> I don't know if Raycast team even knows about this.

I'm part of Raycast, we didn't know about it, learnt about it here

Microslop for a while now seems to be testing exactly how much you can abuse the user before they move somewhere else. Windows is a prime example. Everything is ads, tracking, popups, annoyances, etc.

They have got away with it for a while because a lot of users have largely been stuck, but they are in real trouble now with Apple providing meaningful competition.

If Microsoft is willing to put ads into your PRs via Copilot like this, imagine what they could put into your codebase itself with Copilot.

Or what Microsoft could do, run, install, etc on/from your computer while running their Copilot agents.

This is the same company that puts ads in your start menu and reinserts them with Windows updates even if you manually removed them.

> There are 1.5m of these things in GitHub.

You’re pointing to something entirely different: those are Copilot-created PRs. They can include anything Copilot wants to include. People using the Copilot PR feature know what they’re buying into.

OP is about Copilot doing post-hoc editing of a human-created PR to include an ad, allegedly without knowledge or approval of the creator (well I assume they did give their team member permission to update the PR body, but apparently not for this kind of crap).

It’s like how Disney Plus “ad free” tier shows you ads for Hulu and Disney Perks. They probably redefine “ad” in their terms of service so their own ads are called something else.

Microsoft would probably seriously refer to it as 'just the tip'.

You'll never guess what happens next.

(Hint: everyone knows what happens next)

It's definitely an ad, I think the only real question is whether it's just marketing Copilot or whether part of their partnership with other companies is advertising the integration in this way. The links all go to Copilot docs pages on the integrations, so they're not typical tracked link advertising campaigns.

A bit like "suggested apps" in the start menu. It's "suggestions" and certainly not paid ads.

Honestly, it being a "tip" or "ad" is exactly the same.

What I mean is that even if I take that at face value and accept that it's not an ad, and I can just about see from a certain level of corporate brainwashing how one could believe that, it's still completely unacceptable.

This tip/ad discussion reminds me of the equally idiotic and misleading Facebook post types. Instead of the correctly labeling all ads as, well, ads, Facebook have some ads called "suggested for you", some are completely unlabeled with only a "follow" button to start following, some ads are labeled as "sponsored" etc. I think they are doing this to evade legal limitations they might have otherwise. Last time I used Facebook it showed me 25 ads in a row (I counted), without any of my hundreds of follows with active feeds. Truly insane company.

It is clearly an ad, no doubt about that.

> Looks like MS really want to "give tips"

Including Windows, File Explorer, Start Menu, ...

It seems with the latest "ok we went too far" Win11 patch though, they got some tips back from their users.

New age clippy no one wants but M$lop

It's an interesting model, makes me wonder if prolific open source contributors do it ("leave a tip if you like this MR" kind of thing).

> Looks like MS thinks it's a "tip" rather than an ad.

No, they don't.

> edit: I think it's an ad too. Everyone would think so, except for MS.

You think a company with a $2.65 trillion market cap and an army of marketing professionals doesn't realize that what they're doing here is an ad, and didn't implement it intentionally as such?

That's not even remotely plausible. In the quantum multiverse which contains all physically realizable possibilities, that isn't one of them.