This might be an unpopular opinion but I'm actually glad they do this by default now (you can turn it off). My understanding is that MS was continually getting blamed for users getting viruses because they would never update their system, so in the best interest of the users they decided to force it.

I know a lot of people will still disagree with me, but I think if you were in their situation and you were getting tired of not only end-users but also world governments blaming you for things your users did (or did not do)... you'd probably want to control that a little more too, for both your sakes.

In the end it will hurt MS's reputation for being a broken mess even if it's 100% the users' fault for not updating, so I absolutely get it. And yes I know there's plenty of other things you can blame them for, I'm not saying this is their only issue.