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Telemetry

storybook.js.org

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Re: Telemetry

#21

Post by jstummbillig »

ptx wrote: post #10
kioleanu wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the title to be pretty accurate and I am by no means a native speaker

"Opt" means to "To choose; select" [0]. If you opt in (i.e. make the choice to go in), that implies that you were not already in. In other words, it implies that the default (when you don't make a choice) is "out", i.e. disabled. "Opt-in" and "opt-out" describe what the default is, so adding "by default" doesn't make any sense. If you can choose to go in ("opt-in"), then the default is "out". If you can choose to go…

Opt in by participation is implicit all the time. If I play soccer I am not "opting in" to get hit by a ball, but rest assured, it is going to happen.

There are topics dear to every subgroups heart, that the members will claim, surely must be exempt from this. As far as I can tell, the exemptions are mostly arbitrary.

Re: Telemetry

#22

Post by tilne »

have_faith wrote: post #19
tilne wrote: post #17

I don’t mean to dismiss the importance of users owning and controlling their data, but isn’t telemetry a valid tool for software projects to gain valuable insights into how their product is being used and thus how to improve it? Yes, it can be (and, probably frequently is) abused. Yes there should be a way to opt-out of telemetry if a user desires for whatever reason. But I can’t help but feel this is posted in the s…

> there should be a way to opt-out of telemetry There should be a way to opt-in. Anything else is egregious.

That’s fair. If the telemetry really is helpful to building a better product it should be an easy case to make to users.

Re: Telemetry

#23

Post by Narishma »

iamacyborg wrote: post #5
ricardobeat wrote: post #2

Submission title is a bit confusing: “opt-in” means you have to opt-in, that is, the default is “off”. The sentence “opt-in by default” is the opposite of what I assume the poster meant. Storybook’s telemetry is opt-out as stated at the top of the page. This also looks like something that should be posted as a text submission with commentary - simply editorializing a link + title is discouraged in HN.

It’d be clearer if they just said “opted-in by default”.

In other words, opt-out. Which just proves op's point. The title is at best misleading.

Re: Telemetry

#24

Post by tilne »

pydry wrote: post #20
tilne wrote: post #17

I don’t mean to dismiss the importance of users owning and controlling their data, but isn’t telemetry a valid tool for software projects to gain valuable insights into how their product is being used and thus how to improve it? Yes, it can be (and, probably frequently is) abused. Yes there should be a way to opt-out of telemetry if a user desires for whatever reason. But I can’t help but feel this is posted in the s…

I think its value is considerably overstated from the use I've seen made of it. Executives absolutely love it though. It makes them feel scientific in their decision making and gives them ass-cover when justifying their decisions. I really think that the ability to collect opt in opinions at strategic points in the app is vastly more effective, not to mention less creepy and invasive.

Absolutely agreed with the second point. I’m not sure I agree with the first though. At least not that that’s the main reason telemetry is desired from product teams. (Though obviously telemetry does provide fodder for that type of stupidity for sure.)

To give a concrete example from my past experience, I used to work on a product that essentially knitted a bunch of services from a major cloud provider together to provide a user experience comparable to traditional HPC clusters. We never included telemetry, but we always wanted to in order to gain insight into how many compute queues people were using, how many VMs were in each of them, how many jobs were run over a certain amount of time, how many VMs those jobs ran across, etc. The sole reason we wanted this information was because the configuration exposed for this product was extremely complex, and we wanted to put layers on top of it to more easily enable the most common use cases.

Is this not a legitimate reason to collect telemetry? Is the concern that, even though the dev team wanted the data for legitimate purposes, eventually bad actors will use the capability to start collecting data for more nefarious purposes?

Edit: I see you amended the original to include a statement about opt-in opinions. What do you mean by that?

Re: Telemetry

#25

Post by Y_Y »

Keirmot wrote: post #9
K0balt wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely can be interpreted to mean that the telemetry is opt-in, or that it is opt-out. (“Opt-in by default” is a double positive, a less common sibling of the dreaded double negative)

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t a double positive just a positive while a double negative is a positive? Opt-in by default: you are in You can’t not select opt-in: you are in

Yeah right

Re: Telemetry

#26

Post by Y_Y »

larschdk wrote: post #12
iamacyborg wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’d be clearer if they just said “opted-in by default”.

No. To "opt" literally means "to make a choice". If the choice has been made for you, you are not "opted-in", you are in.

Maybe you could Newspeakify it into "co-opt-in"

Re: Telemetry

#27

Post by [deleted] »

ekanes wrote: post #15
ricardobeat wrote: post #2

Submission title is a bit confusing: “opt-in” means you have to opt-in, that is, the default is “off”. The sentence “opt-in by default” is the opposite of what I assume the poster meant. Storybook’s telemetry is opt-out as stated at the top of the page. This also looks like something that should be posted as a text submission with commentary - simply editorializing a link + title is discouraged in HN.

Sorta. The policy is "opt out" but you are "opted in" by default.

[deleted]

Re: Telemetry

#28

Post by Obscurity4340 »

Y_Y wrote: post #26
larschdk wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. To "opt" literally means "to make a choice". If the choice has been made for you, you are not "opted-in", you are in.

Maybe you could Newspeakify it into "co-opt-in"

No. Opt-out means you have to affirmatively make the choice to not be tracked or whtatever.

Re: Telemetry

#29

Post by sf_rob »

tilne wrote: post #22
have_faith wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there should be a way to opt-out of telemetry There should be a way to opt-in. Anything else is egregious.

That’s fair. If the telemetry really is helpful to building a better product it should be an easy case to make to users.

If Telemetry is valuable, it's largely valuable to the degree it's representative. Opt-in sacrifices this and even a well optimized opt-in process won't prevent that.

This is not to say that Telemetry should be opt-out, just that you place other justifications ahead of the usefulness of Telemetry (which is fine).

Re: Telemetry

#30

Post by Timon3 »

ekanes wrote: post #15
ricardobeat wrote: post #2

Submission title is a bit confusing: “opt-in” means you have to opt-in, that is, the default is “off”. The sentence “opt-in by default” is the opposite of what I assume the poster meant. Storybook’s telemetry is opt-out as stated at the top of the page. This also looks like something that should be posted as a text submission with commentary - simply editorializing a link + title is discouraged in HN.

Sorta. The policy is "opt out" but you are "opted in" by default.

You cannot be "opted in" by someone else. Only you can opt-in or opt-out.
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