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GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

cli.github.com

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Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#161

Post by Sytten »

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…

You are inferring your own perception based on my comment, no need to be an asshole here. Like I said elsewhere we do both and they serve different purpose. We also make is very clear and easy to disable in the onboarding. I hope you try to build a business sometimes and open up your perspectives that maybe just maybe you don't have all the answers.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#162

Post by acedTrex »

embedding-shape wrote: post #130
acedTrex wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> even in exchange for it taking longer time.

I think in terms of corporate teams this is the issue a lot of times, people just are not on the team long enough to build that knowledge. Between the constant reorgs, these days layoffs and other churn the no one puts in the years required to gain the implicit knowledge. So orgs reach for the "tenure independent knowledge base.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#163

Post by mbreese »

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?

This isn’t that surprising to me. Having usage data is important for many purposes. Even Debian has an opt-in usage tracker (popcon) to see wha packages they should keep supporting.

What I’m curious about is why this is included in the CLI. Why aren’t they measuring this at the API level where they wouldn’t need to disclose it to anyone? What is done locally with the GH CLI tool that doesn’t interact with the GitHub servers?

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#164

Post by nkrisc »

vlovich123 wrote: post #131
nkrisc wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In principle, yes, I believe it is a form of spying. Not particularly invasive nor harmful, but spying nonetheless. Logging every page visited is not a technical requirement of serving the requested resource.

> Logging every page visited is not a technical requirement of serving the requested resource. How will you know which page is having problems being served or is having performance problems?

You won’t, but that’s not what was asked.

Logging the requested resource is not a technical requirement of serving that resource.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#165

Post by minraws »

Fuck Github man, Fuck em'. I mean what even is the point. You lost the AI whatever it was, build a good product and features for developers like you tried to once.

And less social media shit, maybe adding better LFS alternative similar to huggingface and stuff.

Git isn't the popular choice in game dev because of this assets in tree hosting nonsense, why haven't we fixed it yet.

Similarly many edge cases, also finally they built stacked prs but man does it feel a under baked, and what it's like 2+ years late.

Please just improve Github, make me feel like I will be missing out if I am not on Github because of the features not because I have to be because of work.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#166

Post by _heimdall »

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…

Anonymous telemetry isn't necessarily spying, though "pseudoanonymous" sounds about as well protected as distinguishing between free speech and "absolutism." Github also wouldn't be tracking git use here, but the `gh` CLI that you don't need to install.

All that said, having been in plenty of corporate environments I would be surprised if the data is anonymized and wouldn't be surprised if the primary motivator boils down to something like internal OKRs and politics.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#167

Post by reaperducer »

Sytten wrote: post #71
reaperducer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why corporate development teams always feel the need to spy on their users? Because they're too shy, lazy, or socially awkward to actually ask their users questions. They cover up this anxiety and laziness by saying that it costs too much, or it doesn't "scale." Both of these are false. My company requires me to actually speak to the people who use the web sites I build; usually about every ten to twelve…

Respectfully I think your argument defeats itself. If you can only speak to your users once every 10-12 months it means your process doesn't scale by definition. Good analytics (not useless vanity metrics) should allow you to spot a problem days after it was launched not wait 3 quarters for a user to air their grievances.

You're describing a different problem.

Bug fixing absolutely gets taken care of immediately, and our customers are very active in telling us about them through these strange new feedback mechanisms known as "e-mail" and "a telephone."

But we don't spy on people to fix bugs.

Nothing that the big tech "telemetry" is doing is about bug fixes. In the article we're all talking about the spying that Microsoft proposes isn't to fix bugs. Re-read what it wrote. It's all for things that may not appear for weeks, months, or years.

And to think that a trillion-dollar company like Microsoft can't figure out how, or doesn't have the money available to scale real customer feedback is just sticking your head in the sand and making excuses.

Microsoft doesn't need people to apologize for its failure.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#168

Post by [deleted] »

merlindru wrote: post #79
throwaway27448 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty ok with the github cli tool team flying blind. The tool isn't exactly a necessary part of any workflow. You don't need telemetry to glean that

that's akin to saying "i do not need their product therefore i don't care"... so what's your point? someone may have made it part of their workflow!

[deleted]

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#170

Post by sdevonoes »

johnfn wrote: post #103
embedding-shape wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're only flying blind if you make decisions not looking and thinking. Analytics isn't the only way to figure out "what your users actually care about", you can also try the old school way, commonly referred to as "Talking with people", then after taking notes, you think about it, maybe discuss with others. Don't take what people say at face value, but think about it together with your knowledge and experience, and…

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. Sometimes HN drives me crazy. From this thread you’d think telemetry is scre…

Telemetry is the previous obvious step to surveillance. Not the telemetry you implement in your own small bus, but at the scale of microsoft, apple, meta… yeah
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