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Making Go telemetry opt-in is a mistake

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Re: Making Go telemetry opt-in is a mistake

#11

Post by str3wer »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #2

> For every kilobyte of Go code available on GitHub, GitLab, and other Git forges, there are unknowable megabytes of private Go code that will never see the light of day (or maybe they will if LAPSUS$ decides to make that company a target). > Without knowing what ports of Go are used, the Go team can’t make sure that the right time is spent on maintaining those ports. Am I being overly pragmatic if not selfish for th…

also why mentioning a group of kids that bought stolen employee credentials and got arrested for it?

Re: Making Go telemetry opt-in is a mistake

#13

Post by remus »

speedgoose wrote: post #8

Respecting the users wishes isn’t a mistake. For sure it may have a few digits less of accuracy in some dashboards but who cares. The consensus was that opt-in was the best solution, and thankfully Google went with the best solution.

> For sure it may have a few digits less of accuracy in some dashboards but who cares.

You could argue that it's ultimately the users who suffer. Telemetry helps guide development, so it's harder for developers to know what to focus their efforts on.

Re: Making Go telemetry opt-in is a mistake

#14

Post by jonhohle »

aatd86 wrote: post #4

They should simply allow for people to pick their default at installation. (so at download) Even better if the go tool were to have a `go update` with a `telemetry-off` flag or something. (and possibly a prompt to remind people otherwise they will complain again) Problem solved.

`telemetry-on` flag. Sending data to third parties should _never_ be implicit or the default. Every PM, marketer, and mid-level manager needs to be firmly reminded that this is grossly invasive, user-hostile, impolite, and creepy.

Without an explicit agreement, it could even run afoul of wiretapping laws (unresolved in courts, as far as I’m aware).

Re: Making Go telemetry opt-in is a mistake

#16

Post by speedgoose »

remus wrote: post #13
speedgoose wrote: post #8

Respecting the users wishes isn’t a mistake. For sure it may have a few digits less of accuracy in some dashboards but who cares. The consensus was that opt-in was the best solution, and thankfully Google went with the best solution.

> For sure it may have a few digits less of accuracy in some dashboards but who cares. You could argue that it's ultimately the users who suffer. Telemetry helps guide development, so it's harder for developers to know what to focus their efforts on.

But the users can still report issues.

And Golang also has the yearly survey that gives much more valuable inputs than telemetry could track IMHO.

Re: Making Go telemetry opt-in is a mistake

#17

Post by greatgib »

I think that the author has kind of a Stockholm syndrome.

"Users are liars, so let's spy them directly to know what we want to know".

It is mind blowing how, as an user/the target, you can support that.

Nothing is really anonymous and your anonymous data can say a lot about you.

Telemetry coming from this IP, so company x is using go. A pattern of data coming every 2 days, so their build nodes rebuild every 2 days. That kind of build pattern is there, so they are using the xxx crypto library...

And when they say, let's trust Google, I would propose to Google to accept the opposite:

Now they will transmit to the public telemetry of their internal systems: how many users, what do they do, how many users they block, for what reason, how many build nodes they have, how many commits, how long the go team is spending looking at telemetry reports, which website are the more visited by Google employees,...

And let's see if they will accept. It's for the good of the world, why they would refuse?

Re: Making Go telemetry opt-in is a mistake

#18

Post by Uvix »

pjc50 wrote: post #5

Reminded of a post I saw the other day referencing Clausewitz to say "if your ideal military strategy is politically unachievable, it's not the ideal strategy". If going for opt-out telemetry makes your customers hate you and you're forced to retreat under a hail of fire, going opt-in is not a mistake. There's also a philosophical problem in going too deep into "customers don't know what they want" and A/B testing ev…

In that scenario, not going opt-out is not a mistake. But going opt-in probably is a mistake, because the data will be useless, so it’s a waste of time to implement.

Re: Making Go telemetry opt-in is a mistake

#19

Post by hgsgm »

junon wrote: post #7
groestl wrote: post #6

> The problem of scrying into the unknowable People really need to accept that they can't and shouldn't have full introspection into everything they're ever interested in. Even if it's a thing they care about (like their own homepage or programming language). Sure it's nice to get feedback. Sure it's nice to know that somebody uses it. But putting a tracker on everything with the argument of "will help me provide a b…

The new owners of Audacity did this and then gaslit the community about it for weeks, despite constant, almost unanimous backlash.

It's right there in the name.

But the creators (someone trying to be "owners" of sowmth5 that is just a name, lol) has the foresight to make it free and open source, so we have Tencity, the original software with a new name.

Re: Making Go telemetry opt-in is a mistake

#20

Post by xena »

speedgoose wrote: post #16
remus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For sure it may have a few digits less of accuracy in some dashboards but who cares. You could argue that it's ultimately the users who suffer. Telemetry helps guide development, so it's harder for developers to know what to focus their efforts on.

But the users can still report issues. And Golang also has the yearly survey that gives much more valuable inputs than telemetry could track IMHO.

Assuming every Go user on the planet fills it out.
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