I have a funny story: I went to go to a notion doc and just intuitively pressed command-O in the app to open the notion doc I wanted. Of course that command doesn’t open notion docs—what that does is turn on audio transcription. So two hours later, I realize I’ve transcribed at the bottom of our team overview page what read like the diary of a madman from fragments of conversation I was having with my wife and dog. I…
Did it transcribe the dog? How long until we get a LLM that can translate dog barks...
Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network
111–120 of 175 posts
Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network
#112A reminder that Notion still operates under the .so TLD [1]
Why should you entrust them with your private notes and data?
Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Make it opt-in and this would be not an issue.
Notion doesn't like making things opt-in. A feature that's opt-in will get like 1% of the use of a feature that's opt-out. A happier middle ground would be to enable by default and show a "I don't like this, pls turn it off" button the first few times. EDIT: shouldn't single out any specific role here. We think opt-out, enable-by-default makes a feature have far greater total utility. But we could do more to provide…
> Our PMs don't like making things opt-in.
Thank god the web browser was developed in an era where PMs weren't stack-ranked on rubrics like "feature engagement". Imagine a world where every website was granted access to your filesystem, webcam, microphone, and geolocation by default so that PMs could report back on how many websites were making use of those browser APIs.
Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the explanation. I was about to install Notion Desktop today. I Won’t install it.
Why? I don't understand the objection to this. If the app was sending off any data to Notion without consent, that would obviously be a privacy issue, but why is it a problem for a desktop app to simply check if your mic is being used and offer to record?
This could be a good feature in open source software packaged by Debian and whose build is reproducible.
People being angry here shows how they distrust software they use and distrusting always online software causes fear and stress.
The best these people can do is relying on free software distributed in a sane way because that's what can help trust software, and, in a professional setting, to push their companies or their providers towards free software as well, and demand guarantees that their privacy is respected.
These matters are not theoretical and this discussion is a witness of this.
If Notion wants to be trusted, they should go open source. I see Notion people are here. Do it! Stop doing closed source software! That doesn't bring anything worth and see what badness it brings. Your value is elsewhere. It's in you expertise, your vision and how well you do things.
I work for an open source competitor (or at least in the neighborhood) and that works out well for us and has been for 20 years.
The day you open source your desktop client, you'll be able to show us the code and show that you indeed don't send audio records or related logs to your headquarters. We won't have to reverse engineer, sandbox just to be sure, and hope for the best.
Knowledge management software shouldn't hide knowledge.
Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network
#115361 points within 5 hours, 112 comments but off the frontpage. Why @dang?
Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Notion doesn't like making things opt-in. A feature that's opt-in will get like 1% of the use of a feature that's opt-out. A happier middle ground would be to enable by default and show a "I don't like this, pls turn it off" button the first few times. EDIT: shouldn't single out any specific role here. We think opt-out, enable-by-default makes a feature have far greater total utility. But we could do more to provide…
Your new feature is privacy invading. It's none of your business to detect if someones mic is on unless they invite you to do that. What is so hard about that? > Our PMs don't like making things opt-in. Lamest excuse ever. I wouldn't be surprised if you phoned back home about that mic activation - do you? I recently joined an org where Notion is in use - I will actively lobby them to not install the desktop app, at a…
What exactly is the privacy issue with detecting when a process begins using the microphone?
Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
My Notion install (macOS) asked to discover devices on my network. I'm assuming this permission is related to "monitoring network traffic".
No, that’s the new "Local Network" prompt which started appearing since macOS 15. Any app that opens a multicast/broadcast socket (mDNS, SSDP, WebRTC ICE, etc.) now has to ask. Electron apps (including Notion) do this by default, so you see this dialog.
> Electron apps (including Notion) do this by default
Feels like a bad default, it teaches user to ignore and say yes.
Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
I admit I haven’t been in any of the mustash twirling meetings. They probably happen, but I have also been in the room with engineers and PMs discussing solving problems with analytics attribution to user.
Given the structure of hierarchical orgs, both can (and likely are) true. Moustache-twirler A: We've identified these metrics that correlate with increased shareholder value Moustache-twirler B: But what do those metrics say about user privacy? (both laugh. This is very funny) MT A: no but really, fire any PMs that don't make these go up and let the survivors figure out why MT B: sounds great. See you at golf this we…
It's probably more telling how you had to invent the cartoonishly evil MTA and MTB, a bootlicker PM, and an honest (but maybe just slightly clueless) engineer.
Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network
#119I’ve come to hate Notion with passion because of its abysmal performance, but I still pay for it for my small business. My non-technical employees use it as a database for clients, tasks, payments etc. I tried to research replacements several times, and still haven’t found anything good. Sometimes I wonder if I should build my own.
> I wonder if I should build my own.
Please consider improving one of the existing open source solutions before doing this: XWiki, Nextcloud, wiki.js...
There's advanced stuff that already exists and we could use some cooperation to get better instead of another competitor in a crowded space.
(I work for XWiki SAS - you can also pay them to build what's missing for you)
Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Notion doesn't like making things opt-in. A feature that's opt-in will get like 1% of the use of a feature that's opt-out. A happier middle ground would be to enable by default and show a "I don't like this, pls turn it off" button the first few times. EDIT: shouldn't single out any specific role here. We think opt-out, enable-by-default makes a feature have far greater total utility. But we could do more to provide…
>Our PMs don't like making things opt-in Then refuse implementing it. Have some dignity for God's sake.
While I personally wish that there were more people who had the ability to make such decisions, and exercised that ability, I think that this is a hostile response to someone who didn't have to spend the time to come on HN and describe the situation to the best of their ability. Calling people undignified because they, or their company, isn't perfect is just going to close down channels of communication.