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submitted 11 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

Microsoft guts Microsoft Rewards points, and its fans are outraged::Microsoft appears to be nickel-and-diming users and fans of its Microsoft Rewards program, which gives "frequent-flyer" points that can be traded in for gift cards.

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[-] ioslife@lemmy.sdf.org 93 points 11 months ago

This was the only reason to use Bing for a long time

[-] shalafi@lemmy.world 18 points 11 months ago

Bing, uh, has it's uses. IYKYK.

[-] Anomalous_Llama@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago

Don’t think Bing has been good for that for some years no?

[-] winkerjadams@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 11 months ago

Pretty sure he's talking about using bing video search for porn.

[-] Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago

Bing's fine in general. Meanwhile any time I get curious and use Google, if I have to go deeper with anything past the first 2 results, it will be absolute garbage.

[-] 9up999@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 months ago

I prefer qwant. Based in France. EU privacy law.

[-] shalafi@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

Works great for me. LOL, tried DuckDuckGo today for giggles, no joy. Even with safe search off, same exact results.

[-] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 11 months ago
[-] shalafi@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

Failed for me, even with Safe Search off. Same results.

[-] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 11 months ago

I see a lot of genitalia with DDG’d search

[-] netchami@sh.itjust.works 43 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I remember using this (cheating a little bit with VPNs and proxies so I could claim the rewards like 20 times every day, because they are separate in every country) to get some Xbox giftcards

I also had ~15 Microsoft accounts and I put them all in a Microsoft family so I could transfer points from one account to another, it was really fun lol

[-] RagingInside@lemmy.world 103 points 11 months ago

This is why we can't have nice things.

[-] helenslunch@feddit.nl 39 points 11 months ago

I mean in their defense, fuck Microsoft with a rusty nail, and this system was basically designed for exploitation.

[-] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 4 points 11 months ago

No, this is why systems that aren’t rigorously designed to preclude exploitation like this simply shouldn’t be released. If flaws like this exist in the system, they will be exploited. It’s not on the users if they exploited a flaw, even if you say “please don’t exploit the flaw”.

[-] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 3 points 11 months ago

There's a continuum between this kind of thing and, say, ransomware attacks. I'm not sure where the line should be drawn.

[-] Welt@lazysoci.al 1 points 11 months ago

Microsoft Rewards isn't a "nice thing".

[-] DesolateMood@lemm.ee 1 points 11 months ago

Idk man I get free game pass every month and people much more patient than me have been able to get entire free consoles. I'd call that pretty nice

[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 39 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

You sound like part of the reason they gutted the thing, then.

[-] netchami@sh.itjust.works 6 points 11 months ago

I stopped doing this a few years ago but the system was flawed from the ground up. The fact that they did nothing to this kind of abuse it mind-boggling. No one actually used this the way it was intended to be used.

[-] BallsInTheShredder@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

But they did do something eventually lol

[-] grayman@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

They're giving out made up points and then letting you trade them for copies of digital files. They're not really losing much.

[-] stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml 6 points 11 months ago

People like you are why normies can’t buy pax tickets. This isn’t simmering to be proud of, you should be ashamed of abusing a system.

[-] Pxtl@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago

For ones where they give you a code for a non-MS service (eg LoL or Overwatch tokens) couldn't you bot-farm this and then literally just sell the redemption code?

[-] netchami@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago

If you actually started selling these, they would probably shut that down pretty quickly and maybe even sue you

[-] Pxtl@lemmy.ca 4 points 11 months ago

Obviously. Don't get caught.

[-] JTskulk@lemmy.world 35 points 11 months ago

Let's make a replacement program for Free software. The more points you get, the more Free software you can install.

[-] kurwa@lemmy.world 15 points 11 months ago

That makes the software not free though 😥

[-] darelik@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

It's not free, it's Free^TM

[-] joyjoy@lemm.ee 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

That's impossible because my time is worthless.

[-] Natanael@slrpnk.net 2 points 11 months ago

The points are measured in gigabytes of storage on your hard drive

[-] Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world 16 points 11 months ago

Meh. This seems relatively minor, and geared towards people purposely gaming it. Which, yeah, I've done at one time or another. Lately I've just been getting the points from searching. It might take a couple extra days to get enough for each $5 gift card. Oh well.

[-] iegod@lemm.ee 8 points 11 months ago

This headline reads like blogTO.

[-] kbtaco@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

I’m most disappointed with the cooldown between searches. The lowering of points was expected as they were cutting back everywhere else.

[-] Pxtl@lemmy.ca 6 points 11 months ago

I mean I've bought 2 Overwatch passes using those points. I couldn't justify paying cash for skins to myself, but MS rewards points I could rationalize. But I basically fire up Edge/Bing to collect the points and then go back to Firefox & DDG. It was obviously not sustainable for them.

[-] FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

Bummer, I was going to check this out too

this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
269 points (100.0% liked)

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