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GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

cli.github.com

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Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#341

Post by mort96 »

zerkten wrote: post #328
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.

The reality is that most product leaders only care about the feedback that has visible consequences. If users aren't performing some action like quitting the app that shows in the telemetry, then they aren't going to pay attention. They'd probably call the issue you see a "craft" issue. Some PM is likely raising it. What happens is that leaders in big companies want perspectives based on data. You can go in with issu…

These kinds of issues cause a negative feeling towards the product in the user. They keep using the product even after having seen a badly auto translated review from a language they speak or all these other things, but they now have a little bit more resentment towards the product. It makes them a bit more likely, over time, to switch to a competitor. Maybe they vent to a friend a month later and the friend suggests giving Apple Maps a try.

How do the metrics you speak of capture these subtle, delayed effects?

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#342

Post by mort96 »

selcuka wrote: post #318
Brian_K_White wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ground truth that I never click on Stargate on Netflix is completely at odds with the actual truth that I love Stargate and want more of it and things like it. What the ground truth usage data is completely ignorant of is that Netflix's copy is a crappy blurry transfer, and so I got dvds instead.

Sure, but Netflix is not interested in whether you love Stargate or not. Telemetry says that you never click it, so it's ok to remove it from their catalogue (which is correct). Now, they could've done a better job by increasing the quality, but that's a further (and costly) optimisation.

Netflix should be very interested in a fact like "Netflix has show X, but Netflix subscribers who love show X choose to watch it someplace else due to issues with Netflix".

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#343

Post by KronisLV »

skydhash wrote: post #312
KronisLV wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not conduct a survey? Large amounts of time before getting feedback, low percentage of people responding, not an accurate sample of all users (you will get signal from the loudest ones) and inaccurate data (biases in perception) instead of measurable reality. Not useless, but not a full replacement for telemetry. > If it's a customer, why not reach directly to him? Layers of indirection (and also the slowness o…

> Large amounts of time before getting feedback […]inaccurate data (biases in perception) instead of measurable reality. I think perception is more valuable because that is the only way of measuring frustration with the UX of the software. Something may be used a lot, but is painful to everyone. > You might not control the processes and approvals needed to do that in a non-startup environment In such environment, it’…

Very reasonable arguments!

> As a user, I essentially want my software to stay the same as long as possible. If I really need a new feature or am struggling with a bug, that’s when I contact the developers.

I largely agree and think that if the world had more users like you, it would be a better place, with more stable software. Unfortunately, in any industry with competing solutions, your users probably won't go through all that trouble and will just pick another product, alongside companies having all sorts of incentives to ship stuff (sometimes the deadlines being made up) and therefore needing to make informed decisions about what to build and what to maintain ASAP. I think we'll get features nobody asked for, telemetry or no telemetry. As for everything else, it depends.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#344

Post by DrScientist »

nkrisc wrote: post #119
DrScientist wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If what they want isn’t in your app, they can’t do it and it won’t show up in your data. Excellent point. > but if it’s not entirely opt-in, I think it is effectively spying no matter what you’re collecting, varying only along a dimension of invasiveness. Every web page visit is logged on the http server, and that's been the default since the mid 1990's. Is that spying?

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.

But it's just tracking something the server was asked to do - I'd say it's legitimate logging.

If you buy something at the supermarket, the supermarket keeps a record of the transaction - it's part of the process.

However if you try and link that to entities and build a pattern behaviour across multiple websites then I think you stray into spying.

Also if the tin of beans I bought at the supermarket records audio at home and uploads to the cloud - that's spying.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#346

Post by hulitu »

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…

> Why we collect telemetry ...our team needs visibility into how features are being used in practice.

This was Microsoft's mantra, while bugs were not fixed for months.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#348

Post by ButlerianJihad »

yamajun93 wrote: post #347

The distinction between anonymous and pseudoanonymous matters a lot in practice, even with a unique machine ID hash, there are patterns can still identify users across sessions. Would be good to see a clearer breakdown of whats collected and how it is anonymized.

the distinction is that the former is a real word, and the latter is a nonexistent word with no meaning. Are you an LLM?

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#349

Post by cindyllm »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #348
yamajun93 wrote: post #347

The distinction between anonymous and pseudoanonymous matters a lot in practice, even with a unique machine ID hash, there are patterns can still identify users across sessions. Would be good to see a clearer breakdown of whats collected and how it is anonymized.

the distinction is that the former is a real word, and the latter is a nonexistent word with no meaning. Are you an LLM?

[dead]

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#350

Post by yamajun93 »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #348
yamajun93 wrote: post #347

The distinction between anonymous and pseudoanonymous matters a lot in practice, even with a unique machine ID hash, there are patterns can still identify users across sessions. Would be good to see a clearer breakdown of whats collected and how it is anonymized.

the distinction is that the former is a real word, and the latter is a nonexistent word with no meaning. Are you an LLM?

How come pseudoanonymous does not exist? There are definitely some data that can trace the user without factual data https://www.ru.nl/en/staff/researchers/research-data/persona...

And well, if I'm an LLM, I'm not, but nowadays that's hard to demonstrate, isn't it?

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