Microsoft Defender SmartScreen is hurting independent developers

Let us say you are an independent developer and it is time to publish your app to the world. To make it easier, you build an installer and start distributing it. A courageous early adopter downloads and runs it, only to be greeted by this strongly worded warning:

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Indeed, in today's Windows environment, Microsoft actively blocks binaries from running; thanks to SmartScreen".

This article details some of the problems with SmartSCreen, which in theory could be an important and useful technology.