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by feanaro 2195 days ago
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.
1 comments
shadowgovt 2195 days ago
a) It's not a large part of the user base who switches off telemetry and they have the telemetry to know that

b) for being "not a good idea", it's pretty much industry standard now for everything from business software to video games.

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feanaro 2194 days ago
> 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.

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shadowgovt 2189 days ago
> 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.

No; I'm saying missing data leaves holes that can be measured. They know, for example, how many people have downloaded Chrome and how many daily Chrome users they get at google.com (because Chrome will still send a valid UA string if it has telemetry turned off). They can estimate how many users have telemetry turned off from those signals to a pretty decent degree of accuracy; certainly enough to know whether telemetry is telling them about 90% of users of 30%.

For (b), I'm curious what software you use. It's pretty standard in games, online apps, and business software. It's absent in a lot of open-source (mostly because a lot of open-source lacks a centralized vendor who would be willing to pay the cost to collect and interpret that data to improve the software).

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feanaro 2187 days ago
Is Chrome's telemetry so invasive that it reports about all URLs visited? Otherwise I don't see how daily Chrome visitors on google.com would be helpful in this estimate.

I avoid online apps, I don't play a lot of games (and if I do, they're not big titles which are likely to have telemetry) and yes, I primarily use FOSS.

> (mostly because a lot of open-source lacks a centralized vendor who would be willing to pay the cost to collect and interpret that data to improve the software).

This is almost surely an element of it, but I think a respect for privacy and a general distaste for telemetry among FOSS users are more important.

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