AI Agents and Gated Data: The New Ethics of Digital Research

Last week, MC1181209 in the Microsoft message center reminded us of the wider rollout of Teams Premium self-service trials for users.

But it's important to remember that there are now a lot of options for self-service trials where users can just sign themselves up to add a new product to their account. In my tenant, I currently see 27 options.

In most environments, I can think of no good reason why self-service trials would be helpful. All new products need an adoption plan to be successful, all will add cost beyond the trial, and the worst-case scenario is that users spend effort working in a new product that IT budgets can't afford in the long term. And in many cases, self-service purchase just leads to a form of shadow IT where technology costs get hidden on individual credit card statements.

How do you turn this off? Go to the M365 admin center, to org settings, and then to "Self-service trials and purchases". For each available, you can select to turn them off entirely or change the settings.

First posted on Linkedin on 11/03/2025 -> View Linkedin post here