IIRC they lessened it by some ε > 0 in 1803. [1]

> As far as I remember, it is absolutely overreaching, collecting your name, email address, browsing history, searches, application usage and more.

Some of these seem more alarming than others. Where are each of these pulled from? If you have a Microsoft account they already have your name and address. Most people use Chrome and I assume Windows isn't sending that info to Microsoft (although this does make me worry for those who use IE/Edge). Searches and application usage I haven't heard explicitly but those would worry me more.

> Microsoft also keeps a copy of your full-disk encryption key.

Wasn't this only when you had a Microsoft account or something? We can debate how they shove MSAs down users' throat (I want to punch my computer when they do that too), but as far as the FDE key is concerned, I feel like those who don't want this also wouldn't want to use a Microsoft account for their logins to begin with?

[1] https://windowsreport.com/windows-10-v1803-privacy/

You can remove them easily enough from a Microsoft account.

But to respond to your overall point, there are probably hacks around each of the things I've mentioned, but the point is that I don't feel like using an OS that does these things is a reasonable alternative for me. Particularly because who knows what other kinds of aggressive changes are being concocted for the future. I try to make this point to my family and friends too and they seem to agree.

Thanks for the link though, I'll take a look.

There's also a few custom installers/scripts that people have written to disable the telemetry via PowerShell that are floating around, but I think their up-to-date-ness varies from author to author.