[wtallis]

He works (or worked) for Google, and the experience gives many of his comments a warped perspective. Which is why I'm genuinely unsure where he's trying to lay the blame for the status quo that even well-meaning telemetry efforts cannot be trusted.

[jeffbee]

I don't really get where you think the well has been poisoned by Google or any others. Telemetry projects that I am familiar with at that company, like chromeos-wide profiling, are conducted with best in the industry privacy, and they result in a significantly improved experience for users.

Big Tech does not want your stupid private data. It is in all objective respects toxic waste. But they do want to know if your CPU is overheating, or your SSD is failing early, or if your programs run slowly. Telemetry is good and valuable.

[wtallis]

> Big Tech does not want your stupid private data. It is in all objective respects toxic waste.

This is so obviously contradicted by the actual behavior of Google and most other tech companies, big and small. From the inside, you may see a clear distinction between telemetry and the truly creepy amount of personal data collection happening in other parts of the company. But you should have no trouble understanding how end users are less able to draw that distinction, especially when they are not offered the choice to only opt-in to some of the data collection and "personalization".

So, do you really think that a user being suspicious of large-scale data collection means they're deranged?

[mixmastamyk]

Hate to trot out the Upton Sinclair quote again, but it's a bullseye here.