Yeah, invading people's privacy always makes things easier for everyone else, doesn't it? Doesn't mean people who care about it don't want or deserve quality...
"Deserve" is complicated. To a first approximation that ignores a lot of details... What have they done to "deserve" it? They didn't buy it. They aren't making the process of figuring out what they want particularly easy.
People who don't show up to vote also "deserve" a good government by virtue of being people who have to live in a governed society. It's harder to make one for them if the system for selecting leaders is missing their input, regardless of what they deserve.
Popping out of the government analogy and back to software, power users are also in a position where they are more capable of adjusting their experience to suit their needs. All things being equal, a company with finite resources to develop software should dedicate those resources to assisting the non-power users more often than power users.
While you argue your case, that one has to vocalise if one wants something, well, you are still ignoring the basic want of not having your privacy violated and the fact that you can vocalise something willfully, without it being spied away from you. I'm also extremely suspicious of the suggestion that this is something only power users would want.
You can certainly vocalize something willfully. But the people who don't have to do any vocalization at all and are generating megabytes to gigabytes of data on how the application is used by their mere use of it are going to always have a default stronger voice than people who bother to show up on message boards to voice specific concerns.
I actually agree that if you are willing to ignore privacy concerns and a potentially large part of your userbase, then you can simply send megabytes to gigabytes of telemetry and pretend that is the best you could have done and that you have the best data. I'm simply saying that's not a good idea.
> a) It's not a large part of the user base who switches off telemetry and they have the telemetry to know that
So you're claiming that it is typical for software with telemetry support to ignore your choice and still send telemetry about you turning off telemetry? That sounds wrong, but I cannot say I investigated this deeply.
> b) for being "not a good idea", it's pretty much industry standard now for everything from business software to video games.
As I understood the discussion, we were in fact discussing whether this is a good idea and whether it makes sense, so I think it's fair game to comment on it. As for it being an industry standard, that sounds like an overgeneralization. It is certainly not typical of software I use.
People who don't show up to vote also "deserve" a good government by virtue of being people who have to live in a governed society. It's harder to make one for them if the system for selecting leaders is missing their input, regardless of what they deserve.
Popping out of the government analogy and back to software, power users are also in a position where they are more capable of adjusting their experience to suit their needs. All things being equal, a company with finite resources to develop software should dedicate those resources to assisting the non-power users more often than power users.