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1. Embed this notice
   Tom Ritter (tomrittervg@infosec.exchange)'s status on Friday, 06-Mar-2026 01:17:50 JST Tom Ritter

   I've been seeing a lot of comments online about how browser telemetry is just a way to spy on users and we never actually use it, and it provides no value.

   We can debate whether you think someone (Firefox or otherwise) overcollects telemetry, or doesn't collect it in a privacy-preserving enough way. And you should be able to turn it all off, for any reason.

   But it's been instrumental for me, personally, to ship multiple security improvements to Firefox - and I'm just one of hundreds of developers. I wrote up some more here: https://ritter.vg/blog-telemetry.html

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 06-Mar-2026 01:17:49 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     @tomrittervg It doesn't matter how useful you think it is. It's still unethical and wrong.

     I could go through your examples of "Concrete wins from Firefox Telemetry" one by one and detail how each should and could have happened just as smoothly without telemetry, using normal, ethical means like paid QA, voluntary reporting by power-user early-adopters, etc.

     But I think this misses the point. You don't get to decide that having telemetry on-by-default (even with an way to opt-out) is acceptable just because you think you think it produced immensely beneficial results.

   • Embed this notice
     William D. Jones (cr1901@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 06-Mar-2026 07:57:36 JST William D. Jones

     in reply to

     • Rich Felker

     @dalias @tomrittervg (What about telemetry off, opt-in? I have exactly one piece of software I wrote where telemetry would be useful. But I'd never make it on by default.

     That being said, I found out very quickly that said software basically "only works on my machine", so I'd need to add lots of tracing and ask ppl to run it. I shouldn't have released it :'D...

     https://github.com/cr1901/swmon)

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 06-Mar-2026 07:57:36 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • William D. Jones

     @cr1901 @tomrittervg Off-by-default, opt-in is maybe ethically okay, but I still don't like it, because nobody really understands enough to evaluate turning it on, the scope of information that might be included. As a programmer, I don't even want people's core dumps. I don't want the risk of seeing something I wasn't supposed to see, or even that contains something illegal.