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To give some perspective, Microsoft is doing better with VS Code than Mozilla is doing with Firefox. * There are no sponsored ads every time I use common funct

To give some perspective, Microsoft is doing better with VS Code than Mozilla is doing with Firefox. * There are no sponsored ads every time I use common functionality (like opening a new tab) * At least VS Code has a easily available settings page to turn off telemetry To do something half way similar, Firefox requires you to venture into `about:config` where you get a "Here be dragons" message to scare users away from touching settings. Not only that, none of the settings are documented anywhere. Do I trust either of them? No, but at least Microsoft doesn't market "privacy".

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
> At least VS Code has a easily available settings page to turn off telemetry You sure about that? They look pretty similar to me. - https://www.roboleary.net/tools/2022/04/20/vscode-telemetry.html - "It looks like you cannot shut telemetry off 100%. These settings will opt you of most data sharing scenarios; but not all data sharing scenarios." - Apparently even VSCodium can't kill it all - https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#disable-telemetry
acdha 4y ago
This is rather misleading since Microsoft has enormous guaranteed revenue streams and could afford to subsidize VS Code perpetually as a loss-leader for their other services. Saying they're doing better requires a very narrow perspective which assumes you're not competing with them for operating systems, office software, etc. I don't love Firefox having ads but it's also literally a single checkbox which you can choose to uncheck on that page and there's a difference between showing ads and violating privacy. If you want to see a web where privacy is respected more, I'd want it to look at lot like what Mozilla does as an intermediary preventing those advertisers from collecting PII.

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago

> At least VS Code has a easily available settings page to turn off telemetry You sure about that? They look pretty similar to me. - https://www.roboleary.net/tools/2022/04/20/vscode-telemetry.html - "It looks like you cannot shut telemetry off 100%. These settings will opt you of most data sharing scenarios; but not all data sharing scenarios." - Apparently even VSCodium can't kill it all - https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#disable-telemetry

acdha 4y ago

This is rather misleading since Microsoft has enormous guaranteed revenue streams and could afford to subsidize VS Code perpetually as a loss-leader for their other services. Saying they're doing better requires a very narrow perspective which assumes you're not competing with them for operating systems, office software, etc. I don't love Firefox having ads but it's also literally a single checkbox which you can choose to uncheck on that page and there's a difference between showing ads and violating privacy. If you want to see a web where privacy is respected more, I'd want it to look at lot like what Mozilla does as an intermediary preventing those advertisers from collecting PII.