As someone who has designed and used telemetry systems, I’ll never quite understand the strong aversion some people have to them. Telemetry is what lets me tell my boss “yes people really do use our software this way and we can’t break it” or “90% of crashes happen right after the player uses a grenade”. And despite what some conspiracy theorists would have you believe, telemetry data for software from reputable companies does not get sold or used for marketing purposes. Our lawyers make sure of it, and also make us go through privacy reviews to make sure that data isn’t leaking PII.
To me, telemetry would be like a sofa company wanting to put some cameras in your home to see if you’re using the sofa the way they thought you would. It just feels… off.
“90% of crashes happen right after the player uses a grenade”.
Imo, a simple opt-in crash report gets the job done. Technically it is telemetry, but a crash report is more justified than a “where have you clicked” report.
telemetry data for software from reputable companies does not get sold
There’s just no trust in companies to not sell my data. I cannot trust Microsoft nor Google nor any other company to not sell my data, having seen the shenanigans every single company is willing to pull off to get a cent more a year.
Oddly the “where you clicked” report does drive decisions for updates. We (as a developer) use that information to drive UI decisions and determine which flows are more important and should be more easily available
Yes, and it makes sense that it would, and I’d happily give such data to developers I trust to make the programs I love better.
However, that same click data (maybe with some how-long-have-you-looked-at-this data) can definitely be used to target ads at me, which in my book is not okay. And as I said in my comment before, it’s really difficult (at least for me) to trust companies.
In general I agree, but users should be able to make that decision themselves. I do not understand why you can’t turn off telemetry, when it would be trivial to offer that option and so few users would bother to use it.
I agree, it should be opt in. Where I disagree is with how strongly people react against it.
If you buy a car and it only comes with Bluetooth do you have a meltdown? Do you kick, scream, and cry that Big Car is going to steal your data? No that’s fucking ridiculous. But grown ass man children on Lemmy act that way when Microsoft wants to know how many gigs of ram they have.
This is a terrible analogy. First of all, Bluetooth isn’t sending data back to headquarters. It’s a short range wireless connection between your gadgets. It couldn’t even if it wanted to.
Secondly, no one is kicking, screaming, and crying. You said it yourself “that’s fucking ridiculous”, and you’re right, because you just made it up to attack those you disagree with.
Finally, would you be upset if your car sent info on where and how you drive back to Ford? Or do you consider the places you go to be your own private information? Because despite your exaggerations, that’s actually what we’re talking about here. Some people would, and some people wouldn’t. You’re obviously in the latter group. But I don’t consider what I do in my free time to be anyone’s business but my own, and I’m offended that any business thinks it’s entitled to it.
As a programmer: “your data is boring. I am not interested in leveraging this for anything besides getting the service you are using to work as well as possible”
Also me as a programmer: “yo, you don’t need that data, stop asking for it. Ohh, your app is broken because it can’t access permissions? Yeet.”
As a UI designer, no it’s not just them. We need to know how people are using features to know if we should prioritise or deprioritise work on them and what work we might want to put in them.
Thank you. I’ve personally not worked at a company yet that actually sold this data or moved it outside of our internal systems. It exists purely to drive business decisions
They’re able to autocorrect for that, in the way they present the surveys and the type of questions they are asking, they actually have trick questions to check for those kind of things.
As a programmer: “your data is boring. I am not interested in leveraging this for anything besides getting the service you are using to work as well as possible”
Also me as a programmer: “yo, you don’t need that data, stop asking for it. Ohh, your app is broken because it can’t access permissions? Yeet.”
It’s not about the programmers. It’s about the company and the ability to make money off of data they get from you. You should be the one who gets money for your data. Not Microsoft, not Google etc.
Is Microsoft making money off of this particular telemetry data? Maybe not. It should always be opt-in
My company collects a ton of data, but it doesn’t leave our servers. We use it purely to drive internal decisions based on how people actually use the software
Scope: if you provide a service which is a “wrapper” for doing other things, I do not want you to collect usage data. Example: an entire fucking operating system
Opt-out by default (or completely unable to turn it off) even if the service or software I’m using is paid: I want to have the ability to say no. Communicate properly what you collect when I get access to the service, allow me to say no and don’t hide it in 300 pages long TOSes. I don’t want to become your free UX tester when I already pay for the service.
Telemetry-driven development: I absolutely hate this both as a user and a developer. We see there are thousands of users using a feature, but it’s a low % in general, so lead decides we need to remove it from our product. I know that those x thousand people will be annoyed, and so am I when I’m on the receiving end of this.
Another reason that is not universal but service specific is making decisions that purposefully keep you on the platform, over optimizing the interface for maximizing profit.
Me, after spending an entire day making sure we don’t set any cookies until we get consent and actually need them, while fighting off managers who want to install a spyware X, Y and Z just to track the amount of sales, visiting random ass page that could’ve been entirely replaced by just an image, seeing half-page banner saying “we have already set cookies, serviceworker and all of the trackers because the internet does not work without them” be like: Fuck you, Artemiy, my site works fine even without javascript and no cookie header at all. It’s only yours that shits itself at any mention of privacy.
How about shit breaking because everyone at some point is a bad programmer? Even Apple Music doesn’t work when I walk into the elevator until halfway through presumably because hitting play sets of a bunch of useless blocking network calls for music I have saved locally.
What those calls are, I can’t say for sure. Downloading artwork, license checks or telemetry. I’d venture to guess it’s the latter since music will play with placeholder artwork on a slow connection and license checks aren’t required if the subscription was recently validated (works offline for days).
But who really knows. I never bothered to inspect the traffic. The point is, if a company like Apple is creating such a crummy experience for a function so absurdly basic, you can imagine how easy and prevalent telemetry based user degradation is. Go browse the web with a tracker blocker and tell me it isn’t snappier.
PS: I’m also a programmer and collect error reports. So many developers will forego using connection pools, much less collect data with async api’s.
And let’s not even get into how telemetry is a shit tool that is misused 99.99% of the time and only used to surface popular features that aren’t necessarily good features only because we attach causation to every metric (x feature is highly used, therefore it must be good).
Yes, but maybe “reputable” isn’t the right word. Realistically, it’s anyone who would potentially face billions in a class-action lawsuit and could actually afford to pay up without going bankrupt. It’s just not worth the risk to getting a few extra $million to pull in telemetry data to the already expansive list of marketing data they collect and monetize.
For example, I would doubt that Hearthstone (Blizzard, revenue $8.7B) sells their app telemetry data. But I could definitely believe that Hill Climb Racer (Fingersoft, revenue $30M) does, or at least integrates it with ad targeting products.
Microsoft has more to lose than almost any other tech company. They also have more process, legal enforcement, and bureaucracy than most other tech companies.
There’s no fear of a lone engineer moving fast and breaking things at Microsoft. If someone at Microsoft had an idea for how they’d use your data they’d have to pass it through 5 chains of command, 2 tech orgs, and Legal just to begin the process.
A few things (and I enable it usually, for the record):
Not really the user’s job to help you with anything especially related to your boss
“from reputable companies does not get sold or used for marketing purposes. Our lawyers make sure of it,” fuck man, this made me laugh. Good one
Policies get updated, companies are bought and sold, laws change, and most crucially of all, data gets leaked. It doesn’t matter how airtight your asshole is puckered up or how many isolated networks are involved. It gets leaked. Leave the decision up to users about it and in particular maybe let them have full control of their networks.
That would be good, considered the user could actually have a choose to opt out the telemetry. Windows don’t ask you about gathering data for telemetry or “other” reasons.
As someone who has designed and used telemetry systems, I’ll never quite understand the strong aversion some people have to them. Telemetry is what lets me tell my boss “yes people really do use our software this way and we can’t break it” or “90% of crashes happen right after the player uses a grenade”. And despite what some conspiracy theorists would have you believe, telemetry data for software from reputable companies does not get sold or used for marketing purposes. Our lawyers make sure of it, and also make us go through privacy reviews to make sure that data isn’t leaking PII.
To me, telemetry would be like a sofa company wanting to put some cameras in your home to see if you’re using the sofa the way they thought you would. It just feels… off.
Imo, a simple opt-in crash report gets the job done. Technically it is telemetry, but a crash report is more justified than a “where have you clicked” report.
There’s just no trust in companies to not sell my data. I cannot trust Microsoft nor Google nor any other company to not sell my data, having seen the shenanigans every single company is willing to pull off to get a cent more a year.
Oddly the “where you clicked” report does drive decisions for updates. We (as a developer) use that information to drive UI decisions and determine which flows are more important and should be more easily available
Yes, and it makes sense that it would, and I’d happily give such data to developers I trust to make the programs I love better.
However, that same click data (maybe with some how-long-have-you-looked-at-this data) can definitely be used to target ads at me, which in my book is not okay. And as I said in my comment before, it’s really difficult (at least for me) to trust companies.
In general I agree, but users should be able to make that decision themselves. I do not understand why you can’t turn off telemetry, when it would be trivial to offer that option and so few users would bother to use it.
Agreed
It should be opt-in, not opt-out.
I agree, it should be opt in. Where I disagree is with how strongly people react against it.
If you buy a car and it only comes with Bluetooth do you have a meltdown? Do you kick, scream, and cry that Big Car is going to steal your data? No that’s fucking ridiculous. But grown ass man children on Lemmy act that way when Microsoft wants to know how many gigs of ram they have.
This is a terrible analogy. First of all, Bluetooth isn’t sending data back to headquarters. It’s a short range wireless connection between your gadgets. It couldn’t even if it wanted to.
Secondly, no one is kicking, screaming, and crying. You said it yourself “that’s fucking ridiculous”, and you’re right, because you just made it up to attack those you disagree with.
Finally, would you be upset if your car sent info on where and how you drive back to Ford? Or do you consider the places you go to be your own private information? Because despite your exaggerations, that’s actually what we’re talking about here. Some people would, and some people wouldn’t. You’re obviously in the latter group. But I don’t consider what I do in my free time to be anyone’s business but my own, and I’m offended that any business thinks it’s entitled to it.
As a programmer: “your data is boring. I am not interested in leveraging this for anything besides getting the service you are using to work as well as possible”
Also me as a programmer: “yo, you don’t need that data, stop asking for it. Ohh, your app is broken because it can’t access permissions? Yeet.”
It’s not about what the programmers want, it’s about the sales and marketing departments. They are the ones who use and abuse that data
As a UI designer, no it’s not just them. We need to know how people are using features to know if we should prioritise or deprioritise work on them and what work we might want to put in them.
Thank you. I’ve personally not worked at a company yet that actually sold this data or moved it outside of our internal systems. It exists purely to drive business decisions
So ask them to take the survey, instead of spying on them.
Biases data towards only users willing to do such things.
They’re able to autocorrect for that, in the way they present the surveys and the type of questions they are asking, they actually have trick questions to check for those kind of things.
It’s not about the programmers. It’s about the company and the ability to make money off of data they get from you. You should be the one who gets money for your data. Not Microsoft, not Google etc.
Is Microsoft making money off of this particular telemetry data? Maybe not. It should always be opt-in
My company collects a ton of data, but it doesn’t leave our servers. We use it purely to drive internal decisions based on how people actually use the software
My problems with telemetry:
Scope: if you provide a service which is a “wrapper” for doing other things, I do not want you to collect usage data. Example: an entire fucking operating system
Opt-out by default (or completely unable to turn it off) even if the service or software I’m using is paid: I want to have the ability to say no. Communicate properly what you collect when I get access to the service, allow me to say no and don’t hide it in 300 pages long TOSes. I don’t want to become your free UX tester when I already pay for the service.
Telemetry-driven development: I absolutely hate this both as a user and a developer. We see there are thousands of users using a feature, but it’s a low % in general, so lead decides we need to remove it from our product. I know that those x thousand people will be annoyed, and so am I when I’m on the receiving end of this.
Another reason that is not universal but service specific is making decisions that purposefully keep you on the platform, over optimizing the interface for maximizing profit.
Me, after spending an entire day making sure we don’t set any cookies until we get consent and actually need them, while fighting off managers who want to install a spyware X, Y and Z just to track the amount of sales, visiting random ass page that could’ve been entirely replaced by just an image, seeing half-page banner saying “we have already set cookies, serviceworker and all of the trackers because the internet does not work without them” be like: Fuck you, Artemiy, my site works fine even without javascript and no cookie header at all. It’s only yours that shits itself at any mention of privacy.
I don’t want you to know anything about me or my device. Simple as
How about shit breaking because everyone at some point is a bad programmer? Even Apple Music doesn’t work when I walk into the elevator until halfway through presumably because hitting play sets of a bunch of useless blocking network calls for music I have saved locally.
What those calls are, I can’t say for sure. Downloading artwork, license checks or telemetry. I’d venture to guess it’s the latter since music will play with placeholder artwork on a slow connection and license checks aren’t required if the subscription was recently validated (works offline for days).
But who really knows. I never bothered to inspect the traffic. The point is, if a company like Apple is creating such a crummy experience for a function so absurdly basic, you can imagine how easy and prevalent telemetry based user degradation is. Go browse the web with a tracker blocker and tell me it isn’t snappier.
PS: I’m also a programmer and collect error reports. So many developers will forego using connection pools, much less collect data with async api’s.
And let’s not even get into how telemetry is a shit tool that is misused 99.99% of the time and only used to surface popular features that aren’t necessarily good features only because we attach causation to every metric (x feature is highly used, therefore it must be good).
So why not ask, “hey you want to share some telemetry to help us improve the product” then?
It’s what all reputable companies or projects, I am aware of, do.
Do you consider Microsoft a “reputable company?”
Yes, but maybe “reputable” isn’t the right word. Realistically, it’s anyone who would potentially face billions in a class-action lawsuit and could actually afford to pay up without going bankrupt. It’s just not worth the risk to getting a few extra $million to pull in telemetry data to the already expansive list of marketing data they collect and monetize.
For example, I would doubt that Hearthstone (Blizzard, revenue $8.7B) sells their app telemetry data. But I could definitely believe that Hill Climb Racer (Fingersoft, revenue $30M) does, or at least integrates it with ad targeting products.
Microsoft has more to lose than almost any other tech company. They also have more process, legal enforcement, and bureaucracy than most other tech companies.
There’s no fear of a lone engineer moving fast and breaking things at Microsoft. If someone at Microsoft had an idea for how they’d use your data they’d have to pass it through 5 chains of command, 2 tech orgs, and Legal just to begin the process.
How many times have I heard this sort of talk about companies only to eventually learn of their unreported flagrant disregard for the rules…
Sure they probably have some bureaucracy but forgive me if I’m not so confident on their unimpeachabilty.
You are absolutely right. There’s some glaring hacks in Azure to cross tenancies or get into the fabric that they’re completely silent on…
https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/08/microsoft-cloud-security-blasted-for-its-culture-of-toxic-obfuscation/
https://infosec.exchange/@briankrebs/110820474957163710
I mean, it does have a reputation…
A few things (and I enable it usually, for the record):
Policies get updated, companies are bought and sold, laws change, and most crucially of all, data gets leaked. It doesn’t matter how airtight your asshole is puckered up or how many isolated networks are involved. It gets leaked. Leave the decision up to users about it and in particular maybe let them have full control of their networks.
That’s why our lawyers make us make sure that data is sufficiently anonymized before it’s even put on the wire.
Yes I’m sure the lawyer is personally running the analytics to ensure compliance.
No, I’m the one adding the analytics.
Oh thank God, someone reasonable.
Before, I was lost.
That would be good, considered the user could actually have a choose to opt out the telemetry. Windows don’t ask you about gathering data for telemetry or “other” reasons.