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> "it’s very, very valuable data if you care about the customer experience. [...] What can we do as developers to prevent customer experience from becoming adve

> "it’s very, very valuable data if you care about the customer experience. [...] What can we do as developers to prevent customer experience from becoming adversarial?" Pay money for the very very valuable data, instead of taking it and trying to hide behind legalese and finger-pointing and distraction and affront. If studying how people use your thing adds value to your company, run a usability lab where you pay people to study how they use your thing. Contact a company with a lot of users and arrange to give them discounts in exchange for data, agree up front what data will be shared and how it will be used. Offer discounts like Amazon's Kindle-with-ads is cheaper than Kindle. Make it opt-in with limited things you collect and what you do with it, and be trustworthy enough that people believe you only do that. Microsoft PowerShell collects telemetry and it's opt-out, which is annoying for a shell/programming language. But there is a public help document about what is collected and how to opt-out[1] and the source code is on GitHub[2]. Even then I wouldn't be surprised if that was the proverbial straw which broke the camel's back. As developers keep abusing people's trust and taking liberties, something will be. It's a tragedy of the commons situation, why would you stop abusing the ~~environment~~ customer a little bit for a good reason when others are doing worse and they won't stop? [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.core/about/about_telemetry?view=powershell-7.1 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft... [2] https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/blob/master/src/System.Management.Automation/utils/Telemetry.cs https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/blob/master/src/Sys...

cma 5y ago
Windows Terminal does telemetry too. Super creepy.
akira2501 5y ago
> Pay money for the very very valuable data I would assume a primary internal use for this would be to test their driver against specific applications and to develop enhancements and improvements for them. The driver offers application specific mappings, so perhaps they want to know what applications are actually being used to better inform their efforts. If the drivers are continuously updated with this information to provide an improved experience for the largest parts of their user base, then they are effectively paying back for the use of this data. If that's as far as their use of this data goes, then what more do they directly owe you for the data?
- Jiro 5y ago
  "Pay money to get the data from the user" doesn't mean "pay money whether the user wants it or not, and take the data whether the user wants to or not". It means that the user has to engage in a voluntary transaction where he can decide whether the price he's paying is worth it or not. No price is "worth it" if the decision that the price is worth it is a one-sided decision that comes from the company.
dahart 5y ago
Like the sibling comment, my reaction, and my intent when I said “valuable”, was referring to developer quality and customer experience value, not financial value -- assuming the data is not being sold for financial gain, and it is only used for development and UX. I personally loathe reducing all things to financial value on principle, because I think it cheapens relationships and reduces trust, and anyway the conversion rate is often wildly wrong. However, I also think you have a reasonable and valuable point, and maybe paying for the data really is how we make this work. It certainly would be okay in my book if there was a large financial penalty for companies found doing things with data that aren’t in the customer’s best interest and that they didn’t make clear from the start.

cma 5y ago

Windows Terminal does telemetry too. Super creepy.

akira2501 5y ago

> Pay money for the very very valuable data I would assume a primary internal use for this would be to test their driver against specific applications and to develop enhancements and improvements for them. The driver offers application specific mappings, so perhaps they want to know what applications are actually being used to better inform their efforts. If the drivers are continuously updated with this information to provide an improved experience for the largest parts of their user base, then they are effectively paying back for the use of this data. If that's as far as their use of this data goes, then what more do they directly owe you for the data?

Jiro 5y ago
"Pay money to get the data from the user" doesn't mean "pay money whether the user wants it or not, and take the data whether the user wants to or not". It means that the user has to engage in a voluntary transaction where he can decide whether the price he's paying is worth it or not. No price is "worth it" if the decision that the price is worth it is a one-sided decision that comes from the company.

dahart 5y ago

Like the sibling comment, my reaction, and my intent when I said “valuable”, was referring to developer quality and customer experience value, not financial value -- assuming the data is not being sold for financial gain, and it is only used for development and UX. I personally loathe reducing all things to financial value on principle, because I think it cheapens relationships and reduces trust, and anyway the conversion rate is often wildly wrong. However, I also think you have a reasonable and valuable point, and maybe paying for the data really is how we make this work. It certainly would be okay in my book if there was a large financial penalty for companies found doing things with data that aren’t in the customer’s best interest and that they didn’t make clear from the start.