Minecraft to add telemetry • Hacker News Board

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#121

Post by fomine3 » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 4:35 AM UTC

ginko wrote: post #82

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.

> Eh Minecraft is a video game, I just don't see the privacy risk with "typical" Windows-level telemetry happening there. But then Minecraft is a video game. Why do they need to spy on their customers?

Spy is not the purpose for telemetry in most cases.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#122

Post by sneak » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 6:02 AM UTC

drusepth wrote: post #58

sneak wrote: post #10

Are there any products whatsoever that come out of Microsoft that don't contain spyware?

It's not productive to be hyperbolic or reductive. There's a huge difference between telemetry and spyware, especially in this context.

When software transmits usage off device silently without consent from the user, in ways that benefit a remote party and do not benefit the user: that's spyware.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#123

Post by TeMPOraL » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 7:17 AM UTC

philliphaydon wrote: post #119

TeMPOraL wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows went downhill fast since introduction of telemetry.

Windows 10 is better than any previous version of Windows. So how did it go downhill?

User experience. Windows 10 was an upgrade over 8, which was a huge downgrade over 7. Not only did telemetry not help Microsoft improve the UX of their OS after Windows 7, in Windows 10 it's been getting worse with each update, and Windows 11 is slated to be a disaster.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#124

Post by tinus_hn » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 7:34 AM UTC

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.

Typical telemetry could well consist of ‘what processes is the user running’, ‘what kind of hardware do they have’, ‘where is the user’ and ‘what is their data that can be matched to their advertising identifiers’. Which is the typical data that can be monetized.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#125

Post by philliphaydon » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 1:08 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #123

philliphaydon wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 is better than any previous version of Windows. So how did it go downhill?

User experience. Windows 10 was an upgrade over 8, which was a huge downgrade over 7. Not only did telemetry not help Microsoft improve the UX of their OS after Windows 7, in Windows 10 it's been getting worse with each update, and Windows 11 is slated to be a disaster.

Windows 10 was an upgrade over 7. Windows 10 UX improved over 7.

This sounds more like 'MS bad, must hate MS at all costs' then actual legitimate complaints.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#126

Post by pseudalopex » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #118

pseudalopex wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tal…

The impact of missing important personal news isn't quantifiable in practice. Different people want different things from the platform too. And Facebook can't put everything people care about into the equation as long as the real goal remains getting them to look at more ads.