This is AFTER debloating all the MS bs as much as I can.
The amount of MS telemetry is just mindboggling.
It has become really nasty for sure…
But I can’t really blame them. Who wouldn’t want to know? And who doesn’t do it? It’s just always MS who gets shit on for doing it. Everything and everyone tracks our every movement and click. If ET had been an android-phone he had been long called home before the intro started.
Don’t get me wrong, i effing abhor these things from the depths of my nerdy heart and do everything to block them all. But we just can’t avoid it anymore. We can just hope to get it all blocked or that it at least only sends anonymous usage-data and nothing else.
And who doesn’t do it?
OSS operating systems. The more proprietary software you run, the less and less you actually own your computer and the more it becomes a tool to advance the interests of megacorps.
But to play devil’s (angel’s?) advocate for a minute, Microsoft can’t fix vulnerabilities in Windows without telemetry data. There’s a practically infinite combination of hardware components Windows runs on, and that makes it impossible for Microsoft to find and fix vulnerabilities and bugs in house. Older versions of Windows were so insecure in-part because Microsoft made telemetry reports opt-in, and we all know how likely the average user is to do so.
Now that’s not to say that everything Microsoft collects is appropriate; I’m only saying there is a valid case for collecting some data from users.
Oh i didn’t mean to say that telemetry is inherently bad. If it really would just be totally anonymous stats the devs would need, yeah sure. Just tell me WHAT EXACTLY it is. Or gimme a preview-option before sending. But it’s mostly stuff that’s none of their beeswax.
The amount my pihole blocks is titanic. If I’d be paying for traffic that would make a substantial difference.
If they only used it for that people wouldn’t have a problem with it. The problem is due to their shit business practices no one trusts them (or should trust them). They’ve proved they don’t have their users best interests at heart.
Not all. Ubuntu does phone home too. But sure, most don’t. But OSS is not for mainstream-users. I am protected (and just pissed), i was speaking more on behalf of the clueless mass and in general.
And btw. Your argument fails at phonee. Android and apple suck in regards to privacy. I could use privacy-os’ on my pixel but they all lack boldly. So the moment i leave my perfect private pc, I’m screwed with mobiles again… I doubt there ever will be a viable linux-phone.
we just can’t avoid it anymore
Speak for yourself. Besides, all-or-nothing privacy is a false dichotomy. Giving out less personal data is still better than giving out everything, and you don’t need 100% privacy to be unprofitable to advertisers.
You misread. It IS unavoidable nowadays or most of the surface-web is non-functional if you block anything that isn’t content. Besides the amount of work it takes to just not be tracked rises and rises.
Doesn’t mean I don’t do whatever i can do avoid it. To every techy it should be more than obvious that there is no binary approach. You can only do more or less to avoid more or less but never eliminate it.
So yeah, the less the better. And one might even partially reach a state where one is unprofitable to advertisers. Yet that can change tomorrow or on the next site or when you use some phone-app or or or…
That’s what i meant with “unavoidable”. You can’t avoid a persistent ever-evolving problem.
It’s always MS who has people on the internet defending them when they do it, to the point that it looks like MS social media presence is being carefully managed, like Apple. I saw it happen on Reddit too, and it happened less and less the more they got called out. The same “$70 a year for Office 365 is so worth it” is a talking point when I was on Reddit. Apparently, people here say the same thing.
I’m not defending them. I just dislike the silly MS-hate train. As if they were the only ones doing it. If apple does it, it’s a feature. MS is evil. That’s as boring and old like IE-jokes that are still around. I have more Linux-machines than win-machines in my home lab.
And every major crap has its fanboys and marketing-workforce defending their shit.
Desktop linux doesn’t have any of this. And one day we’ll get real linux on phones too (with full featured support).
Nah, we will never have a GOOD Linux-phone. And if, it’s most likely NOT without tracking and whatnot. Why should any company put money into a thing they can’t control after sale? Sadly so, i might add.
Canonical Ubuntu does or at least did though. Caused a shitstorm years ago despite it being opt-in back then. I don’t know how they do it nowadays.
KDE also has opt-in usage tracking but I trust that project enough to believe it’s really only for improving the software.
I think most software like this grows to a certain size and then they need the telemetry to identify issues. There’s so many hardware configurations and most people don’t submit bug reports or opt into their configuration being shared. It’s not an inherently bad thing, just some companies are taking more than they need.
If ET had been an android-phone he had been long called home before the intro started
That’s a good one! But to be fair, Apple calls home just as much. They just don’t sell that data (yet).
If you think they don’t use that data to try and sell apple products, I’ve got a bridge to sell.
They may not have an advertising network, yet, but they use your data for their interests. Currently, it serves their interests to pretend they are more private and secure, but they are not.
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.
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.
It doesn’t matter how airtight your asshole is puckered up or how many isolated networks are involved. It gets leaked.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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 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
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.
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.
Devil’s advocate: basically the only proper way to figure out how people are using your product and how you can tweak it to achieve its goal is by firing events and including relevant metadata such as how much time they spent on a screen or how far they scrolled. Telemetry is not necessarily “evil” by default.
The other side of that is that the telemetry data never gives you a “why” of something.
For example, users might spend a long time at a screen because they are thinking about what to do, or they are confused by the options and can’t figure out which option they need.
This is why a QA team coupled with a large amount of beta testers is invaluable and necessary.
Telemetry, in the context of software development and UX design, is either a decision by the misinformed or just an excuse to save costs by axing the Windows QA department.
In reality it’s likely the data is being sold off. But in either case, that’s data Microsoft isn’t entitled to (from a moral/privacy perspective).
Telemetry, in the context of software development and UX design, is either a decision by the misinformed or just an excuse to save costs by axing the Windows QA department.
That’s very silly. That’s actually such a ridiculous opinion I’m pretty sure you’ve left out some assumption that would make it make sense.
I replied elsewhere but YES! Telemetry is notorious for causing devs to hyperfocus on shit features due to their high usage. Just because a user is clicking X over Y doesn’t mean Y sucks and X is better. Maybe Y is in their periphery, or camouflaged by the background artwork or worded badly. But hey, since X gets a lot of clicks, it must be good, right?
For example, users might spend a long time at a screen because they are thinking about
… anything!
what am I gonna eat?
I should remember to feed the bicycle…
who stole my cat btw?
who am I to judge?
who am I?
what’s the meaning of life?
what’s the meaning of finding it?
what’s the meaning of figuring out what the meaning is of finding it???
Dammit! I forgot to feed my bicycle last night! No wonder it was at my bedroom door ringing its bell nonstop.
Also, Firefox, lemmys beloved browser, sends telemetry by default. You have to dig through menus you didn’t know existed to even find out, and then disable.
Not only to Mozilla, but third parties as well.
Sure it’s scummy, but it’s definitely not hidden. When you open the settings page Data Collection is a top level option
It’s hidden in the fact it’s not presented upon first startup, it never mentions it, and it’s at the very bottom of the settings page.
You have to discover it. And who knows how long you had it enabled before you find it.
Mozilla is also HIGHLY political, paying large sums of money to hardcore anti-white organizations.
Are these the “anti-white” supporters you’re talking about? https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/leadership/
Seems odd that these anti-white warriors would be overwhelmingly white themselves. I’m guessing you think the only competent people they could find to hire were white?
Devil’s advocate: basically the only proper way to figure out how people are using your product
Focus groups and customer surveys work really well.
Not in the slightest unfortunately. Often customers don’t even know what customers want, and the subgroup that actually responds to these aren’t necessarily “average”
Not in the slightest unfortunately. Often customers don’t even know what customers want, and the subgroup that actually responds to these aren’t necessarily “average”
That seems like one hell of a hand waving away the opinion.
You do realize that was used for decades before computer’s and the Internet was a thing, right?
And they do things like blind tests so they get audiences that are average.
Actually, except for the deepest debugging data that only a programmer would want, you’re incorrect. And the conversation wasn’t just about that one minority type of data set.
I totally agree, but where I have a problem (and I imagine a lot of other users here) is that you can’t fully opt out. You can only set “minimal” tracking but not none.
“bUt ThAt DaTa iS gOiNg tO mAkE ThE pRoDuCt BeTtEr”
That’s literally Office356. If you use outlook or any part of the office suite, you will have tons of traffic to there. If you drop it, it will stop working.
How certain are you of that?
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The software doesn’t complain certain?
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You see nothing wrong certain?
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Someone on the internet told you certain?
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Microsoft validated the claim certain?
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You wrote the software certain?
