HALIFAX, N.S. — This week, Microsoft released an unprecedented, yet highly innovative, retention feature for its multi-factor authentication app.
For students at Dalhousie University, Microsoft’s Authenticator app is required to log into key services such as email and Brightspace, since only using your password is so 2015.
While the MFA process does make platforms more secure, it comes with an unforgivable downside: typing in a two-digit number from your phone to a login screen fucking sucks. Microsoft’s newest update aims to tackle this crime against the people.
The new feature called AuthentiClips incorporates a short-form video-sharing platform that occupies the bottom half of the screen. Microsoft states the update will boost student productivity because it makes logging on to school accounts “less utterly miserable.”
After only a few days online, the app is already filled with user-generated content. These AuthentiClips feature anything from puppy videos to dashcam footage of car crashes leading to certain (yet plausibly deniable) death.
Dal students praise the change, which seems to have made logging in almost enjoyable.
“The weight of the world has been lifted off my shoulders,” says Stephen Pitchford, a second-year political science student.
“Before the update, that app really killed all my motivation,” he says. “You’d spend an hour sitting around on Instagram convincing yourself you should probably write that essay, and as a reward for your valiant effort, you get slapped in the face with some fucking MFA.”
Pitchford says he usually watches more Instagram reels as a reward for putting his password and two-digit number in the app, but now he can “kill two birds with one stone.”
The Mackerel reached out to Microsoft and received an email statement from Emily Rose, the company’s digital accessibility specialist:
“It was the only thing we could do to make things right,” she said. “We admit, the authenticator app is one of this firm’s biggest blunders. The people responsible for its original design have all been fired. The app was programmed to listen to its surroundings and trigger an MFA at the most inconvenient moment. When we found out universities had required its use, we knew we had to step in and help these poor students.”
In the days following the update, the authenticator app saw an upsurge in users. Smelling the profits akin to a cartoon character floating toward a pie, Microsoft opted to spin off AuthentiClips into its own app, plunging Dal students back into the depths of misery as Microsoft Authenticator returned to its pre-brainrot state.
“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
— Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight