Looks like the journalist was too young to remember the day when Microsoft announced this policy via email to everyone. I remember the days where I get reminder emails on my secondary account to login. It was always in their terms and conditions ever since. Certainly they didn't do this quietly. But yes, they do this, unfortunately.
the fundamental flaw of these kinds of survey: if you have enough time to participate then you're not majority, you will never value time-saving features as highly as people who matter will, for example. lots of other things. I never regard experiments using accidental sampling seriously.