3 ms·

Okay but companies don’t just add telemetry because it’s a fun and exciting engineering challenge. They do so for legitimate engineering and business reasons.

Okay but companies don’t just add telemetry because it’s a fun and exciting engineering challenge. They do so for legitimate engineering and business reasons. These solutions have privacy nuance they are not black and white/evil v good

belter 4y ago
Enabled by default -> Bad Give user option to enable to improve product -> Good
- squarefoot 4y ago
  And possibly keep telemetry data (all of it) auditable by users, so that they know exactly what they are opting in to transmit.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    If you are doing telemetry in a way that respects privacy this won’t be possible. Or at least there won’t be a way to verify whatever data you have locally to their database
- hajile 4y ago
  Not to mention that if you do anything requiring security, then this all becomes a giant nightmare that results in the entire editor and toolchain being disallowed.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  This is a political opinion and regardless an implementation detail. My response was that telemetry serves actual purposes and very useful ones at that. Our goal should be to adapt and ensure privacy via regulations and standards. Wishing, or enforcing, that every application not have telemetry by default is both unrealistic and unwanted.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
throwaway22032 4y ago
Telemetry is malware. Always has been.
falcolas 4y ago
My concern is that anybody at a company can suggest a telemetry point and it's added with little or no oversight, and store it forever. It may not be a fun engineering challenge (though it could be, depending on the metric), but sifting through the results is a "fun data interpretation" event. Especially for marketing and sales groups. The solutions should have a privacy nuance... but don't. For example from TFA, collecting git branch and repo names. That seems like a terrible idea, since it's not like Microsoft's devs will have access to reproduce issues from those repos. It's also a potential leak of sensitive corporate data.
npteljes 4y ago
Factory farming is also an engineering challenge, with legitimate business reasons - its way more economical. I think most of the time horrible things just make sense, in some other framing. My point is - something being useful is a very low bar. It's not the point of the discussion here. Maybe some privacy zealots won't acknowledge this, but telemetry can be very useful, and at the same time a breach of privacy. And regarding Microsoft, it's also about their attitude towards it. It's their way or the highway. It has always been like this - the software might be the way it is, but regarding their business dealings they are and always were ruthless. That's what made them great. So now what we see is a continuation of their previous attitude. And a slice of the current zeitgeist which is always-on internet with everyone slurping up user data.
squarefoot 4y ago
Telemetry can be an invaluable source of information to improve products, everyone knows that; it's sorta like having 100% of the users continuously reporting bugs and information from which software vendors can infer most wanted features or modifications to improve usability. Which business wouldn't want that? If done right it could be great for everyone, including users. Unfortunately there's no way to ensure that invaluable tool won't one day be used against users to sneak out data that wouldn't contribute in any way to products improvement, namely making profits from users profiling. But the point isn't being good or evil; businesses have no sense of morals, they don't obey to common sense but rather take the path that leads to the higher profits, and these days profiling users unfortunately brings high profits. It's not a matter of which company is good or bad, or if telemetry can be done right or not, but rather how long until a software with built in telemetry will use it the wrong way, because soon or later everyone of them will be presented the scenario in which doing a bad thing brings them more profits; and this principle applies way beyond telemetry.

belter 4y ago

Enabled by default -> Bad Give user option to enable to improve product -> Good

squarefoot 4y ago
And possibly keep telemetry data (all of it) auditable by users, so that they know exactly what they are opting in to transmit.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  If you are doing telemetry in a way that respects privacy this won’t be possible. Or at least there won’t be a way to verify whatever data you have locally to their database
hajile 4y ago
Not to mention that if you do anything requiring security, then this all becomes a giant nightmare that results in the entire editor and toolchain being disallowed.
edgyquant 4y ago
This is a political opinion and regardless an implementation detail. My response was that telemetry serves actual purposes and very useful ones at that. Our goal should be to adapt and ensure privacy via regulations and standards. Wishing, or enforcing, that every application not have telemetry by default is both unrealistic and unwanted.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

throwaway22032 4y ago

Telemetry is malware. Always has been.

falcolas 4y ago

My concern is that anybody at a company can suggest a telemetry point and it's added with little or no oversight, and store it forever. It may not be a fun engineering challenge (though it could be, depending on the metric), but sifting through the results is a "fun data interpretation" event. Especially for marketing and sales groups. The solutions should have a privacy nuance... but don't. For example from TFA, collecting git branch and repo names. That seems like a terrible idea, since it's not like Microsoft's devs will have access to reproduce issues from those repos. It's also a potential leak of sensitive corporate data.

npteljes 4y ago

Factory farming is also an engineering challenge, with legitimate business reasons - its way more economical. I think most of the time horrible things just make sense, in some other framing. My point is - something being useful is a very low bar. It's not the point of the discussion here. Maybe some privacy zealots won't acknowledge this, but telemetry can be very useful, and at the same time a breach of privacy. And regarding Microsoft, it's also about their attitude towards it. It's their way or the highway. It has always been like this - the software might be the way it is, but regarding their business dealings they are and always were ruthless. That's what made them great. So now what we see is a continuation of their previous attitude. And a slice of the current zeitgeist which is always-on internet with everyone slurping up user data.

squarefoot 4y ago

Telemetry can be an invaluable source of information to improve products, everyone knows that; it's sorta like having 100% of the users continuously reporting bugs and information from which software vendors can infer most wanted features or modifications to improve usability. Which business wouldn't want that? If done right it could be great for everyone, including users. Unfortunately there's no way to ensure that invaluable tool won't one day be used against users to sneak out data that wouldn't contribute in any way to products improvement, namely making profits from users profiling. But the point isn't being good or evil; businesses have no sense of morals, they don't obey to common sense but rather take the path that leads to the higher profits, and these days profiling users unfortunately brings high profits. It's not a matter of which company is good or bad, or if telemetry can be done right or not, but rather how long until a software with built in telemetry will use it the wrong way, because soon or later everyone of them will be presented the scenario in which doing a bad thing brings them more profits; and this principle applies way beyond telemetry.