this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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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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[–] [email protected] 93 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 45 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It still is, but it was too.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

there are six ducks out there, and they all want sun chips.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

And Voss, those thirsty bastards.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I see a lot of genitalia with DDG’d search

[–] [email protected] 33 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (2 children)

That makes the software not free though 😥

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

That's impossible because my time is worthless.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (4 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 102 points 9 months ago (3 children)

This is why we can't have nice things.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 9 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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”.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 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.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Microsoft Rewards isn't a "nice thing".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 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

[–] [email protected] 39 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Obviously. Don't get caught.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

This headline reads like blogTO.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Bummer, I was going to check this out too