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The "equitable exchange" of telemetry is you give anonymized usage data for free, and the developers provide you with a better product based on that data. If yo

The "equitable exchange" of telemetry is you give anonymized usage data for free, and the developers provide you with a better product based on that data. If you trust the developer, it sounds like a reasonable deal to me. No one is making you use that software.

falcolas 6y ago
> the developers provide you with a better product based on that data I think that it's incorrect to believe that telemetry allows developers to build "better" software. Web pages have had intrusive telemetry for over a decade now, and they still broadly suck. We're able to navigate the world of hamburger menus, text with poor contrast, and scrolljacking because we're adaptable humans, not because these kinds of changes actually improve the websites. The problem is that telemetry can only tell you the "what" and "how", but not the "why". > If you trust the developer It's not just the developers who gain access to that data. It's everybody at the company. It's 3rd parties who contract with that company. It's everybody who hacks into the data set at the company. And it's every governmental agency from (almost) any country with an overly broad warrant who has access to that data. See my upstream comments about China and Hong Kong > No one is making you use that software. Just as nobody is making an effort to make it simple (or even possible) to make an informed choice about whether I should use that software. Homebrew is a great example. I know that it's sending telemetry to Google only because someone raised a ruckus and used social pressure to make the homebrew devs add in a reasonable amount of consent into the install and update process. Thankfully, laws are catching up with technology, and I should soon be able to rely upon simply saying "data collection not directly tied to software functionality legally requires my explicit consent, and that consent is not required to run the software".
- haecceity 6y ago
  I don't think you understand how telemetry works because you're comparing it to scrolljacking and such. The telemetry they're talking about is for error reporting. It answers questions like 1. Did this error condition that should not happen happen? 2. How many users did it happen for? (Who is not available for legal reasons) If you search for tracelogging in the code you'll find they're associated with debugging and errors. https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/blob/e997f3e394e66f2389f4f33f36c58b1c2768e975/src/AppInstallerCommonCore/Telemetry/TraceLogging.cpp https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/blob/e997f3e394e66f2... I don't know if you understand how difficult it is to debug programs that fail on someone else's machine. Well that's what telemetry is for.

falcolas 6y ago

> the developers provide you with a better product based on that data I think that it's incorrect to believe that telemetry allows developers to build "better" software. Web pages have had intrusive telemetry for over a decade now, and they still broadly suck. We're able to navigate the world of hamburger menus, text with poor contrast, and scrolljacking because we're adaptable humans, not because these kinds of changes actually improve the websites. The problem is that telemetry can only tell you the "what" and "how", but not the "why". > If you trust the developer It's not just the developers who gain access to that data. It's everybody at the company. It's 3rd parties who contract with that company. It's everybody who hacks into the data set at the company. And it's every governmental agency from (almost) any country with an overly broad warrant who has access to that data. See my upstream comments about China and Hong Kong > No one is making you use that software. Just as nobody is making an effort to make it simple (or even possible) to make an informed choice about whether I should use that software. Homebrew is a great example. I know that it's sending telemetry to Google only because someone raised a ruckus and used social pressure to make the homebrew devs add in a reasonable amount of consent into the install and update process. Thankfully, laws are catching up with technology, and I should soon be able to rely upon simply saying "data collection not directly tied to software functionality legally requires my explicit consent, and that consent is not required to run the software".

haecceity 6y ago
I don't think you understand how telemetry works because you're comparing it to scrolljacking and such. The telemetry they're talking about is for error reporting. It answers questions like 1. Did this error condition that should not happen happen? 2. How many users did it happen for? (Who is not available for legal reasons) If you search for tracelogging in the code you'll find they're associated with debugging and errors. https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/blob/e997f3e394e66f2389f4f33f36c58b1c2768e975/src/AppInstallerCommonCore/Telemetry/TraceLogging.cpp https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/blob/e997f3e394e66f2... I don't know if you understand how difficult it is to debug programs that fail on someone else's machine. Well that's what telemetry is for.