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submitted 1 year 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 76 points 1 year ago

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

[-] db2@sopuli.xyz 38 points 1 year ago

It still is, but it was too.

[-] beerclue@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

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

[-] gekkonaut@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

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

[-] ohlaph@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

And Voss, those thirsty bastards.

[-] shalafi@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Anomalous_Llama@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

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

[-] winkerjadams@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 year ago
[-] shalafi@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

I see a lot of genitalia with DDG’d search

[-] JTskulk@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year 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 10 points 1 year ago

That makes the software not free though 😥

[-] joyjoy@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's impossible because my time is worthless.

[-] Natanael@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 year ago

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

[-] netchami@sh.itjust.works 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 73 points 1 year ago

This is why we can't have nice things.

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 1 year 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 -2 points 1 year ago

Microsoft Rewards isn't a "nice thing".

[-] DesolateMood@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year 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 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

[-] grayman@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year 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.

[-] netchami@sh.itjust.works -4 points 1 year 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.

[-] stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year 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 1 year 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 -2 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Pxtl@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

Obviously. Don't get caught.

[-] kbtaco@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

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

[-] iegod@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

This headline reads like blogTO.

[-] FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Bummer, I was going to check this out too

[-] Pxtl@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year 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.

this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
207 points (96.8% liked)

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