Color me shocked...

Yes, because not giving them first an opportunity to clarify their position to this "apparent" change implies we are assuming bad faith and not willing to give the benefit of the doubt first.

It should be also obvious to anyone following recent news that this is not the biggest concern inside MSFT who just announced layoffs, so the possibility of just being a misunderstanding is more likely than usual IMHO

The only solution is to demand a public trust hold these and administer them on behalf of computer users everywhere.

This is a time when Microsoft stands exposed (again) and such a demand can be raised and escalated. To defer endlessly to Microsoft is to once again lose the moment and either lose the battle now or set up one for a future loss -- nowhere is anything other than a perpetuation of the stalemate of the status quo ante a possibility without fighting for the control to be given up by Microsoft.

I think this is the most useful framework to think about these things.

For example, imagine you are in charge of security at Microsoft. You propose to a wide array of security measures. Some of them require additional work in Windows, some of them require work from vendors and some would be easy to enable but require extra development to make work well with other operating systems.

Your boss is tasked with picking which of these things should be the companies priority this year. Which of these do you think will be at the bottom of the list? The measures start to roll out and you receive backlash. You earnestly suggested these security measures in good faith so you will of course defend them and be adamant that their purpose is security. But your good intentions were ultimately irrelevant, because filtered through bad incentives they created emergent evil.

"Is Microsoft good or bad" is a trick question, it's a blind self-feeding machine.