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Minecraft to add telemetry

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Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#111

Post by pseudalopex »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #81
slg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At some point we have to accept that this data actually helps them fix real issues too It is strange that this community of all communities has such a resistance to this idea. Software developers should know better than anyone how difficult it is to identify and fix vague software problems without having specific details about the problem. Yes, there is a negotiation between the value of telemetry and privacy and of…

There are at least two distinct issues here this community is concerned about: 1. Telemetry is unethical if the users didn't provide informed consent (opt-in) for it. It's not just a theoretical point - anyone who's worked in tech sector for a while should know most companies cannot be trusted to behave ethically (especially if they took VC funding). 2. There's a certain dysfunction/antipattern that's popular in tech…

> Telemetry is unethical if the users didn't provide informed consent (opt-in) for it.

And if the only way to opt out is not use the product. Or stop using it particularly.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#112

Post by rnd0 »

belval wrote: post #7

Eh Minecraft is a video game, I just don't see the privacy risk with "typical" Windows-level telemetry happening there. At some point we have to accept that this data actually helps them fix real issues too, they're not monetizing their players directly with it.

ha ha ha I came here to troll -or at least point out tongue-in-cheek the same thing.

But seriously though, it's not on the same level as, say -visual studio code sending back telemetry which includes potentially secret code or anything. Or Defenders willy-nilly sending "samples" back to the mothership for analysis.

I sincerely don't mind it if a game sends this info back, I think it's actually a good use of Telemetry.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#113

Post by delroth »

skeaker wrote: post #100
delroth wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We introduced some opt-in telemetry in dolphin-emu.org several years ago. I remember several times we discovered things we would likely have completely missed otherwise: - We found out by looking at the distribution of software version that we had a strong holdout on one specific revision. It turns out we had a regression in a niche feature which was very important to a sub-community of our users, and users were basi…

This is a fascinating answer that has persuaded me to your side. I recall opting out of Dolphin telemetry because I simply couldn't be bothered to check what would be sent, but seeing not only examples of what data is sent but also how it's used in such a positive way will definitely have me turning the telemetry on next time I go to use it.

We have a privacy policy which describes what we collect in a bit more details, see https://dolphin-emu.org/docs/privacy/

https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/blob/master/Source/Co... is the actual code which collects most of the information. We do multiple things to avoid being able to track user activity too much -- for example, while every instance of Dolphin has a unique ID so we can do things like unique counts, events that happen within a play session are associated to truncated_hash(unique ID + game ID) and not directly with the unique ID. This means that we can only correlate events from the same user playing the same game, but not* two events from one user playing different games.

* Our implementation is a bit weak given that the set of all gameids is small and enumerable. We could probably do better there.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#114

Post by pseudalopex »

the-dude wrote: post #39
littlestymaar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At some point we have to accept that this data actually helps them fix real issues too, they're not monetizing their players directly with it. What do we know about that? Microsoft have long lost the benefit of doubt with their shady data collection practices.

What kind of evil things have they done with the data? Genuinely curious.

Collected it without consent.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#115

Post by geoduck14 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #81
slg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At some point we have to accept that this data actually helps them fix real issues too It is strange that this community of all communities has such a resistance to this idea. Software developers should know better than anyone how difficult it is to identify and fix vague software problems without having specific details about the problem. Yes, there is a negotiation between the value of telemetry and privacy and of…

There are at least two distinct issues here this community is concerned about: 1. Telemetry is unethical if the users didn't provide informed consent (opt-in) for it. It's not just a theoretical point - anyone who's worked in tech sector for a while should know most companies cannot be trusted to behave ethically (especially if they took VC funding). 2. There's a certain dysfunction/antipattern that's popular in tech…

>There's a certain dysfunction/antipattern that's popular in tech sector, called being a "data-driven company".

This is sarcasm. Right?

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#116

Post by pseudalopex »

conradev wrote: post #108
hulitu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I totally agree. Telemetry is invaluable to making software better. Can you give 1(one) example of a program which was improved by using telemetry ? And no, trashing the UI in the name of change or modernism does not count. Thank you.

The word “telemetry” can mean a lot more than “detailed usage data to inform design decisions” I’m talking extremely basic things, like, what are the most popular crashes in the app? Which did I introduce in the most recent version? Why is there an increase in end to end latency in fetching data from the server? Stuff that would fall under “bug fixes and improvements” that you would likely not notice.

The word telemetry became common when it became more than optional crash reports and update checks.

The last example sounds detailed enough. And some privacy considerations are moot when the app is a client for your server.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#117

Post by pseudalopex »

im3w1l wrote: post #99
cylon13 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse in a really insidious way too. Optimizing based on engagement for instance could be maxxing the amount of time people spend using a service, while minning unseen variables people care about like their emotional state while engaged. It’s sort of an inevitable thing that optimizers do to things they don’t measure, and it’s an extremely difficult problem to put everything people care about into the equation. Like…

> But last week, Facebook revealed that it had manipulated the news feeds of over half a million randomly selected users to change the number of positive and negative posts they saw. It was part of a psychological study to examine how emotions can be spread on social media. Doing such a study would be the first step in optimizing for a good emotional state. But it (quite understandably) led to an outcry which stopped…

Sentiment analysis will tell you people have positive feelings about cute animals and negative feelings about friends getting cancer. An extremely difficult problem to put everything people care about into the equation.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#118

Post by im3w1l »

pseudalopex wrote: post #117
im3w1l wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But last week, Facebook revealed that it had manipulated the news feeds of over half a million randomly selected users to change the number of positive and negative posts they saw. It was part of a psychological study to examine how emotions can be spread on social media. Doing such a study would be the first step in optimizing for a good emotional state. But it (quite understandably) led to an outcry which stopped…

Sentiment analysis will tell you people have positive feelings about cute animals and negative feelings about friends getting cancer. An extremely difficult problem to put everything people care about into the equation.

I think it's way more complicated than that. Like you could measure how much better someone feels after seeing cute animals. Short term happiness isn't the only goal and needs to be traded of with other things, both as informing the user about what their friends are doing (you probably do want to know if they get cancer even if learning about it is sad), trending topics so you are clued into what everyone else is talking about, and of course ads. Learning more about the numbers allows better tradeoffs.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#120

Post by philliphaydon »

ginko wrote: post #84
philliphaydon wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows.

Windows has been getting worse for the last 3 or so generations of Windows.

Windows 10 is better than any previous version. I mean my Windows laptop is far more stable than any distro I run on my desktop and work laptop.
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