When Microsoft made the Feedback Hub universal app available to Windows 10 Insiders in March 2016 and generally available two months later, the plan was for the app to be the perfect tool for users to report issues and share suggestions on how to improve Windows experience for all customers.
However, as reported by users over the weekend and as BleepingComputer was able to confirm, the Windows 10 Feedback Hub is also now being used as a spam platform and a forum by political trolls.
Lack of moderation leads to a spam fest
Even though customers have been complaining increasingly often of Microsoft's delay in reading and addressing their reports, the platform's use for spamming and as a political forum with no intervention from Redmond's employees comes to show that the Feedback Hub either lacks the appropriate moderation tools or really suffers from a lack of attention from Microsoft.
To make matters worse, the "Report Abuse" button that can be used to report such posts is automatically disabled for five minutes after reporting three such posts as users who have tried reporting these spam posts found.
Be that as it may, it's obvious that that Feedback Hub is riddled with posts that have nothing to do with user feedback as shown in the screenshots we embedded below (this is just a small sample of all the spam we found).
It also shows that Microsoft is either unwilling to do anything about it, it doesn't consider the Feedback Hub an important tool as it's marketed to regular users and Insiders, or it just doesn't have the manpower to filter all the garbage.
Little to no improvement since Feedback Hub's launch
Either way, users have been saying for a while now that Microsoft is ignoring (some) reports (1, 2, 3), such as a serious issue that led to customer data loss after updating to Windows 10 1809 (1, 2, 3) and an issue affecting the Fresh Start recovery option in Windows 10 2004 that weren't addressed in the final builds even though they were reported by Windows Insiders through the Feedback Hub.
"Guess this is ultimate proof they don't read feedback," one user said in the Reddit thread that exposed these Feedback Hub problems.
"They also don't normally delete feedback (that would imply they have actual moderators), so there's a vulnerability here where they might be responsible for hosting questionable or illegal content and people can spam it up as much as they like," another one said.
Since Microsoft has been bundling Feedback Hub with new Windows 10 installations in 2016, very little has been added to improve the overall functionality of the app as it still doesn't provide users with the capability to edit or delete feedback posts, change their posts' category, or even edit or delete comments.
"The bad news is that the number of displayed feedbacks in search results is limited to 50," one user explains. "Among 50 feedbacks - 40 feedbacks is spam."
"As a result, excellent feedbacks are lost among tons of spam. Good feedbacks are also outside the 50 displayed feedbacks."
Is the Feedback Hub still on Microsoft's radar?
On the other hand, Samer Sawaya, a Microsoft Senior Program Manager Lead, has said in 2015 when users' feedback was collected through the Windows Feedback Hub, that the feedback team's goal "is to connect teams across Windows directly to the customer feedback you provide, and to make it very simple to leverage your feedback within the code we’re writing—to make it better."
"Therefore, we track how much feedback we receive, how much we convert into bug reports and work items, and how many of the work items we complete. We monitor these key metrics continuously to ensure we’re acting on your feedback," he added.
More recently, right before rolling out the Windows 10 Creators Update in 2017, Windows Servicing and Delivery Partner Director John Cable said that "[b]esides being an information source that we monitor closely, the Feedback Hub application offers a few key advantages."
"If you have your privacy settings enabled at the Full level, then the Feedback Hub application can capture valuable diagnostic data that makes feedback much more actionable for our engineering teams.
"Further, the search and upvote capability in the Feedback Hub helps us quickly spot trends across users that may require attention."
But the question remains: has Microsoft lost interest in the Windows 10 Feedback Hub since then?
Comments
Some-Other-Guy - 3 years ago
Wait....What?
Are you saying that Microsoft does not edit or delete your posts without giving you a reason (the way Bleeping Computer does) ?
Are you saying that Microsoft does not ban you from posting the truth about how horrible Microsoft products are (the way Bleeping Computer does) ?
WOW!
They seem downright civil by comparison
forum11 - 3 years ago
I was never a fan of the Feedback Hub and, by all recent accounts I've seen, MS has indeed lost interest in the FBH. So many of the issues with the various monthly Windows Updates and the bi-annual feature updates have been clearly reported in the FBH only to be ignored by MS and perpetuated Win 10 general release fiascos. At least with the MSDN, TechNet, Answer, Community, Q&A, and other web forums one could/can see and participate (and see what MS is ignoring) without needing a Win app.
TsVk! - 3 years ago
Who would have thought that laying off 40,000 software testers and then pushing their OS's as beta-versions on the public would have greater effects than making Micro$oft richer.