"News and interests" process perpetually in task manager as of September 2024 W10 updates
Update: Here is another longer running thread about this issue that's a bit more active: https://old.reddit.com/r/WindowsHelp/comments/1ff5m2d/news_and_interests_keeps_appearing_in_task/
This is a continuation of a previous thread (which was locked, presumably because it was posted in a subreddit which did not permit tech support posts, which nobody realized until too late): https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/1fp9ahr/anyone_else_notice_their_shutdowns_take_longer/
The problem is that a process has begun appearing on boot called News and interests, regardless of whether all options for having this Windows feature are completely disabled or not via the taskbar options.
The process will enter a dormant state after some time, however interacting with the taskbar using your mouse or the Windows key will wake it, causing it to spike in system usage for a time before it eventually enters a dormant state again until the prior triggers are repeated. This News and interests process is comprised of 6 Microsoft Edge WebView 2 and one Search application subprocess.
This issue began with updates pushed out in September of 2024 on Windows 10, and unlike previous instances of similar problems related to people trying to get rid of persistent 'News and interests,' the old solutions of editing group policies and the like don't seem to work on this new iteration.
My main gripe with this issue is that it doesn't seem needed, at all. I have no use for the News and interests feature, and so why is it running at all times, restarting itself after a couple minutes any time I manually force the process to be shut down? I've also seen people complain that this process is causing their computer to take significantly longer to shut down.
As far as I know, the only option we have at the moment (aside from uninstalling the latest Windows Updates, which is not at all ideal) is to rightclick on the News and interests process in the task manager and provide feedback on it using the Feedback Hub app. Someone in a previous thread about this mentioned that this was apparently a known issue at this point, but it can't hurt to provide more reports about it through the Feedback Hub method.
Lastly, here are some other threads that were made about this issue spread out across this site including one from the Microsoft support forums:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/1flrn2k/recent_update_to_w10edge_webview2/