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What would you call it? Your analogy fails on several levels — is there a more direct counter argument you can make?

by gfodor 7y ago

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
If you care about your user experience, you want as much data as you can get about what exactly your users are doing. This generalizes across all companies in all industries, and I would call it "data collection". Saying "we satisfied the requirements so it succeeded" is pretty universally recognized as a cop-out, which you resort to when you don't really care or have no other choice. There exist strategies that step over the line to spying (you shouldn't, like, put tracking devices on your users), but the article doesn't suggest that you should do those.
- gfodor 7y ago
  Yours is the consensus view, I'm contrarian on it. Appealing to it as being "universally recognized" as an argument about its validity is a logical fallacy. The methodology of recent history has been to instrument everything, and then use that to analyze. I'm not ignorant, I've done this. It's an effective way of not fooling yourself. However, the downsides of such data collection have, for the most part, been ignored in the process of determining what to instrument, how that data is stored, and what is to be done with it. This is an industry-scale oversight and is going to rapidly change, especially in light of new regulations. Beyond the fact that such data is a liability (and usually can be de-anonymized) and the legal requirements of having it being burdensome, organizations need to ask the question of if their data collection policy is ethical. Your "universal recognition" in my mind is more of a "universal blind spot". On the contrary, instead of saying that lack of a data collection policy is a cop-out due to laziness or lack of care, I'd argue that falling back on collecting data shows a similar kind of laziness, where you've failed to come up with a better solution to your problem of understanding how well your product is performing that doesn't require violating the privacy of your customers. (Even if you aren't violating it per se, you're only one data breach away from someone else doing so, and that would be entirely your fault.) The correct methodology is to try to solve these problems with minimal data collection, ideally none. It also means sometimes you will not collect data, and knowingly potentially miss insights, because the trade-off doesn't make sense. That doesn't mean you don't do it, but it does mean that when you do, you should recognize it as a liability, a deep trade-off that has many negatives, where the benefits should outweigh it. If it's not actionable, don't collect it. If you don't need it anymore, permanently delete it. Most organizations don't see it that way, but I predict many will in the coming years.

What would you call it? Your analogy fails on several levels — is there a more direct counter argument you can make?

by gfodor 7y ago

What would you call it? Your analogy fails on several levels — is there a more direct counter argument you can make?

If you care about your user experience, you want as much data as you can get about what exactly your users are doing. This generalizes across all companies in all industries, and I would call it "data collection". Saying "we satisfied the requirements so it succeeded" is pretty universally recognized as a cop-out, which you resort to when you don't really care or have no other choice. There exist strategies that step over the line to spying (you shouldn't, like, put tracking devices on your users), but the article doesn't suggest that you should do those.

gfodor 7y ago
Yours is the consensus view, I'm contrarian on it. Appealing to it as being "universally recognized" as an argument about its validity is a logical fallacy. The methodology of recent history has been to instrument everything, and then use that to analyze. I'm not ignorant, I've done this. It's an effective way of not fooling yourself. However, the downsides of such data collection have, for the most part, been ignored in the process of determining what to instrument, how that data is stored, and what is to be done with it. This is an industry-scale oversight and is going to rapidly change, especially in light of new regulations. Beyond the fact that such data is a liability (and usually can be de-anonymized) and the legal requirements of having it being burdensome, organizations need to ask the question of if their data collection policy is ethical. Your "universal recognition" in my mind is more of a "universal blind spot". On the contrary, instead of saying that lack of a data collection policy is a cop-out due to laziness or lack of care, I'd argue that falling back on collecting data shows a similar kind of laziness, where you've failed to come up with a better solution to your problem of understanding how well your product is performing that doesn't require violating the privacy of your customers. (Even if you aren't violating it per se, you're only one data breach away from someone else doing so, and that would be entirely your fault.) The correct methodology is to try to solve these problems with minimal data collection, ideally none. It also means sometimes you will not collect data, and knowingly potentially miss insights, because the trade-off doesn't make sense. That doesn't mean you don't do it, but it does mean that when you do, you should recognize it as a liability, a deep trade-off that has many negatives, where the benefits should outweigh it. If it's not actionable, don't collect it. If you don't need it anymore, permanently delete it. Most organizations don't see it that way, but I predict many will in the coming years.