7 ms·

The feedback to this change is very negative. And some of the things we thought would help (respecting DNT) don't seems to matter much. We'll have a look at all

by sytse 7y ago

The feedback to this change is very negative. And some of the things we thought would help (respecting DNT) don't seems to matter much. We'll have a look at all the feedback and see what we can learn and adjust. First change to the blog post is in https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/33278/diffs https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/... and we're discussing more changes.

thsowers 7y ago
Not sure why the "opt-in" option isnt more apparent as a less hostile UX? I've always thought of Gitlab as a privacy minded company, until now, and the botched attempts to listen to feedback are only worsening my impression. Please prove me wrong!
- sytse 7y ago
  "Not sure why the "opt-in" option isnt more apparent as a less hostile UX?" do you mean having to use DNT to opt out?
  - thsowers 7y ago
    No, I mean opt-in to telemetry as opposed to having to opt-out would be more ideal
  - _-___________-_ 7y ago
    Not all browsers make it easy to turn DNT on (Safari has apparently removed it), so it's not an ideal opt-out mechanism. DNT is basically a failed technology; if you really care about not being tracked you would just block the trackers rather than asking them to pretty please not track you. (Edited to add: as others have said, this should not be opt-out anyway. Opt-in is much less user hostile, and as far as I know is legally mandated in the EU anyway.)
  - wastedhours 7y ago
    The issue is forcing this as "opt-out" rather than "opt-in". Opt-out is pretty hostile UX for something you must have known would be seen as a negative by large swathes of the developer audience (and if you didn't see the negative reaction coming, then there's larger questions to be asked). I'm a free user, so I'm "happy" insofar as I have very little say, but it's certainly a worrying step.
    - sytse 7y ago
      Thanks. We will revisit opt-in vs. opt-out, especially for self-hosted installations. We didn't expect praise for more telemetry from the developer audience but we did underestimate the reaction. There were many more concerns than we expected. We’re going to process the feedback and rethink our plan. We will not activate tracing on GitLab.com or GitLab self-managed for now. We'll make sure to communicate in advance on our blog when we do have a new plan.
      - alangibson 7y ago
        > we did underestimate the reaction Be serious. You knew what the reaction would be. You gambled on it getting missed by the community and lost.
        sytse 7y ago
        As said we didn't expect praise. We published this change in a blog post and sent an email.
      - bdcravens 7y ago
        Typically when Github “copies” a feature, there’s a blog post within a couple of hours.
      - wastedhours 7y ago
        Thanks for the reply, and glad to hear about the review - am still surprised to hear the reaction was larger than expected though. The narrative is rather predictable - "community minded tech company raises cash, has ultra valuation, starts imposing tracking onto users etc..." Fair or not, that's the leagues now. Also, might be a learning about engaging the community on things it understands - a common user of a SaaS platform might not have an understanding of tech, but a common user of a developer SaaS platform does. If when I had next logged into the dashboard I got a modal that asked me "hey, here's a list of things we'd like to monitor to make your experience better, what data would you be happy we looked at?" I'd probably opt-in to some just to be helpful as I know the context. I'm guessing a lot of your mid-market acquisition (though likely not revenue) is through word of mouth, migrations or "dark procurement" (?) - audiences that are ultra-sensitive to this sort of thing, so the misstep here is a question.
  - time0ut 7y ago
    Using DNT as an opt out mechanism is beyond ridiculous. It doesn't impact us yet (EE) luckily. This would put us in a tough spot as we are required to control this sort of thing, but have no way enforcing it with our third party developer community. It is a worrying misstep from my perspective.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
kuschku 7y ago
So first of all I’d recommend you try to understand your users. Your EE users use your self-hosted product because they don’t want anything leaving their premises — not a single bit of data. If you require this, do you really think EA, SIEMENS, Ericsson, Lockheed Martin or Bayer are going to let any data from their instances with potentially secret and internal future projects leak out to you or your third parties? No, they won’t. They’ll require you signing a contract that you won’t track them, or they’ll switch vendors — you’re the small fish in that case. Additionally, I’d suggest reading and understanding the GDPR — the text is actually surprisingly simple: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679&from=EN https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... So you, or in case of the EE Edition, your customers, have to have explicit, clear, and freely given[1] consent to allow any telemetry or tracking which contains PII to happen at all, and especially to give any PII to third parties. Pseudonymous data counts as PII. Data which contains the IP (such as a direct connection to a third-party server to transmit data) counts as PII. [1] Even more interesting, freely given consent is defined as explicitly opt-in, and it has to be in clear and simple language, the default (and/or the biggest button) has to be rejecting everything, and the consent can not lead to any functional changes, so you can’t require opt-in to let the user access any functionality either.
- aetimmes 7y ago
  From the article: "Enterprise Edition (EE) No current changes. We are not adding telemetry services to EE at this time."
  - EpicEng 7y ago
    >at this time Which was recently added after receiving a metric ton of backlash. You have to question their initial thought process here.
    - kevin_b_er 7y ago
      Check out some more of the thought process: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/telemetry/issues/34 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/telemetry/issues/34 The original title was "Remove the ability to toggle sending telemetry data back to GitLab", then "Remove the ability for on-prem users to toggle sending telemetry data back to GitLab"
kstenerud 7y ago
How is it that you even considered DNT a viable option when it's been common knowledge for years that DNT is a failed technology? Even Wikipedia knows that, and yet you, an expert in the field, don't?
- prophesi 7y ago
  Yeah, we need a "it's now infeasible to track me" as opposed to a "please don't track me."
- wlll 7y ago
  Cynical me could imagine the conversation might go something along these lines: Alice> We want to do a thing, and we want everyone to do it without being able to realistically avoid it while still saying "we gave them an option" Bob> Let's use DNT, it's used by almost no-one and is largely obsolete. Alice> Perfect! It's a bit like web sites that allow you to opt out of tracking and targetted advertising by directing you at the cookie config settings in your web browser. A token gesture.
  - heavyset_go 7y ago
    There's no need to be cynical, the situation you posed is 100% within the realm of possibility when you consider that the actions Gitlab took benefit Gitlab greatly.
tcd 7y ago
I can't believe any organisation can be this tone deaf considering the awareness of privacy abuses that are practically in the news on a daily basis. Respect your users and respect yourself, roll back the change, make an apology PR piece and move on.
mattl 7y ago
Please make this telemetry opt-in and optional, even on GitLab.com.
nroach 7y ago
Part of the issue is that Gitlab's approach signals a "we don't know what we don't know" problem. Enterprises have been dealing with GDPR, CCPA, and data privacy issues for several years now. The apparent fact that Gitlab doesn't recognize when they're running afoul of opt-out standard practices mechanisms, and has those vulnerabilities appearing to be not caught during the SDLC is probably causing a lot of second guessing of competency by your more mature customers. edit: This isn't a problem unique to Gitlab. Microsoft, for example, has encountered and dealt with this problem (telemetry privacy issues) as well (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-ie/DeployOffice/privacy/overview-privacy-controls https://docs.microsoft.com/en-ie/DeployOffice/privacy/overvi...). Search for "Microsoft Dutch DPIA" for all the sordid detail.
rocky1138 7y ago
I personally don't have a problem with telemetry when the product is free and what you collect and how it's used is clearly defined. If people are paying, it should be reduced or eliminated if the monthly fee is high enough. I think a big problem is that it was so unexpected! Especially the API changes, where people probably are wondering why things aren't working today. Some advance notice would have helped, probably. I've used Gitlab in the past and will continue to use it here and there, though I host all my own repos at home with just regular old git and use Github for work, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt because I'm technically not a heavy user of your service.
JohnFen 7y ago
> some of the things we thought would help (respecting DNT) don't seems to matter much DNT is dead as a dodo, and many people either use browsers that no longer support it or are strongly resistance to enabling it because it's used as a signal in fingerprinting browsers. I'm not sure why you thought DNT would help.
EpicEng 7y ago
Judging from the MR thread it seems that almost everyone was in favor of opt-in except for the CFO.
philipwhiuk 7y ago
The code review worked. Then he got shouted down. That’s a big corporate culture problem. And why did the lead email mention SOC2 and not CCPA and GDPR?

by sytse 7y ago

thsowers 7y ago

Not sure why the "opt-in" option isnt more apparent as a less hostile UX? I've always thought of Gitlab as a privacy minded company, until now, and the botched attempts to listen to feedback are only worsening my impression. Please prove me wrong!

sytse 7y ago
"Not sure why the "opt-in" option isnt more apparent as a less hostile UX?" do you mean having to use DNT to opt out?
- thsowers 7y ago
  No, I mean opt-in to telemetry as opposed to having to opt-out would be more ideal
- _-___________-_ 7y ago
  Not all browsers make it easy to turn DNT on (Safari has apparently removed it), so it's not an ideal opt-out mechanism. DNT is basically a failed technology; if you really care about not being tracked you would just block the trackers rather than asking them to pretty please not track you. (Edited to add: as others have said, this should not be opt-out anyway. Opt-in is much less user hostile, and as far as I know is legally mandated in the EU anyway.)
- wastedhours 7y ago
  The issue is forcing this as "opt-out" rather than "opt-in". Opt-out is pretty hostile UX for something you must have known would be seen as a negative by large swathes of the developer audience (and if you didn't see the negative reaction coming, then there's larger questions to be asked). I'm a free user, so I'm "happy" insofar as I have very little say, but it's certainly a worrying step.
  - sytse 7y ago
    Thanks. We will revisit opt-in vs. opt-out, especially for self-hosted installations. We didn't expect praise for more telemetry from the developer audience but we did underestimate the reaction. There were many more concerns than we expected. We’re going to process the feedback and rethink our plan. We will not activate tracing on GitLab.com or GitLab self-managed for now. We'll make sure to communicate in advance on our blog when we do have a new plan.
    - alangibson 7y ago
      > we did underestimate the reaction Be serious. You knew what the reaction would be. You gambled on it getting missed by the community and lost.
      - sytse 7y ago
        As said we didn't expect praise. We published this change in a blog post and sent an email.
    - bdcravens 7y ago
      Typically when Github “copies” a feature, there’s a blog post within a couple of hours.
    - wastedhours 7y ago
      Thanks for the reply, and glad to hear about the review - am still surprised to hear the reaction was larger than expected though. The narrative is rather predictable - "community minded tech company raises cash, has ultra valuation, starts imposing tracking onto users etc..." Fair or not, that's the leagues now. Also, might be a learning about engaging the community on things it understands - a common user of a SaaS platform might not have an understanding of tech, but a common user of a developer SaaS platform does. If when I had next logged into the dashboard I got a modal that asked me "hey, here's a list of things we'd like to monitor to make your experience better, what data would you be happy we looked at?" I'd probably opt-in to some just to be helpful as I know the context. I'm guessing a lot of your mid-market acquisition (though likely not revenue) is through word of mouth, migrations or "dark procurement" (?) - audiences that are ultra-sensitive to this sort of thing, so the misstep here is a question.
- time0ut 7y ago
  Using DNT as an opt out mechanism is beyond ridiculous. It doesn't impact us yet (EE) luckily. This would put us in a tough spot as we are required to control this sort of thing, but have no way enforcing it with our third party developer community. It is a worrying misstep from my perspective.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

kuschku 7y ago

So first of all I’d recommend you try to understand your users. Your EE users use your self-hosted product because they don’t want anything leaving their premises — not a single bit of data. If you require this, do you really think EA, SIEMENS, Ericsson, Lockheed Martin or Bayer are going to let any data from their instances with potentially secret and internal future projects leak out to you or your third parties? No, they won’t. They’ll require you signing a contract that you won’t track them, or they’ll switch vendors — you’re the small fish in that case. Additionally, I’d suggest reading and understanding the GDPR — the text is actually surprisingly simple: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679&from=EN https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... So you, or in case of the EE Edition, your customers, have to have explicit, clear, and freely given[1] consent to allow any telemetry or tracking which contains PII to happen at all, and especially to give any PII to third parties. Pseudonymous data counts as PII. Data which contains the IP (such as a direct connection to a third-party server to transmit data) counts as PII. [1] Even more interesting, freely given consent is defined as explicitly opt-in, and it has to be in clear and simple language, the default (and/or the biggest button) has to be rejecting everything, and the consent can not lead to any functional changes, so you can’t require opt-in to let the user access any functionality either.

aetimmes 7y ago
From the article: "Enterprise Edition (EE) No current changes. We are not adding telemetry services to EE at this time."
- EpicEng 7y ago
  >at this time Which was recently added after receiving a metric ton of backlash. You have to question their initial thought process here.
  - kevin_b_er 7y ago
    Check out some more of the thought process: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/telemetry/issues/34 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/telemetry/issues/34 The original title was "Remove the ability to toggle sending telemetry data back to GitLab", then "Remove the ability for on-prem users to toggle sending telemetry data back to GitLab"

kstenerud 7y ago

How is it that you even considered DNT a viable option when it's been common knowledge for years that DNT is a failed technology? Even Wikipedia knows that, and yet you, an expert in the field, don't?

prophesi 7y ago
Yeah, we need a "it's now infeasible to track me" as opposed to a "please don't track me."
wlll 7y ago
Cynical me could imagine the conversation might go something along these lines: Alice> We want to do a thing, and we want everyone to do it without being able to realistically avoid it while still saying "we gave them an option" Bob> Let's use DNT, it's used by almost no-one and is largely obsolete. Alice> Perfect! It's a bit like web sites that allow you to opt out of tracking and targetted advertising by directing you at the cookie config settings in your web browser. A token gesture.
- heavyset_go 7y ago
  There's no need to be cynical, the situation you posed is 100% within the realm of possibility when you consider that the actions Gitlab took benefit Gitlab greatly.

tcd 7y ago

I can't believe any organisation can be this tone deaf considering the awareness of privacy abuses that are practically in the news on a daily basis. Respect your users and respect yourself, roll back the change, make an apology PR piece and move on.

mattl 7y ago

Please make this telemetry opt-in and optional, even on GitLab.com.

nroach 7y ago

Part of the issue is that Gitlab's approach signals a "we don't know what we don't know" problem. Enterprises have been dealing with GDPR, CCPA, and data privacy issues for several years now. The apparent fact that Gitlab doesn't recognize when they're running afoul of opt-out standard practices mechanisms, and has those vulnerabilities appearing to be not caught during the SDLC is probably causing a lot of second guessing of competency by your more mature customers. edit: This isn't a problem unique to Gitlab. Microsoft, for example, has encountered and dealt with this problem (telemetry privacy issues) as well (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-ie/DeployOffice/privacy/overview-privacy-controls https://docs.microsoft.com/en-ie/DeployOffice/privacy/overvi...). Search for "Microsoft Dutch DPIA" for all the sordid detail.

rocky1138 7y ago

I personally don't have a problem with telemetry when the product is free and what you collect and how it's used is clearly defined. If people are paying, it should be reduced or eliminated if the monthly fee is high enough. I think a big problem is that it was so unexpected! Especially the API changes, where people probably are wondering why things aren't working today. Some advance notice would have helped, probably. I've used Gitlab in the past and will continue to use it here and there, though I host all my own repos at home with just regular old git and use Github for work, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt because I'm technically not a heavy user of your service.

JohnFen 7y ago

> some of the things we thought would help (respecting DNT) don't seems to matter much DNT is dead as a dodo, and many people either use browsers that no longer support it or are strongly resistance to enabling it because it's used as a signal in fingerprinting browsers. I'm not sure why you thought DNT would help.

EpicEng 7y ago

Judging from the MR thread it seems that almost everyone was in favor of opt-in except for the CFO.

philipwhiuk 7y ago

The code review worked. Then he got shouted down. That’s a big corporate culture problem. And why did the lead email mention SOC2 and not CCPA and GDPR?