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> The problem with opt-out telemetry is that as soon as you admit people won't voluntarily turn it on, you've admitted it's a user hostile behavior. That is in

> The problem with opt-out telemetry is that as soon as you admit people won't voluntarily turn it on, you've admitted it's a user hostile behavior. That is in fact not the case. This is just one possible explanation for users not turning it on, one that I don't believe is even close to a meaningful amount in the grand scale of things. As I wrote in the first message, a huge amount of people don't care either way. They won't turn it off if they're prompted, but they also wouldn't bother turning it on. They just don't care. I'm one of these people.

bheadmaster 4y ago
> As I wrote in the first message, a huge amount of people don't care either way Do you have any data to support that claim? Anecdotally, almost all programmers I've spoken to have expressed some kind of complaint about how much data all our devices collect these days. Many of them even saying that they're afraid to speak their mind on the Internet because they know someone might connect their words to their true identity. A large number of non-programmers have mentioned to me how freaked out they are by their Android phones showing them ads for things they've just mentioned in proximity of their phones for the first time. Considering the massive surveillance we're under, I think that "most people care, and don't want telemetry if given the choice" is much more precise than "most people don't care".
- hardware2win 4y ago
  You seems to conflate telemetry with spying Uploading crash log to devs to help them fix bugs Or stats about project sizes So they are aware how their users use their soft and can optimize
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    What is the exact difference between spying and telemetry that user hasn't consented to?
    - acdha 4y ago
      If we consider the dictionary definition spying has a sense of personal and private information being collected. For telemetry, one of the first questions would be whether the data being collected is the same — for example, something like the version of the C compiler you have installed doesn't seem like nearly as sensitive. The other part is the question of exactly what consent means in this context. If I sneak into your house, I'm spying. If I record what you do when visiting my house, that's arguably still spying. If I say I'm giving you a free meal but at the bottom of the menu there's a warning that I use statistics about which meals are the most popular unless you ask me not to, that doesn't feel like it's in the same category as the previous two even if there's a pretty strong argument that it's best to ask you the first time you show up.
      - bheadmaster 4y ago
        I don't think such real-world analogies serve any useful purpose, they only make things more confusing. I'd define "spying" as any data collection that users are not informed of. Go tool is an open-source development tool - people expect open-source development tools to serve the users, not the developers (to the detriment of the user). That's the whole point of the whole open-source (and free-software) movement. [A significant number of] users do not want their tools to send any data from their machines that they themselves haven't allowed it to. To create an open-source development tool that sends data by default is a deception tactic - it works because most people trust open-source tools, and because most people won't know the data is being sent by that particular tool. The deception part is what bugs me the most. I may or may not be against telemetry in general, but I am definitely against deception of the users. And providing a few lines in the release notes counts as "informing the users" as much as changing a few lines in the TOS counts as "informing the users" - in my opinion, doesn't.
        acdha 4y ago
        > I don't think such real-world analogies serve any useful purpose, they only make things more confusing. Isn’t it the same as using a term like “spy” with significant outside connotations rather than more common technical terms like “telemetry” or “anonymous usage data collection”? Similarly, “deception” implies malice or subterfuge. One typically doesn’t associate that with extensive public comment so using that term seems like it’s contributing more heat than light.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Those are all obviously spying, if you don't ask first!

bheadmaster 4y ago

> As I wrote in the first message, a huge amount of people don't care either way Do you have any data to support that claim? Anecdotally, almost all programmers I've spoken to have expressed some kind of complaint about how much data all our devices collect these days. Many of them even saying that they're afraid to speak their mind on the Internet because they know someone might connect their words to their true identity. A large number of non-programmers have mentioned to me how freaked out they are by their Android phones showing them ads for things they've just mentioned in proximity of their phones for the first time. Considering the massive surveillance we're under, I think that "most people care, and don't want telemetry if given the choice" is much more precise than "most people don't care".

hardware2win 4y ago
You seems to conflate telemetry with spying Uploading crash log to devs to help them fix bugs Or stats about project sizes So they are aware how their users use their soft and can optimize
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  What is the exact difference between spying and telemetry that user hasn't consented to?
  - acdha 4y ago
    If we consider the dictionary definition spying has a sense of personal and private information being collected. For telemetry, one of the first questions would be whether the data being collected is the same — for example, something like the version of the C compiler you have installed doesn't seem like nearly as sensitive. The other part is the question of exactly what consent means in this context. If I sneak into your house, I'm spying. If I record what you do when visiting my house, that's arguably still spying. If I say I'm giving you a free meal but at the bottom of the menu there's a warning that I use statistics about which meals are the most popular unless you ask me not to, that doesn't feel like it's in the same category as the previous two even if there's a pretty strong argument that it's best to ask you the first time you show up.
    - bheadmaster 4y ago
      I don't think such real-world analogies serve any useful purpose, they only make things more confusing. I'd define "spying" as any data collection that users are not informed of. Go tool is an open-source development tool - people expect open-source development tools to serve the users, not the developers (to the detriment of the user). That's the whole point of the whole open-source (and free-software) movement. [A significant number of] users do not want their tools to send any data from their machines that they themselves haven't allowed it to. To create an open-source development tool that sends data by default is a deception tactic - it works because most people trust open-source tools, and because most people won't know the data is being sent by that particular tool. The deception part is what bugs me the most. I may or may not be against telemetry in general, but I am definitely against deception of the users. And providing a few lines in the release notes counts as "informing the users" as much as changing a few lines in the TOS counts as "informing the users" - in my opinion, doesn't.
      - acdha 4y ago
        > I don't think such real-world analogies serve any useful purpose, they only make things more confusing. Isn’t it the same as using a term like “spy” with significant outside connotations rather than more common technical terms like “telemetry” or “anonymous usage data collection”? Similarly, “deception” implies malice or subterfuge. One typically doesn’t associate that with extensive public comment so using that term seems like it’s contributing more heat than light.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Those are all obviously spying, if you don't ask first!