This week in Facebook

Do you remember when I said that Facebook's ongoing and ever-deepening scandals were going to end with someone from the firm doing jail time? That outcome just became a lot more likely.

As reported by CNN Business:

Federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation into Facebook's data sharing deals with a number of large technology companies, according to a new report in the New York Times.

As part of the investigation, a New York grand jury has subpoenaed two well-known smartphone makers for records related to the investigation, according to the report.

[...]

The grand jury inquiry was on behalf of the US attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York. When contacted by CNN Business, the Eastern District did not have a comment on the case.

Add this to Facebook's big outage of yesterday, and their incredibly stupid decision to block the campaign ad of Democratic Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, apparently because it talked bluntly about the need to break up companies like Facebook (way to prove her case, Zuck), and you end up with a week that a New York Times op-ed describes as "biblically bad."

Microsoft's mixed messaging Windows 7 users to get GWX upgrade nag screens again... and also DirectX 12. WTF, MSFT?

Before we get started, I just want to point out that Microsoft announced both of these Windows 7 developments on the same day.

First, from The Inquirer:

THE NAGS are back, and we're not talking about the invasion of the killer horses that we dreamt about after a particularly cheeky late-night cheeseboard.

Microsoft has confirmed that starting next month, Windows 7 users will start to see pop-ups warning them that their beloved operating system is reaching end of life on 14th January 2020.

This will send shudders of resigned recognition to all those who lived through the saga of nag screens that plagued Windows 7 and 8.x users when Windows 10 was rolled out as a free upgrade and made it very difficult to opt out.

The good news is that these "courtesy reminders" contain some learnings gained from that whole debacle, with a promise that this time you'll see far fewer, and that there'll be a definite "don't remind me again" checkbox to get rid of them.

And then, from The Verge:

Microsoft is making a very surprising addition to Windows 7 this week, with the support of DirectX 12 for the nearly 10-year-old operating system. While Windows 7 support will end in less than a year and Microsoft will start sending notifications to PCs next month, the company is allowing some game developers to implement DirectX 12. The first game to appear with DirectX 12 support on Windows 7 is Blizzard’s World of Warcraft.

Microsoft heard feedback from Blizzard that features like multi-threading in DirectX 12 were bringing substantial framerate improvements to World of Warcraft on Windows 10. Blizzard wanted these same features on Windows 7, presumably because it still has a large base of players on this older OS. Microsoft originally launched DirectX 12 as part of Windows 10, and has not made it available for Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 users.

This is just baffling, even for Microsoft. I can see bringing the new Chromium/Edge browser to Windows 7; Microsoft have a significant number of large-volume license-holders to whom they're trying to sell additional years of Windows 7 support ($300 USD per PC for three years, and only if you have a volume license), so adding new functionality to the platform for them makes a certain amount of sense. But WoW players? In a year in which they're trying desperately to convert individual Windows 7 users into Windows 10 Home (or Pro) users, for Microsoft to be giving those same individual W7 users additional reasons not to switch makes no obvious sense.

Oh, and these same PC gamers, who've mostly rejected both of Microsoft's ecosystems, i.e. Windows 10 and XBox Live? Microsoft has more goodies in the bag for them, too, even if they don't play WoW.

Windows 7 gained market share last month, while everybody else lost ground.Seriously, WTAF?

OK, I'll admit it... I have no idea what's going on with OS market share trends this year.

Last year seemed to have a clear pattern. With few exceptions, Windows consistently lost share each month to MacOS and Linux, with Chrome staying steady. This year, though, Windows is growing while everyone else has started to slip. That would seem to be the perfect story for Microsoft, who have been waiting for Windows 10 to finally start taking over the desktop/laptop OS market for years, and for tech punditry, who have mostly been expecting business and government deployments to finally make that happen as Windows 7 winds down to end-of-service in January of 2020.

But that's not what we see happening. Instead, Windows 10 is slowly sliding along with all over OS versions, while Windows 7 and 8.1 together posted gains that are strong enough to raise Windows' overall user market share of the desktop/laptop space. It's demented... and yet, it's also happening.

So, what the actual fuck is actually happening?

Comparing last month's numbers with this month's, by same OS version.

I could understand if some Windows 10 users were rolling back to Windows 7, or if some newly-minted Linux users had switched back to Windows 7 - after all, I've done that before, my own self.

But it's not just Windows 10 and/or Linux that are being cannibalized by Windows 7; according to NetMarketShare's numbers, MacOS users are also switching to Windows 7, apparently having already spent the Apple Tax to buy their (expensive) new Macs.

Only one possible explanation occurs to me, and I have no idea whether it's reasonable or not. I'm starting to wonder whether NetMarketShare's are being skewed by something which they themselves claimed to have dealt with before: botnets.