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Opt-in data is "useless" That's one I have not heard before Useless for what Targeting a certain "type of user" perhaps "I get the distrust of large corpora

Opt-in data is "useless" That's one I have not heard before Useless for what Targeting a certain "type of user" perhaps "I get the distrust of large corporations and other obvious bad actors - but the blanket cycnicism for all telemetry here is kind surprising" There is effectively no way for a user to determine whether an actor is "bad" or "good" and that definition may vary depending on the user The user cannot verify how the data might be used or where it might be transferred. As such, there is almost zero incentive for the data collector not to engage in malfeasance (as the user defines that term); deterrents are lacking Perhaps there is irony in criticising "blanket" cynicism whilst arguing for "default" telemetry. Both suffer from the same "one size fits all" error

1vuio0pswjnm7 6mo ago
Begs the question: Why isn't opt-out "useless" Perhaps because only way to get large sample size is to target users who are unaware of "defaults", i.e., remove choice Perhaps when forced to make a choice ("opt-in"), users will not choose to share data (unless the developer uses dark patterns to manipulate the choice) Why is that
LordDragonfang 6mo ago
> That's one I have not heard before No offense, but if that's the case, you are very new to the discussion. It's been pretty well-documented that opt-out provides orders of magnitude more useful reports than opt-in. For the best example: Factorio, a game with an almost-exclusively-technical playerbase and extremely well-regarded and community-friendly dev team, which already had a ton of people writing good bug reports on the forums, [fixed 12 crash-causing bugs](https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-231 https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-231) within two days after making crash reports automatic and opt-in. And if it has that much impact for Factorio, you can imagine how much bigger the impact is for non-technical software.
1vuio0pswjnm7 6mo ago
"Another idea was to have a prompt asking if you wish to upload the log or not, after every crash. Apart from the extra implementation time, players will still often click "Don't send", either because that's what they have been doing for many years or because they just want to quickly get back in the game or because they feel that the crash was somehow their fault." https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-231 https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-231 Here, the developer is trying to infer user reasoning and intent Curiously, he omits the possibility that users would prefer not to send the data When in fact this is exactly what users indicate they prefer He pretends that "Don't send" is ambiguous, for example, that despite clicking "Don't send" users actually don't care if data is sent But there is nothing here that indicates users wanted to send data or that they do not care Software developers can obviously do whatever they want and they can act against the interests of users This includes ignoring or explaining away the preferences of their users ("Don't send") and engaging in speculation about user reasoning and intent The developer here seems dismissive of users' reasons for clicking "Don't send", even though he does not know the reasons and can only speculate. At the same time he expects readers to take his reasons for collecting crash logs as justified. Then he unilaterally decides to remove user choice (the "Don't send" button) and substitute his own choice (send data) as a default Perhaps lack of developer pre-release testing and quality control is relevant to this discussion. Alas, the problem is framed as one of data collection and user consent where the "solution" is making data collection surreptitious and making "consent" uninformed, implied

1vuio0pswjnm7 6mo ago

Begs the question: Why isn't opt-out "useless" Perhaps because only way to get large sample size is to target users who are unaware of "defaults", i.e., remove choice Perhaps when forced to make a choice ("opt-in"), users will not choose to share data (unless the developer uses dark patterns to manipulate the choice) Why is that

LordDragonfang 6mo ago

> That's one I have not heard before No offense, but if that's the case, you are very new to the discussion. It's been pretty well-documented that opt-out provides orders of magnitude more useful reports than opt-in. For the best example: Factorio, a game with an almost-exclusively-technical playerbase and extremely well-regarded and community-friendly dev team, which already had a ton of people writing good bug reports on the forums, [fixed 12 crash-causing bugs](https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-231 https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-231) within two days after making crash reports automatic and opt-in. And if it has that much impact for Factorio, you can imagine how much bigger the impact is for non-technical software.

1vuio0pswjnm7 6mo ago

"Another idea was to have a prompt asking if you wish to upload the log or not, after every crash. Apart from the extra implementation time, players will still often click "Don't send", either because that's what they have been doing for many years or because they just want to quickly get back in the game or because they feel that the crash was somehow their fault." https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-231 https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-231 Here, the developer is trying to infer user reasoning and intent Curiously, he omits the possibility that users would prefer not to send the data When in fact this is exactly what users indicate they prefer He pretends that "Don't send" is ambiguous, for example, that despite clicking "Don't send" users actually don't care if data is sent But there is nothing here that indicates users wanted to send data or that they do not care Software developers can obviously do whatever they want and they can act against the interests of users This includes ignoring or explaining away the preferences of their users ("Don't send") and engaging in speculation about user reasoning and intent The developer here seems dismissive of users' reasons for clicking "Don't send", even though he does not know the reasons and can only speculate. At the same time he expects readers to take his reasons for collecting crash logs as justified. Then he unilaterally decides to remove user choice (the "Don't send" button) and substitute his own choice (send data) as a default Perhaps lack of developer pre-release testing and quality control is relevant to this discussion. Alas, the problem is framed as one of data collection and user consent where the "solution" is making data collection surreptitious and making "consent" uninformed, implied