GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry • Hacker News Board

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#121

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 2:47 PM UTC

jubilanti wrote: post #118

Sytten wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to believe that it was not necessary until I started building my own startup. If you dont have analytics you are flying blind. You don't know what your users actually care about and how to optimize a successful user journey. The difference between what people tell you when asked directly and how they actually use your software is actually shocking.

Wow, it really is sad how literally unthinkable it is to you and so much of the industry that you could actually talk to your users and customers like human beings instead of just data points. And you know what happens when you reach out to talk to your customers like human beings instead of spying on them like animals? They like you more and they raise issues that your telemetry would never even think to measure. It…

[deleted]

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#122

Post by Forgeties79 » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 2:49 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #60

Forgeties79 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have details on what they’re collecting and how they’re using it/if they’re selling it to advertisers/etc, I’m happy to make a judgment. I’m not saying they don’t engage in any of those practices, I am specifically talking about the hardware survey.

> If you have details on what they’re collecting Well, you can start with everything a typical HTTP request and TCP connection comes with, surely they're already storing those things for "anti-fraud practices", wouldn't be far to imagine this data warehouse is used for analytics and product decisions as well.

>wouldn’t be far to imagine

I explicitly said I agree it’s a distinct possibility, but that’s not proof. If you have actual info on what they collect and how it’s used I can assess it. As it is we don’t know the extent or uses at all, we are speculating.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#123

Post by dietr1ch » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 2:49 PM UTC

a2128 wrote: post #14

Why we collect telemetry ...our team needs visibility into how features are being used in practice. We use this data to prioritize our work and evaluate whether features are meeting real user needs. I'm curious why corporate development teams always feel the need to spy on their users? Is it not sufficient to employ good engineering and design practices? Git has served us well for 20+ years without detailed analytics…

It's not the devs themselves, but the team/project/product management show that needs to pretend they are data driven, but then resort to the silliest metrics that are easy to measure.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#124

Post by vlovich123 » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 2:50 PM UTC

jubilanti wrote: post #118

Sytten wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to believe that it was not necessary until I started building my own startup. If you dont have analytics you are flying blind. You don't know what your users actually care about and how to optimize a successful user journey. The difference between what people tell you when asked directly and how they actually use your software is actually shocking.

Wow, it really is sad how literally unthinkable it is to you and so much of the industry that you could actually talk to your users and customers like human beings instead of just data points. And you know what happens when you reach out to talk to your customers like human beings instead of spying on them like animals? They like you more and they raise issues that your telemetry would never even think to measure. It…

I think you’re overlooking that they were talking about stated and revealed preferences, a well known economic challenge where what people say is important to them and what shows up in the data is a gap. Of course you talk to users and do relationship management. That doesn’t negate the need to understand revealed preferences.

In the OSS world this is not a huge deal. You get some community that’s underserved by the product (ie software package) and they fork, modify, or build something else. If it turned out to be valuable, then you get the old solution complemented or replaced. In the business world this is an existential threat to the business - you want to make sure your users aren’t better served by a competitor who’s focusing on your blindspot.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#125

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 2:50 PM UTC

consp wrote: post #113

dualvariable wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it not sufficient to employ good engineering and design practices? Git... Git has horrible design and ergonomics. It is an excellent example of engineers designing interfaces for engineers without a good feedback loop. Ironically, you just proved your point that engineers need to better understand how users are actually using their product, because their mental visualizations of how their product gets used is us…

Apparently I use git wrong since I do not feel this design and ergonomics issue.

[deleted]

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#126

Post by xpe » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 2:50 PM UTC

tornikeo wrote: post #95

Good for GitHub. All companies need this. Some use it to improve products, some use it for less commendable goals. I know HN crowd is allergic to telemetry but if you've ever developed a software as a service, telemetry is indispensable.

Thinking out loud: what are the best practices to vet a tools' telemetry details? The devil is in the details.

A quick summary of my Claude-assisted research at the Gist below. Top of mind is some kind of trusted intermediary service with a vested interest in striking a definable middle ground that is good enough for both sides (users and product-builders)

Gist: WIP 31 minutes in still cookin'

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#127

Post by trinsic2 » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 2:51 PM UTC

dale_glass wrote: post #48

a2128 wrote: post #14

Why we collect telemetry ...our team needs visibility into how features are being used in practice. We use this data to prioritize our work and evaluate whether features are meeting real user needs. I'm curious why corporate development teams always feel the need to spy on their users? Is it not sufficient to employ good engineering and design practices? Git has served us well for 20+ years without detailed analytics…

> I'm curious why corporate development teams always feel the need to spy on their users? Is it not sufficient to employ good engineering and design practices? No, because users have different needs and thoughts from the developers. And because sometimes it's hard to get good feedback from people. Maybe everyone loves the concept of feature X, but then never uses it in practice for some reason. Or a given feature has…

I think the big problem with Telemetry is that it's too much of a black box. There is 0 transparency on how that data it really used and we have a long history of large corporates using this data to build prediction products that track people by finger printing behavior though these signals. There is too much at stake right now around this topic for people to trust any implementation.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#128

Post by vlovich123 » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 2:52 PM UTC

lamasery wrote: post #104

lukevp wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was running a physical business and I wrote down each person’s name and credit card number and the exact time and order they placed, that would be pretty invasive and “spying”. If I write down how many units I sold of each item per day, and the volume of transactions by credit card vs cash, it’s anonymized and I don’t think this would generally be considered “spying”, just normal business metrics. How’s the latt…

Watching me use my computer in my house or office is spying. Aggregating request statistics server-side unless you're only generating those requests to spy on what I'm doing on my computer is more like the not-spying you're talking about.

The logical conclusion is you’re asking for no local products and everything to run server side. It’s kind of a ridiculous position that doesn’t change the spying being done other than it’s on the other side of a browser.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#129

Post by skeuomorphism » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 2:53 PM UTC

jubilanti wrote: post #118

Sytten wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to believe that it was not necessary until I started building my own startup. If you dont have analytics you are flying blind. You don't know what your users actually care about and how to optimize a successful user journey. The difference between what people tell you when asked directly and how they actually use your software is actually shocking.

Wow, it really is sad how literally unthinkable it is to you and so much of the industry that you could actually talk to your users and customers like human beings instead of just data points. And you know what happens when you reach out to talk to your customers like human beings instead of spying on them like animals? They like you more and they raise issues that your telemetry would never even think to measure. It…

Marketing came to the conclusion that people dont know what they actually want. They decided to lump in engineers and programmers as well, since they started abusing their goodwill.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#130

Post by embedding-shape » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 2:53 PM UTC

acedTrex wrote: post #114

embedding-shape wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, you can spend the weeks to months of expensive and time consuming work it takes to get a fuzzy, half accurate and biased picture of what your users workflows look like through user interviews and surveys. Or you can look at the analytics, which tell you everything you need to know immediately, always up to date, with perfect precision. Yes, admittedly, the first time you do these things, they're difficult, ha…

So if you don't want to spend the time doing that, or as is more accurate in corporate settings, the general turnover of the team is high enough that no one is around long enough to build that deep foundational product knowledge, and to be frank most people do not care enough. This is why telemetry happens, its faster, easier and more resilient to organizational turmoil.

> This is why telemetry happens, its faster, easier and more resilient to organizational turmoil.

I don't disagree with that, I was mainly talking about trying to deliver an experience that makes sense, is intuitive and as helpful and useful as possible, even in exchange for it taking longer time.

Of course this isn't applicable in every case, sometimes you need different tradeoffs, that's OK too. But that some favor quality over shorter implementation time shouldn't drive people crazy, it's just making different tradeoffs.