[hohohn]

That's how every company rationalizes the mass collection of user data. "Oh lets collect many terabytes of every user-action in case we need to one day discontinue a feature".

It's a book. You don't need to collect and track every fucking action I do to find out if your stupid highlighter is being used in Poland.

[jjcon]

Whether you like it or not this collection does lead to better products - that is why you think every company does it because those that don’t usually die out. Understanding your users is vitally important.

Privacy LARPers are a tiny segment of the market, the average person doesn’t really care if their ‘usage of the highlighter function is tracked’

[neiman]

> Privacy LARPers are a tiny segment of the market, the average person doesn’t really care if their ‘usage of the highlighter function is tracked’

If so, why don't they loudly advertise the data collection and do it only with opt-in?

It's not that the average user doesn't care if they're tracked, it's that they're not aware that they're being tracked.

[jjcon]

You think companies should loudly advertise something people don’t care about? That doesn’t make sense.

Plenty of companies are quite transparent about their data collection practices (set up an Apple device recently?)

Most people are aware of data collection, they care more about functionality though.

[shadowprofile77]

>Plenty of companies are quite transparent about their data collection practices (set up an Apple device recently?)

I have not, not recently, but what you say is simply bullshit. They're "transparent" in that they give you a ToS loaded with legalese that they know you couldn't easily read through to find just how much and where they're squeezing your life for information to store. In cases where they simplify this with some less legalistic declarations of data use, what you often see there are numerous weasel words and phrases to very ambiguously describe what's being done. You know, things like "We MAY collect some information for the sake of improving user experience" and blah blah....

Then of course, there's the outright lying, which also happens, in which big tech companies simply fail to mention some types of data collection anywhere (the Amazon Alexa voice recordings being listened to by humans is a good example iof this)

[jjcon]

This isn’t buried in a tos or legalese

https://www.groundctl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/csm_IMG...

Apple prompts you for each piece of data collection during the setup of an iOS device (and lets you choose if you want to share).

[t-writescode]

You're presenting the shining example in the corporate world of responsibility with customer data, Apple, with every other company and saying that everyone does it this way?

Most companies hide it in legalese. Some companies claim they're not sending any data and then send it anyway. Looking at you Philips Hue lights.

[neiman]

> You think companies should loudly advertise something people don’t care about?

It's not what I said.

[jjcon]

> why don't they loudly advertise the data collection

[neiman]

This I wrote. I didn't write "companies should loudly advertise something people don’t care about" -> you added something to my sentence, taking it out of context.

I wrote my opinion already, but I'll repeat it anyway in case it was not clear. I think you can't know if people care about it or not, as long as they're not informed about it.

[rumanator]

> If so, why don't they loudly advertise the data collection and do it only with opt-in?

But they do.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yg70ojfWXnk

[neiman]

The video is about synch, while the conversation is about "collection does lead to better products" -> i.e, analytics.

[rumanator]

What do you believe syncing means? This discussion talks about whispersync reporting last page read and most recent page read events. What do you think that's supposed to do?

[neiman]

Syncing and analytics are not identical, sorry.

[danShumway]

> Privacy LARPers

This is an unnecessarily denigrating term at this point in the conversation. It's not LARPing to want to be able to read a book or take notes without being tracked.

[jjcon]

> It's not LARPing to want to be able to read a book or take notes without being tracked.

Absolutely agree but it is LARPing to pretend this collection is for anything but improving a product. Nobody is out to get you and nobody particularly cares how often you specifically turn the page (the data is useful in aggregate).

[danShumway]

Kindle's privacy FAQ[0] says:

> We also use it to develop and improve products and features for all our customers and to gain insights into how our products are being used, assess customer engagement, identify potential quality issues, analyze our business, and customize marketing offers.

Targeted marketing is, in itself, something that's reasonable for someone to want to block regardless of whether or not there's a mustached villain tracking you. Privacy is about more than stalkers, it's about the effects of data usage. For some people, targeted advertising is a harm regardless of whether or not the company knows their name.

To go a step farther, I also don't understand why it's LARPing to be worried about a company who is actively being investigated for misusing seller data.

I bring this up every time that one of these threads/stories gets posted, but there's (appologies, but for lack of a better word) some kind of weird gaslighting that always happens in these situations. Before it broke that Echo and Siri queries were sometimes listened to by 3rd-party contractors, if I had posted that suspicion on HN people would have called me paranoid. Once the story broke, the argument then shifted to, "well of course they're doing that, how else would you improve the service?" That kind of thinking applies to Amazon as well.

I don't know that it's likely, but I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that Amazon might use this information in the future to help target pirates, change book rankings on their store, perform highly targeted advertising and book recommendations, or turn it over during government subpoenas. Those are completely reasonable usages that their privacy policy leaves them permission to do.

Similarly, I don't know that it's likely, but it's not outside the realm of possibility that this information might get sent to 3rd parties with less responsible data practices, or that employees might be given direct access to it in an unobfuscated form[1]. It's not something I'm losing sleep over, but I wouldn't be shocked to my core if someday all this information got leaked publicly and correlated to people's email addresses.

These are all situations where privacy matters regardless of the original intention. The "I only want to make my service better" defense applies to basically all data collection that most companies do. Even advertisers use that defense. It's reasonable for people to want to avoid being a part of that.

Of course, it's also reasonable for people not to care, to say that hacking is a risk they're willing to live with, and that they don't mind targeted ads, and that the books they read aren't sensitive. But it's not LARPing if someone has a different opinion on whether or not they want to tolerate that stuff.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

[1]: See, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/12/12/creepy-net.... Is it LARPing for me to be weirded out by a marketing department trolling over my reading/listening/watching habits looking for viral tweet material?

[choward]

> Whether you like it or not this collection does lead to better products

Maybe it's just me but every tech product I use these days gets worse over time. If something does get better, two things get worse. They mostly try to optimize for user engagement and not user experience.

> Understanding your users is vitally important.

And the only way to understand people is spying on them?

[jjj123]

There’s an important distinction to make: this tracking doesn’t necessarily lead to better products, it leads to better business metrics.

Sometimes a better product comes out of better business metrics, but other times they’re directly opposed.

[Google234]

This is not true. What if for example you want to make a change to the dictionary feature because you imagine that it’s not useful and should be less prominently accessible. How would you measure if this is a good idea or not without tracking its use? This has nothing to do with business and everything to do with making the product better.

[jjj123]

Sure, there’s an example where best case the user experience is improved and business metrics aren’t affected. But I assure you if that app has a decent analytics setup they’ll also be tracking business metrics, and if for some reason business metrics went down with that change past some acceptable threshold, that change won’t be launched.

Now if you look at opposite case, where a feature is worse for user experience but helps business metrics, that feature will definitely be launched. A small, mostly harmless example: Ever tried to hide twitter’s recommended accounts? It gives you the option to “see less often”, but curiously there’s no option to stop seeing the window forever. Why? Because clearly it benefits twitter’s business on average to keep showing these recommendations.

I’ve built enough dark patterns at my last job to know it always comes down to business metrics.

[choward]

Exactly. At the end of the day it's about profit and not necessarily a better product. Sometimes more profit means making a better product for the end user.

[PeterStuer]

'Privacy LARPers are a tiny segment of the market, the average person doesn’t really care if their ‘usage of the highlighter function is tracked’'

Which is exactly why we have regulation that forbids these practices, to protect the gullible from themselves. Furthermore, do you think privacy should be the privilege of just those that are smart and keen enough to be aware and prepared to engage in a relentless and perpetual battle with the most dark of patterns with every click they make?

[jononor]

Do you have something to back up the claim that this kind of data collection leads to better products?

[ihm]

This comment is such cowed boot-licking of a giant corporation. Completely antithetical to the hacker ethos.

[jjcon]

One can partake in the hacker ethos while not being a conspiracy nut - albeit I admit those sometimes go together.

[lwouis]

Most of the world-famous libre software is built without their developers study of massively collected usage data ("telemetry").

I look at VLC as a great example to follow. Their stats show 3.4 billion downloads (https://www.videolan.org/vlc/stats/downloads.html), yet they do no telemetry at all. The product works great. It could be improved of course, but Outlook could also greatly be improved, and they have high-salary staff and a boatload of data they extract from users. Yet it's slow as hell and has lots of UX I disagree with.

I'm myself the author of a replacement of Windows "alt-tab" on macOS (https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/) which doesn't do any telemetry. I can lead the roadmap, with the help of the community, without spying on how users set their preferences and use the app.

As a matter of fact, it can be argued that acting that way can be negative value as it's reinforcing popular usage; or from the power-users perspective, dumbing down the software. By definition, advanced features will have low usage. It doesn't mean it should be removed.

Lastly, think about non-software businesses. Many amazing products have simply no way to gather data when the products are in the users homes. They rely on gathering data by talking to customers at the points of purchase, customer care, are in various forums with enthusiast users. This model has shown great results, so it is in no way clearly to be avoided in favor of telemetry-everything.

[rumanator]

> Most of the world-famous libre software is built without their developers study of massively collected usage data ("telemetry").

The sort of telemetry mentioned in the article is used for UX purposes, and God knows FLOSS sucks at UX.

And by the way, Debian collects and reports telemetry since the early 2000s, and Firefox is quite open on how much telemetry it collects.

[2rsf]

TBH the argument that it reinforce popular usage is a valid one, at MS we were taught again and again on how to design good experiments using telemetry but at the end it's hard to support changes when your data shows that something is working properly, and UI changes tend to produce a dip in usage or satisfaction graphs until they catch-up.

[Google234]

VLC’s UI is horrible.