4 ms·

How right or wrong it is to collect information about people and what they do is not entirely determined by how much personal information there is to get. Just

How right or wrong it is to collect information about people and what they do is not entirely determined by how much personal information there is to get. Just like how right or wrong it is to break into someones house is not entirely determined by what they take, or how much personal information you have in your house. But yes, if you don't have anything valuable in your house, maybe you don't need to be concerned about people breaking in, but that doesn't make it more right.

stinos 6y ago
Such analogies really depend on what the telemetry contains (granted, I don't know in this case). I.e. you describe it as stealing from inside the house. Say, VSCode figuring out your email adress and reporting it. But it might as well actually be pretty anonymous non-personal data i.e. more like looking at the outside of a house and taking note of that. Say, VSCode reporting the theme you use, and just that.
- robalni 6y ago
  My point is that it's not just what information is being taken that matters. Even if you don't take anything it's still wrong to do things inside someone's computer or home without permission. Maybe VS Code asks for permission properly and gives the user sufficient control and has good defaults, I don't know, but it's difficult to do that properly because people don't understand computers as well as they understand the rest of life.
  - ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
    This (Vscode) is a product for developers, so are you saying that if you use VScode you don’t understand computers? That’s very arrogant of you
    - robalni 6y ago
      By "computers" I really meant "the complexity in the software that computers run". Computers do very complex things and most of those things can't be directly seen. So if you want to tell someone about what some software is doing, it's not always easy.
- mosselman 6y ago
  > Say, VSCode reporting the theme you use, and just that. Wouldn't that be like looking through the windows to see what clothes they wear or at what time they go to bed or who they sit at the table with? Just because you are outside of someone's home it doesn't mean you can't invade on their privacy. Why does an editor need to do telemetry to begin with? Mind your own business. If you don't want to give me something for free, don't. Don't make something free and then feel like you have the right to spy on me. Charge me for using it.
  - stinos 6y ago
    Wouldn't that be like looking through the windows to see what clothes they wear or at what time they go to bed or who they sit at the table with? Hehe with 'theme' I was actually just thinking about the color of the outer walls, should have made that clear. Even then: passing by a house and peeking through a window once is usually legal and as far as I know doesn't require consent (at least not in my country). Stopping in front of the window and staring inside for hours, not so much. Nor is passing by at the exact same time everyday and peeking inside. Why does an editor need to do telemetry to begin with? Mind your own business I'm not advocating in any direction here, be it pro or against telemetry. My point merely is that before making analogies, you'd better first check what telemetry exactly is being collected otherwise your analogy might be completely off.
  - jug 6y ago
    Telemetry is commonly used for statistics on how a product is used, to learn for example if the user interface is counter intuitive or obnoxious with a much better sample size than their own team. I also note that we still don’t have a clue in this discussion what the telemetry even includes despite tools and probably even documentation detailing this already existing. But I guess it’s more fun to debate this from a philosophical standpoint than the product in question.
    - toyg 6y ago
      From everything I’ve read, MS (and other telemetry-happy developers like JetBrains) see telemetry as a way to gather statistics about UI interaction patterns and popularity of this or that component, so that they can prioritise development towards the most popular features and problems. It’s a bit like our good old “Popularity Contest” package in Linux, but applied to UI elements and behaviours. It’s the sort of thing that resulted in a massive Paste button on the first Office ribbon, because telemetry said Paste was the most used feature. Sometimes I wonder if I should turn all telemetry on, so that they’d have a datapoint that actually matches my workflow rather than Joe Schmoe’s. It’s a bit invasive though, and culturally speaking is a horrible model (“I can’t change things unless you let me watch what you do all the time”). Obviously if you care about privacy you should keep telemetry off, but to be honest, if you don’t trust Microsoft to respect common decency about private code, you just shouldn’t use a tool they built in the first place. I use JetBrains tools and trust them enough to leave telemetry on (“voting” for my preferred features, effectively). If you do any politically-sensitive work, though, you should absolutely stay the hell away - because then it doesn’t matter what they do with it today, but what they could do if they wanted (i.e. under pressure from authorities).

stinos 6y ago

Such analogies really depend on what the telemetry contains (granted, I don't know in this case). I.e. you describe it as stealing from inside the house. Say, VSCode figuring out your email adress and reporting it. But it might as well actually be pretty anonymous non-personal data i.e. more like looking at the outside of a house and taking note of that. Say, VSCode reporting the theme you use, and just that.

robalni 6y ago
My point is that it's not just what information is being taken that matters. Even if you don't take anything it's still wrong to do things inside someone's computer or home without permission. Maybe VS Code asks for permission properly and gives the user sufficient control and has good defaults, I don't know, but it's difficult to do that properly because people don't understand computers as well as they understand the rest of life.
- ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
  This (Vscode) is a product for developers, so are you saying that if you use VScode you don’t understand computers? That’s very arrogant of you
  - robalni 6y ago
    By "computers" I really meant "the complexity in the software that computers run". Computers do very complex things and most of those things can't be directly seen. So if you want to tell someone about what some software is doing, it's not always easy.
mosselman 6y ago
> Say, VSCode reporting the theme you use, and just that. Wouldn't that be like looking through the windows to see what clothes they wear or at what time they go to bed or who they sit at the table with? Just because you are outside of someone's home it doesn't mean you can't invade on their privacy. Why does an editor need to do telemetry to begin with? Mind your own business. If you don't want to give me something for free, don't. Don't make something free and then feel like you have the right to spy on me. Charge me for using it.
- stinos 6y ago
  Wouldn't that be like looking through the windows to see what clothes they wear or at what time they go to bed or who they sit at the table with? Hehe with 'theme' I was actually just thinking about the color of the outer walls, should have made that clear. Even then: passing by a house and peeking through a window once is usually legal and as far as I know doesn't require consent (at least not in my country). Stopping in front of the window and staring inside for hours, not so much. Nor is passing by at the exact same time everyday and peeking inside. Why does an editor need to do telemetry to begin with? Mind your own business I'm not advocating in any direction here, be it pro or against telemetry. My point merely is that before making analogies, you'd better first check what telemetry exactly is being collected otherwise your analogy might be completely off.
- jug 6y ago
  Telemetry is commonly used for statistics on how a product is used, to learn for example if the user interface is counter intuitive or obnoxious with a much better sample size than their own team. I also note that we still don’t have a clue in this discussion what the telemetry even includes despite tools and probably even documentation detailing this already existing. But I guess it’s more fun to debate this from a philosophical standpoint than the product in question.
  - toyg 6y ago
    From everything I’ve read, MS (and other telemetry-happy developers like JetBrains) see telemetry as a way to gather statistics about UI interaction patterns and popularity of this or that component, so that they can prioritise development towards the most popular features and problems. It’s a bit like our good old “Popularity Contest” package in Linux, but applied to UI elements and behaviours. It’s the sort of thing that resulted in a massive Paste button on the first Office ribbon, because telemetry said Paste was the most used feature. Sometimes I wonder if I should turn all telemetry on, so that they’d have a datapoint that actually matches my workflow rather than Joe Schmoe’s. It’s a bit invasive though, and culturally speaking is a horrible model (“I can’t change things unless you let me watch what you do all the time”). Obviously if you care about privacy you should keep telemetry off, but to be honest, if you don’t trust Microsoft to respect common decency about private code, you just shouldn’t use a tool they built in the first place. I use JetBrains tools and trust them enough to leave telemetry on (“voting” for my preferred features, effectively). If you do any politically-sensitive work, though, you should absolutely stay the hell away - because then it doesn’t matter what they do with it today, but what they could do if they wanted (i.e. under pressure from authorities).