Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com • Hacker News Board

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#101

Post by jsmith45 » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 9:46 PM UTC

teej wrote: post #67

falcor84 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting point. But wouldn't the vast majority of Gitlab users be signed in (and thus server-side trackable)? Pretty much all functionality other than just reading code seems to require it.

The only way to know this would be if you read the entire discussion across 2+ threads on the Gitlab site for their event tracking MR. Basically this whole shit show started as so: * Gitlab previously used 3rd party infrastructure for their user event tracking * They did not send this 3rd party user id for GDPR and other reasons * Because they did not have user id, they could not understand user behavior across sessi…

I read in one of the issues that it was Marketing that wanted Pendo tracking. (I'm guessing marketing mainly wanted it for gitlab.com).

In one place I saw a developer basically say Pendo is marketing's, and product is only interested in using Snowplow (with first party data processing).

Development was entirely happy with a true opt-in. Development does want to be able to get data back from on premises instances, but is totally fine with having it be an instance wide option that can be off.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#102

Post by techntoke » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 9:46 PM UTC

foreign-inc wrote: post #78

How can you trust a company like GitLab whose default decision is always bad and then they change direction after public outcry. Either they don't think before they make decisions or they are just trying to figure out what they can get away with. This really shows their lack of morality. They kind of remind me of Facebook.

Lol, I think you're forgetting about another provider. Besides you can always try Gitea.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#103

Post by musicale » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 9:47 PM UTC

itake wrote: post #95

epoch_100 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Further, GitLab will commit to not implementing telemetry in our products that sends usage data to a third-party product analytics service." That seems like a pretty solid indication that the plans are cancelled.

That sounds like they are going to roll out a first-party service, which is better, but not great for the self-hosted deployments.

Telemetry still sucks. I don't want it, and it should never be opt-out.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#104

Post by notJim » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 9:48 PM UTC

Accacin wrote: post #96

zapita wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may or may not agree with that comment, but it is not nasty. What is nasty, on the other hand, is the vitriolic reaction to it. So far I count 16 "middle finger" emojis, including one with the subtitle "incompentent or malicious CFO". In what world does a disagreement over the right level of telemetry justify this kind of behavior? It's mind-boggling to me how entitled and aggressive the open-source culture is al…

> In what world does a disagreement over the right level of telemetry justify this kind of behavior? In a world where companies think little of collecting and selling our personal data to make a profit? In a world where companies feel the need to track every part of my life with or without my permission. This is something I can't escape, as every time I interact with someone that does use one of these platforms than…

> In a world where companies feel the need to track every part of my life with or without my permission. This is something I can't escape, as every time I interact with someone that does use one of these platforms than they are able to collect data on me.

I find this attitude honestly kind of confusing. I mean, you know that the shops you go to know what products you're buying from them, right? Presumably those shops look at that data in aggregate when thinking about which products to stock. How is this any different? If you're transacting with someone, it's not possible to hide that transaction from them.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#105

Post by notJim » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 9:51 PM UTC

I find the anti-telemetry attitude honestly kind of confusing. I mean, you know that the shops you go to know what products you're buying from them, right? Presumably those shops look at that data in aggregate when thinking about which products to stock. How is this any different? If you're transacting with someone, it's not possible to hide that transaction from them. Of course you should have the right to have that data deleted, but that's different from saying it should never be collected at all.

Also, given that nearly all websites are using something like Google Analytics or similar (or several of these at once), the reaction and vitriol here just seems weirdly disproportionate.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#106

Post by andrewbinstock » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 9:52 PM UTC

>We have not yet added instrumentation to the Enterprise edition versions, and we will not do so until we have a way for self-hosted customers to opt out... (Scott Williamson, Gitlab VP of product, responding to the OP)

That's not the right way to do it. Customers should need to opt in, rather than having to opt out.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#107

Post by EpicEng » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 9:54 PM UTC

Accacin wrote: post #89

tyre wrote: post #58

The reaction to this whole saga has been insane. Chill out people. They fucked up, users gave feedback, they listened. This isn't some corporate conspiracy, some grand ethical dilemma with an evil company on one side and some white knight hackers on the other. Let's imagine for a second that they are people trying to do the right thing, with years of history doing the best they can. They wanted to measure usage to ma…

> Let's imagine for a second that they are people trying to do the right thing, with years of history doing the best they can. How could a company like this ever think that opt-out is appropriate? It seems like all their engineers knew this was a bad idea and everyone else seemed to think it was okay! The problem for me was how a company like this couldn't see that this would happen and went along with it, I held Git…

Not to mention the fact that the CFO didn't want to even allow opt-out under any circumstances.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#108

Post by imglorp » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 9:55 PM UTC

stiray wrote: post #38

jbk wrote: post #27

We received an apology email at the same time, well written, explaining what they did wrong, apologizing, promising to do a post-mortem, promising to not send to 3rd party trackers, and saying they did a mistake and waiting for feedbacks on the issue tracker. And with very little BS in the mail. Such level of transparency, of apologizing and clarity, especially written at the first person "I am truly sorry." is very…

What should really be praised... Without further, congratulations to everyone protesting against this gitlab move. This is something that should be done years back when google started with its tracking, same with facebook. This was the behaviour that should be seen each and every time some company wants to take advantage of its users. But to my sadness it is rarely seen. So once again congratulations to each and ever…

It's a tiny SaaS that depends on customer good will. A few hundred pings did the job because we matter.

If only this worked with giant corps. FB has around 2.4 billion MAU and a few nerd rants won't be noticed the next time they screw the user and a handful complain.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#109

Post by Vinnl » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 9:55 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #77

tyre wrote: post #58

The reaction to this whole saga has been insane. Chill out people. They fucked up, users gave feedback, they listened. This isn't some corporate conspiracy, some grand ethical dilemma with an evil company on one side and some white knight hackers on the other. Let's imagine for a second that they are people trying to do the right thing, with years of history doing the best they can. They wanted to measure usage to ma…

> The reaction to this whole saga has been insane. Chill out people. I very much disagree. I think the outcry was warranted, and right now I see GitLab doing the right thing (and, obviously, the outcry was a huge reason for that). Changing plans in the harsh light of public condemnation isn't easy, and for that I very much commend GitLab. As someone who was very much against the previously announced change, though (…

It doesn't seem to me that GP disagrees with that. They're not telling people to chill out in the sense that they should have voiced their concerns about the feature; it's about the outcry, about the black-and-white, evil-vs-good type of discourse that was happening in response to it.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#110

Post by EpicEng » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 9:56 PM UTC

function_seven wrote: post #74

falcor84 wrote: post #35

Could someone here please explain to me why Gitlab's product managers would be so interested in client-side analytics in the first place? From my familiarity with their service, almost every operation requires an ajax call, or a full page refresh. Is there really that much value for the product managers in these additional analytics?

Wasn't this proposal to add the client-side tracking to their hosted on-premises product? They don't have any visibility in how those instances are being used, and wanted to use the telemetry to get that. (Not understanding that often, the entire point of choosing to host your own instance is to avoid this in the first place)

No, it was for everyone. They initially conceded not to add it to their enterprise versions (post-backlash), but the intent was always to add it for the rest of us.