Gonna come out with a controvertial take here, but I am actually fine with anonymised usage stats/telemetry if they are solely designed to improve the product, and as long as there is an opt-out. Many people are get furious about telemetry in firefox or distros, but when i ask what their precise issue is with it, can give no answer.
Sending these stats is also a contribution to the projects that help improve software.
Many people are get furious about telemetry in firefox or distros, but when i ask what their precise issue is with it, can give no answer.
They already gave you their answer. They don’t think collecting data without very deliberate opt in is acceptable. There is no need for anything more precise than that. It’s a perfectly complete answer on its own.
Personally, i see metric/telemetry collection like democracy; you are perfectly entitled to not participate, but if you opt out you also forfeit your right to complain about bugs or missing features.
I work on a companion app for a piece of very expensive hardware where our users are trained on how to report problems, and I’d still have 1 stack trace from our telemetry system than 1000 user reports. Our privacy policy explicitly states that we collect some information for the purpose of identifying and fixing issues, and for product development, and that we won’t sell or share that data. We operate in the EU, so the amount of money we could get from a data broker selling that information would be a rounding error on the fines we’d see if we did.
Absolutely read the privacy policy and call out weak policies, but “metrics” and “telemetry” are not synonyms for “spying”
I think a lot of the arguing people are doing here is about the usefulness of opt-in vs opt-out. And personally I tend to agree with the side of the opt-out group; telemetry that users opt-in to is just less useful overall for figuring the average needs of your users. Opt-in is way too self-selecting and shows you very little about what actually needs to be worked on for everyone. However, if the telemetry is not privacy-respecting then opt-out is not a good thing at all. But I think I trust the endless OS system that fedora is trying to use.
I would say opt-out is fine as long as the option is presented to the user early on in the UX. Like for example during installation. If it’s opt-out but the option to do so is hidden then that’s not good.
I can do that:
Because constantly, throughout the entirety of the corporate controlled internet era we are now in, and I mean constantly as in it is hard to find an exception, anonymous data collection has at some point in the future turned into non-anonymous data collection to sell to data brokers.
Hell, there are a staggering.number of services being caught with ignoring opt-out preferences even and non-anonymously tracking users via identification numbers.
The problem I have with it is that eventually, every single closed source “anonymous” consumer telemetry will eventually become de-anonymized and almost always sold. If any capitalist company sees a cash cow that they aren’t milking, shareholders or rich owners will demand that it be milked.
I would struggle to find a case where it hasn’t happened with any popular software
I think “Explicit choice” is the best option
When a proposal is made by a person, a political party, a company, or an entity of any type we automatically (consciously or not) run their proposal through our personal filters to create a judgment about said proposal. So, when Fedora proposed telemetry I had to be aware of what my personal filters were and there were a few biases I had developed that make me uncomfortable with Fedora and their future use of telemetry: a) IBM b) Large companies have a dubious record of using user data ethically - they exist to make money and so if they have opportunities to do so, they will and that means the user data will get sold, aggregated, indexed for personal info, etc… if not immediately, IT WILL happen eventually.
Having been in leadership in large corporations for decades myself, the introduction of telemetry is presented as responsible and harmless enough so the pill is easy to swallow. The future of how that data is used and expands is the major concern for me; it’s the exact situation of boiling a frog.
The individuals hoping to collect this telemetry may be great and ethical people wishing to do a net-good, however, these people are involved in a large organization with much larger powers and motives and so the original intent of doing only good with it will get lost. It can be no other way. I liked Fedora quite a lot but I recently switched upon hearing about their proposal - be it Opt-In or Opt Out was a moot point for me because I don’t trust they would even honor my selection anyway. My two cents, which is worth about half that…
How is this corporate shilling? Telemetry isn’t inherently bad and can be very useful to projects, it’s only when it goes against the users wishes or collects excessive amounts of data that it becomes bad.
Have you been keeping up with the story? Few people are saying there is absolutely zero value in telemetry as a concept. Most people have an issue with it being on by default. For a FOSS community, especially one who tries to act as if privacy matters, the very nature of the concept “telemetry that’s on by default” is the problem. I wouldn’t personally use the phrase corporate shilling because I think it’s not the most precise descriptor of the situation, but it’s not entirely innacurate either. I think all of their talk about “it’s anonymized” or “it’s not excessive” or what have you is just distraction: the real issue is that it’s on by default.
