Microsoft in court for allegedly misleading Australians over 365 subscriptions
51 comments
·October 27, 2025jeppester
It should not be normal that companies are trying to fool their customers. I may be wrong, but I feel that dark patterns have gotten worse and have become quite normalised.
I'm well aware that companies are not your friends, and they are only in it to earn as much money as possible etc. But in the ideal world it should never be a consideration to willingly deceive your customers. Then something is wrong that needs fixing.
thewebguyd
You can thank Friedman for that with the whole "The social responsibility of business is to increase profits" mindset and the Dodge vs. Ford court case that ruled Ford had to operate his company in the interests of its shareholders above all else.
We need to end shareholder primacy and have stronger antitrust enforcement.
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giancarlostoro
I call it Marketing Driven development. Its also responsible for a drop in higher quality software as business people have to justify their jobs and push developers off maintenance tickets that are “low priority” items but still impact enough customers that it should be embarrassing.
zerosizedweasle
If your product is this bad and no one wants to buy it normally, maybe you should build a new product.
estimator7292
But it's so much more profitable for shareholders to force users to engage with the shitty product
givemeethekeys
It's much cheaper for execs to buy bundled "it can do everything for less!" junk for the peasants.
That and, they're paying for Excel anyway...
wat10000
Even if you have a great product, you'll still get more money out of people if you apply some dark patterns like this. It's very hard for a company to resist that siren call.
noir_lord
Welcome to 2025 - Cyberpunk without the cool aesthetics but all the downsides.
I realised the last time I was in a major city (I live in a village) at night just how close we are, ebikes wizzing around with youngish adults wearing corporate logos all over themselves while using e-cigs, gangs of others waiting outside each restaurant for a pickup.
Straight out the opening of Snowcrash but without the cool car.
We really did invent Torment Nexus from the classic cautionary tale "Don't Create The Torment Nexus".
I love computers, I love programming (and have for 35 years), I really really am coming to detest larger and larger parts of the modern tech scene - consumer tech and the Microsoft/Meta/Googles of the world.
wat10000
We thought computers were different. That freedom of information would throw off the shackles of the old order and usher in a new era of human flourishing.
Turns out computers weren't different at all, they just hadn't caught the full attention of government and business yet.
matheusmoreira
I think I became depressed because of this. I used to be so enthusiastic about computers. We had the freedom to do anything we wanted. Now they're locking everything down, destroying everything the word "hacker" ever stood for. I'm watching it happen in real time. It's heart breaking.
Computers are world changing technology. They are so powerful they could defeat police, judges, governments, militaries. Left unchecked, they could wipe out entire segments of the global economy. They could literally reshape the world. The powers that be cannot tolerate it.
IT4MD
[dead]
Asmod4n
Thank luck we aren’t in the Warhammer 40k universe yet.
noir_lord
If anything we'd be more likely to open a portal to hell for Argent Energy.
`Meta today announced a strategic partnership with Union Aerospace Corporation - the deal will give Meta access to UAC's energy network powering the next revolution in AI.`
alex1138
There's no accountability either on a liability - legal, prison - level or a personal duty to make sure you Do The Right Thing (when, of course, you have a family to feed)
Behavior like what some of the tech giants do (and I don't crusade against "big tech" but individual cases are ridiculous) wouldn't be justified if you, like, wrote it down on a piece of paper and showed it to them, but they get away with it because you can just ignore all feedback, you don't have to actually answer support tickets from a distance of potentially hundreds of miles away (if you acted like that to my face, well, you wouldn't dare)
Some are worse than others; some legitimately just do not care how much evil they're pumping out into the world (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651178)
tsunamifury
Uber, Airbnb and DoorDash are the primary dark pattern users in the industry.
I am an executive design leader and all hires from these three companies are screened in detail about their honesty level in their designs due to how many issues I have with these companies training their workers to lie.
If you work for them know that it’s a black mark on your record.
I have hired two from these companies who literally opened the interview with “I want to leave X because they literally are lying”
zerosizedweasle
I feel like tech companies are sparing no shenanigans to be able to say people are paying for AI. Shouldn't it sell itself if it is as world changing (in it's current form) as people claim?
tencentshill
Rebranding Office as Copilot was an easy, sleazy way to gain millions of locked-in paid subscribers.
jsheard
https://www.perspectives.plus/p/microsoft-365-copilot-commer...
Even after putting their thumb on the scale, the numbers are still dismal. Not even a 2% conversion rate.
this_steve_j
The marketing has 100% shifted to the creation of workloads using “Agents”.
Presumably the hyperscalers can begin conflating the number of “agents” created with “boring jobs eliminated” and thus herald the industrial revolution.
But first: Your subscription price is increasing and now includes 5 Agents.
mrweasel
At what point does someone in management step in and kill of the product? 2% should be a pretty clear sign that the product is either price entirely wrong, or just not something that anyone wants to buy.
Are Microsoft just in to deep at this point? They killed one off their flagship brands (Office) in favour of Microsoft 365 Copilot, shouldn't someone be fired for that decision at this point?
I'm looking forward to the books and articles in 10 - 20 years time, attempting to explain what happened internally at Microsoft these past years.
estimator7292
The cost is already sunk and the only alternative to forcibly extracting any profit is to admit they got suckered into the hype and burned billions of dollars for nothing
ulfw
I don't even know what Microsoft 365 Copilot means. What idiotic branding. 365 means subscription I believe (you pay 365 days of the year). But Copilot? Huh? That's just a feature
devsda
I don't know how it was during the dot-com bubble, but the current AI hype is the biggest "Fake it till you make it" operation I've ever seen.
My only worry is about the huge impact on rank and file employees when they issue the "we are re-aligning our strategic direction/priorities and we are focusing on effective resource utilization" pr statement.
jdgoesmarching
Atlassian yanked core Jira Service Manager features into their premium plan which, you guessed it, includes AI.
For our company of >30 people this amounted to a ~$7k/mo increase.
noir_lord
Shhh - We aren't supposed to point out that the 4 Emperors of the Apocalypse are naked.
stevenkkim
This happened to me in the U.S. too. Family plan went from $99/yr to $129/yr. I was going to just going to resentfully accept this, when I just got annoyed and said, "you know what? we don't use word and excel enough to justify this and there are definitely alternatives." Only when I went to cancel did I find out that they tried to force me onto the $129 "with AI" plan (who actually thinks AI features are worth anything? I've never used them in office or really any MS product) and that the "without AI" plan is still $99.
I decided to cancel anyway because I was still resentful.
Thing is, either $99 or $129 for the Family plan is actually quite reasonable, our family has 5 users. I just don't like giving money to deceitful or disrespectful companies.
If Microsoft had just kept the pricing the same as they had for many years, I almost certainly would have re-subscribed.
giancarlostoro
The worst part is it literally costs them the same to tack on AI they are just hiking the price in order to generate more revenue. Running Word locally does not cost them more.
aquafox
I once bought an Office 2016 license and when I installed it this year on a new laptop, it turned itself into a trimmed down O365. After the first Office update, I got a non-closable ad next to my Excel spreadsheet to upgrade to a full O365. Even more, I was only able to save files to OneDrive and not locally. That was not what I originally paid for!
Tepix
It's fraud. Plain and simple.
akulbe
Google is doing exactly the same thing. Our monthly rates for Workspace went up because of the AI crap we didn't ask for.
lotsofpulp
The price went up because the seller was willing to bet enough people would keep paying it to more than offset the people who stop paying it. The addition of a feature no one wants is just marketing to make buyers feel better about having less money.
trashb
I feel like a lot of people don't internalize this.
The features don't matter as long as people put up the price for what they require. The job of the salesman/marketing team is to bet on a balance that will net the company money. The features are just the sales pitch that convince you you need the latest and greatest (comparable to a sports car salesman selling you the new v8 model instead of the more economical v6).
iptq
The $50 million punishment feels so insubstantial to Microsoft that they probably wouldn't even think twice before doing similar things again or worse. Only things that could threaten the bottom line would actually make companies reconsider.
matheusmoreira
So... How's Libre Office these days?
sireat
This 30 Euro jump in Europe was a kick in the pants for me.
Even though it is still a relatively good deal for a Family Plan (compared to say Google Drive or Dropbox) for OneDrive, I finally dropped my Microsoft 365 Family plan.
The final straw was that the Copilot was completely unhelpful and hallucinated features Office portal does not have.
samiv
Late stage capitalism will be so amazing (before the whole thing collapses.)
I imagine that in the future we'll have fridges with an integrated display that will not let you open the door until you watch through 40s of ads. Other option is to pay $$$ for ad-free monthly subscription that will then also (eventually) get ads.
We need to stop this.
I'm ready to see execs who sign off on these things to do actual prison time. In fact I think it's a requirement.
nashashmi
You can still do the same now. Go to cancellation and be offered a package without AI.
stevesimmons
I am in the UK.
I got Microsoft's emails, did not want Microsoft's forced imposition of Copilot in my Office subscription (regardless of price), found the classic option mentioned in online forums, and managed to switch to it just before my renewal.
My 89 year old aunt on the other hand got stung for the unwanted forced upgrade. I had to call Microsoft, complained about them unfairly exploiting vulnerable customers, and eventually got a downgrade and the difference refunded.
What really annoys me about this - quite apart from the initial deception/misrepresentation - is I now expect Microsoft to pull similar tricks in future. A real disincentive to sign up to any other 'value-added' services.
Why make subscriptions so full of traps that consumers end up hating you? (Yes, I know, so some GM can hit this quarter's bonus)
That reminds me, having just cancelled Spotify (due to their price rise), Disney+ is next on the list. Maybe Netflix too.
They have switched people to the plan with Copilot in the US too. I just checked and next renewal is set for the $99 plan with Copilot instead of the $69 plan I had been on.
I remember some email from them saying the Copilot was now on my plan, but I don't recall anything saying that this was actually a different, more expansive plan, or that Copilot was just a trial and the plan would switch until I took action, or anything like that.
Here's how to get back to your old plan:
• find the Services & Subscriptions page on your account and select Manage.
• click "Cancel Subscription".
• On the page that brings up there will be an option to switch to a different plan. That should have the "Personal Classic" plan. There's also "Family Classic" for people that want the family plan without Copilot.
Another way that some have reported works is to simply turn off recurring billing. That then sometimes triggers an offer to switch plans that includes the Classic plans.