[Spivak]

Not saying what's being collected isn't invasive but over time we've redefined spyware and tracking to include logging, error reporting, and telemetry.

Someone in the 90's would be imagining bonzi buddy when you say tracking when it's actually pendo.

[alabastervlog]

This has it backwards: “telemetry” or otherwise collecting info without explicitly asking each time was definitely, for-sure just spyware as late as the mid ‘00s. We only later decided a bunch of that definitely-not-ok stuff was ok.

[Latty]

Companies have intentionally bucketed those things together with invasive ad tracking so they can obfuscate what the user is agreeing to.

As with GDPR, it's easy to offer a good user experience and do the right things by default, but there is an active choice being made to make it annoying and misleading to try and trick users into doing stuff that is against their own interests.

[Spivak]

Apple isn't, I can turn off ad tracking and keep analytics on.

[Latty]

Sure, but the "redefinition" you talk of isn't consumers suddenly being unreasonable, it's the fact they've experienced so much gaslighting and unclear dark patterns they are (reasonably) assuming everything is suspect and rejecting it all.

[realusername]

And what about something like the AdvertisingID? The OS creates an identifier for the purpose of tracking you with ads.

[gruez]

Before that app developers were reading IMEI or mac addresses, which were arguably worse because they can't be reset.

[realusername]

Isn't that just because the sandboxing is really poor on mobile compared to the web? You cannot read those on the web.