Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Andrej Shadura (andrew_shadura@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 03-Mar-2025 00:31:09 JST Andrej Shadura

   @trysdyn, why would I want to disable telemetry or studies?

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 03-Mar-2025 00:31:09 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     @andrew_shadura @trysdyn Because unless you're an expert you have no idea if they leak sensitive personal information. And participating normalizes them, makes opting out more conspicuously different for ppl who need to. They're also harmful to begin with because they're user surveys biased to only reflect the behaviors of non privacy conscious users, and create data that suggests privacy features are unused.

     All telemetry is harmful in this way. Respectable projects don't use telemetry whatsoever.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 03-Mar-2025 02:58:50 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     @andrew_shadura @trysdyn Also (I wrote in depth on this a long time ago, should dig it up) the word "telemetry" here is very loaded and harmful.

     "Telemetry" conventionally means remote sensing/measurement done on something the party gets the readings from owns and has deployed.

     In the context of software, it implies the software running on your device really "belongs to" the party getting the telemetry, and is an agent acting remotely on their behalf.