You can disable it on Windows 7, though. That's the most important point.

If you adopted the policy of only installing security updates, which plenty of people did after GWX if not before, you didn't get that other junk anyway.

The way Microsoft have actively made it more difficult to install only security updates on older versions of Windows recently is yet another reason not to trust them with updates you can't control at all on newer versions. They brought this mistrust upon themselves by abusing their position deliberately and repeatedly, so I don't think anyone can blame the sceptics.

The really sad thing is the number of people, even here on HN where you'd expect to find relatively well-informed discussion, who completely miss the distinction between security updates and updates more generally when debating this issue. I mean, we are literally talking about an organisation that pushed out an entire new operating system via the update process, and they deliberately did so in such a way that many people now have that new OS and didn't necessarily want it or actively did not want it.