if they do.
In my company they allow you to use duo key as alternate. I’m guessing your company doesn’t? Could be worth asking.
What if its on your phone work account? That’s totally sandboxed
It seems safer on iPhone than Android. I’d still avoid it due to subpoenas.
I haven’t signed into anything work related on my phone since we switched to Google.
Anything work requires goes on my tablet.
This is illegal in Norway :)
And Germany.
They’ve crossed the line a long long time ago. All microslop products are straight up unusable.
Microsoft: Our product is not our software. It’s you!
I’m their software?
No no, you’re the wetware
I worked on a large(ish) contract (tens of millions) with one of Microsoft’s engineering teams where they were implementing an Azure managed version of software we produced. I would regularly refuse to install teams at the meetings, using teams in-browser only.
It also ensured that the technical project manager had to be the one to transcribe anything in our notes into whatever tools Microsoft was using.
While it was never said, the Microsoft engineers seemed to completely understand and never pushed back against my refusal to a) install crapware and b) not take on work that wasn’t mine.
Not using teams: win win.
I would regularly refuse to install teams at the meetings, using teams in-browser only.
I tried to do this for a safety meeting, Teams is also broken in browsers. I’m not sure if intentional or incompetence.
How about intentional incompetence
Teams in browser is the only way that I use it either, and it isn’t “broken” like it used to be, but you need to use a Chromium based browser. This is typical Microsoft bullshit with only truly supporting “their” browser, luckily they don’t actually make an actual browser anymore so you can use any of the better Chromium browsers.
Teams in browser is the only way that I use it either, and it isn’t “broken” like it used to be, but you need to use a Chromium based browser.
so, it’s broken. Either buggy, or just straight up not follow common web standards
Well, it used to be broken on ALL browsers in Linux, so let’s just go with less broken, which is a high mark for most MS software. MS and following standards are like oil and water.
I surprisingly haven’t had any issues using Teams on Firefox but maybe I’m just lucky…? Been using it for months now after uninstalling the app.
I had nothing BUT problems with it, but I haven’t tried it in about six months as I started using Teams it in a chromium based browser. I only need to use Teams when working with strictly MS focused companies (i.e. not ours), so it isn’t a daily hassle anyway.
I too had problems and used a chromium just for teams, but those problems seem to have gone away. It’s terribly slow to load up and join in a Firefox but perhaps that is normal, and then it works
I wonder if the team that is tasked with making teams worse has team meetings with the whole team on teams.
Yesterday I read on here that Microsoft doesn’t let their teams use Teams.
My employer has the usual setup of M365 enterprise shit running on Dell laptops.
Fortunately we devs are able to “dual boot” to run Linux on our machines, since our product is an embedded Linux system. (has anybody seen my Windows partition btw? I can’t even find anything NTFS formatted, whoopsie!)
All that background info is just so I can pay Microsoft a compliment, even if it has asterisks all over it:
The entire Microsoft suite works just fine in a browser, and in LibreWolf too! I do typically add some permissions for those sites for convenience, since librewolf is privacy/tracking hardened (firefox fork) out of the box. I use Teams and Outlook every day, and occasionally will drop a file into OneDrive or edit something in MS Office. I don’t write many office-format documents though, so I’m more likely to be in LibreOffice or a PDF viewer just reading a doc.
You know how in media streaming and gaming there’s that balance of whether it is more convenient to be a paying customer versus pirate everything?
Microsoft’s stuff is literally better to use in Linux. Even if I need to test the Windows build of something, a VM is SO much more convenient. And I’m not even logged into the microsoft shit on that. If I need something from OneDrive, I go to the browser there too.
Having Teams remind you that, during session recordings, your video and what you say can be used by Microsoft for whatever purpose they want, including (but not limited to) training AI.
This wasn’t the line that was crossed? Seeing/hearing your likeness in the next generated AI / copilot commercial, because you needed to consent in order to work. This is “fine” /s
… but having Microsoft know that you’re answering Teams messages while on the toilet… yeah, that’s where “the line gets crossed” (eyeroll)
We need to wake-up and drop this technological cancer.
edit: a word
“It’s okay, because it’s Microsoft” is management’s response when I raise a concern at work.
Heaven forbid you use an open source tool that isn’t on the software whitelist yet
“It’s okay, because it’s Microsoft”
“You mean the mass surveillance corporation under the control of the nazis?”
The users aren’t the customers. The customers are the users’ bosses.
And or some random dude in procurement.
Employees arent the ones paying for Teams, so why would they care? Teams could openly market itself as remote work surveillance tool for employers and they’d gobble that shit up.
Of course there is, this guy leads it
Teams can be worse?
You’re doubting Microsoft’s ability to make a product worse?
No, they have shown again and again, that they are capable of the impossible, if it comes to making things worse.
But still, we are talking Teams.
“Scientist invents new, even smellier, dog poo.”
Just add more rotting eggs.
Oh!
