If you have to endure Microsoft shoving their whole fist up where the sun don't shine because your new-ish hardware either doesn't support Windows 7 or you're tired of worrying about operating systems and decided to just bite the bullet, here are a few things you ought to consider:

In the beginning, there was no reliable way to stop Microsoft's spying unless you somehow got your hands on a clean ISO for the LTSB/LTSC edition of Windows 10. Now there is, through a third party open source firewall called Simplewall. By default it comes with a list of IP addresses to block that Windows normally sends telemetry, keystrokes and other data to. Simply enable them in the blocklist.
Link: https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall

Another project which aims to mitigate data collection as well as to debloat the system is a PowerShell script called Windows10Debloater which disables bloatware applications that have their own data collection, such as Cortana, the Microsoft Store and Edge. (Link: https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater).

After running these I managed to get zero networking utilization when I don't run any internet-connected tasks myself, something which was near impossible when running Windows 10 without these things. Keep in mind though that you will probably have to re-run the PS1 script after every major update since those tend to re-enable some if not all of the built-in crapware.

You can also defer Windows updates by setting Windows Update Service from Manual to Disabled in services.msc. To ensure that the Windows Update Service doesn't start without your permission since it can actually do that (believe it or not) you can open up gpedit.msc, then go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update > Configure Automatic Updates, and select Disable. This way, Windows will only update when you tell it to.

Yeah this is a lot of hoops to jump through but I think it's worth it to try to stop Windows 10 from just doing what it wants.

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Anonymous 09/16/21(Thu)08:15 No. 2422 [Edit] File 163180532683.jpg - (600.63KB , 1350x1274 , ee0eaee341caf068d4f12b180d3a8ea8.jpg ) Off-topic, but I don't want to make a new thread. On windows, you can't tag gif and png files by default. This program fixes that by adding metadata to whatever file types you want(which are supported I guess). https://github.com/Dijji/FileMeta

>>	Anonymous 10/03/21(Sun)06:42 No. 2433 [Edit] File 163326857142.jpg - (41.87KB , 680x558 , 797.jpg ) Simplewall is a lifesaver. Haven't had to update for a while.