[badsectoracula]

Indeed, this is one of the various options one has.

Another option is to not use it and be vocal against telemetry, hopefully convincing others to do the same while dissuading other developers (especially in a forum like Hacker News where people that build stuff gather) from adding it on their products.

[unclad5968]

Genuine question. Why do you care if other people agree with you about telemetry? I almost always enable telemetry on anything I don't believe will serve me ads.

[pjmlp]

Democracy is the dictorship of the majority, thus when majority is fine with telemetry disabling it won't be an option any longer.

[pasoevi]

I wouldn't take people seriously who are vocal against telemetry in a product which has paid version with the option to turn telemetry off. Such people would be vocal against paying for the work others do. Also, if properly anonymised, telemetry isn't the devil people make it to be.

[badsectoracula]

> I wouldn't take people seriously who are vocal against telemetry in a product which has paid version with the option to turn telemetry off.

You are conflating two separate things, a product does not need telemetry to function and if telemetry is needed it can be opt-in. Similarly a product does not need to be free to have telemetry nor does it need to be paid to not have telemetry, as i already wrote these two are completely separate.

> Such people would be vocal against paying for the work others do.

Again you are conflating two completely separate things: people being concerned about the privacy implications of telemetry (both directly and indirectly, see below) and people who are against about paying others for their work.

> Also, if properly anonymised, telemetry isn't the devil people make it to be.

Even if anonymized (which is something you can only guarantee for open source projects that either you or someone you trust has checked they do such anonymization properly - and also you either build yourself from the source that was checked or you used a binary from a reproducible build) having telemetry in place still creates and reinforces a precedent of it being acceptable which in turn can be used to excuse other programs doing the same but those programs actually not caring about doing proper anonymization (at best) or even outright spying on you (at worst).

Besides anonymized data can still be used in conjunction with other data to be deanonymized and the best way to protect users from this is to not collect that data in the first place.

[pasoevi]

I'm not conflating these two things. I didn't say they have to have telemetry to keep it free. All I am saying is, if you have the option to pay and decide whether you give them telemetry or not, then there is no reason being vocal about them giving you more for free. It is a company and they need to make profit. If more users with telemetry enabled gives them more data that they can use to indirectly increase their profit, I only applaud them. If they stopped allowing to turn telemetry off for the product in paid version as well, then you would have a valid point.

That said, nothing wrong with being vocal about privacy and high standards in collecting usage.

[throwaway51034]

Privacy is a fundamental human right, not something you get to withhold from people until they give you money.

Yes, I could pay them to get a product that lets me disable telemetry. I'd much rather just use something else, so I don't have to fund their unethical business practices.

[bigstrat2003]

That is an extremely disingenuous framing of the topic. They make a product, which you can pay money for. If you prefer, they will also let you pay by sending them usage telemetry. In neither case are you being deprived of a human right or extorted in any way - it's a transaction where you receive a benefit in exchange for something you give to them.