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GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

cli.github.com

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Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#301

Post by dpark »

groby_b wrote: post #226
junon wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. If I'm forced to use a feature I hate because it's the only way to do something, the "ground truth" reflects that I like that feature. It doesn't tell the whole story.

Most metrics teams are reasonably competent and are aware of that. Excepting "growth hackers" I haven't been in a single metrics discussion where we didn't talk about what we're actually measuring, if it reflects what we want to measure, and how to counterbalance metrics sufficiently so we don't build yet another growthhacking disaster. Doesn't mean that metrics are perfect - they are in fact aggravatingly imprecise…

Eh, there are a lot of cases where teams A/B test their way into a product that sucks.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#302

Post by Avamander »

kelvinjps10 wrote: post #281
xigoi wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many products would be much better if they listened to what people are saying on public forums instead of using telemetry. For example, Google Maps has a longstanding bug where it auto-translates all reviews even if they are in a language you speak. If Google cared about user feedback, they could’ve easily fixed it, but no amount of telemetry will tell them this.

I hate this feature. Google knows the languages I speak because I added them in my account, even with all the tracking they obviously know, but they keep messing it up in all their products, Google Search, YouTube (they add machine audio translations to videos and translate the thumbnails).

They even do it on Google Play. No, I don't want to buy books in a language I can't read, suggest me ones that I can. It's been like that for a decade now I think. I guess it doesn't make them lose a noticeable amount of money.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#304

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #142
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…

Asking users isn't a substitute for usage data. Usage data is the ground truth. Soliciting user feedback is invasive, and it's only possible for some questions. The HN response to this is "too bad" but it's a thought-terminating response.

> Asking users isn't a substitute for usage data.

Sure.

> Usage data is the ground truth.

Absolutely not. That's how you get "we buried this feature and nobody used it, so clearly nobody wants it".

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#305

Post by SchemaLoad »

embedding-shape wrote: post #65
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.

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…

What people say, and what people do are different things. Especially when the people who agree to talk to you aren't representative of the whole user base.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#306

Post by SchemaLoad »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #153
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.

The totality of Microsoft's products is proof that this is false. If telemetry and analytics actually mattered for usability, every product Microsoft puts out wouldn't be good instead of garbage.

There are far too many factors to assign the quality of microsoft's products to telemetry.

Having the data doesn't mean you will act on it. And doesn't mean microsofts interests are aligned with the users.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#307

Post by johnfn »

6r17 wrote: post #249
johnfn wrote: post #103

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

"You’d think telemetry is screen recording your every move" - that's literally what tracing and telemetry is about. "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, al…

No, telemetry is not "literally" about screen recording. Telemetry is metrics. That is why they invented a new word for it rather than calling it "screen recording".

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#308

Post by rtpg »

tensegrist wrote: post #218
ryanshrott wrote: post #155

> you're going to have to opt out of a lot more than this one setting The opt-out situation for gh CLI telemetry is actually trickier than it sounds. gh runs in CI/CD pipelines and server environments where you may not want any outbound connections to github.com at all, not because of privacy but because of networking constraints. In those environments, the telemetry being on by default means your CI fails or your Ba…

> In those environments, the telemetry being on by default means your CI fails or your Bastion host can't reach GitHub at all. i'd be surprised if the inability to submit telemetry is a hard error that crashes the program

There are definitely slightly annoying variants of this of "ah the program does its job in 200ms but takes 5s to shutdown timing out trying to send telemetry data". Especially annoying on CLI programs.

I have been unpleasantly surprised by several programs outright crashing when not being able to send telemetry data consistently. Though this has usually been when the connection is a bit odd and it is able to send through _some_ stuff but then crashes when it fails later.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#309

Post by SchemaLoad »

TheDong wrote: post #57
gordonhart wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The impact of a few more network calls and decreased privacy is basically never felt by users beyond this abstract "they're spying on me" realization. The impact of this telemetry for a product development team is material. Not saying that telemetry more valuable than privacy, just that it's a straightforward decision for a company to make when real benefits are only counterbalanced by abstract privacy concerns. This…

For most CLIs, I definitely feel extra network calls because they translate to real latency for commands that _should_ be quick. If I run "gh alias set foo bar", and that takes even a marginally perceptible amount of time, I'll feel like the tool I'm using is poorly built since a local alias obviously doesn't need network calls. I do see that `gh` is spawning a child to do sending in the background ( https://github.c…

If it's done in a background process then it won't impact the speed of the tool at all. When the choice is between getting data to help improve the tool at the cost of "bad manners" whatever that means, the choice is pretty easy.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#310

Post by caymanjim »

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…

The language used in statements like this always annoys me. "We want visibility", ok fine. "We need"...the hell you don't.
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