The existence of these workarounds allow Microsoft to achieve their goals. It doesn't behoove them to tighten the screws completely, because they still get to capture the vast majority who do what they're told to. And after enough years of acceptance of surveillance creep, the Overton window will have shifted enough that subverting these controls will be perceived by normies as suspicious behavior.

> With some effort, you can use local account

For now. Microsoft has been trying to close that for a while, and I suspect the only thing keeping some of it alive is the stark security requirements some of their corporate/business customers mandate.

ledragonx windebloat tools my friend, your life will become much better. it strips out sooooooooooo much adware. It's like every service in windows from MS, dozens of them, all has telemetry. WHen it runs it's like getting a colonic and you think to yourself "wow, all that was in there?!?"