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GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

cli.github.com

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Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#351

Post by zerkten »

mort96 wrote: post #341
zerkten wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My point is that they don't capture the effects you describe - unless designed in. There is little motivation to do that though because they can track larger effects which are aligned with current leadership priorities. That's why I included the part about the PM that has recognized the problem.

I can guarantee you that the class of problem you describe has been discussed at the individual contributor level, so is known to some extent. Getting it from recognition to action is the problem. It is a huge lift to get some of these small things through the gauntlet to execution. Meanwhile, as you say, competitors with taste and attention to detail are building a better product.

This is very much a problem of large organizations. Those same PMs at a small company. If Google Maps was an independent company, the impediments would be fewer and priorities more aligned with building the best Google Maps.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#352

Post by embedding-shape »

paulddraper wrote: post #295
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…

> Sometimes HN drives me crazy. You can tell the difference between those who build businesses and those who simply use them.

I was gonna say it's a difference between producing something to make money, and producing something meant for people to like and perhaps love, but same thing :)

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#353

Post by feelamee »

throwaranay4933 wrote: post #197
lukewarm707 wrote: post #150

#Telemetry FUCK OFF export DOTNET_CLI_TELEMETRY_OPTOUT=1 export ASTRO_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1 export GATSBY_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1 export HOMEBREW_NO_ANALYTICS=1 export NEXT_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1 export DISABLE_ZAPIER_ANALYTICS=1 export TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1 export GH_TELEMETRY=false

Also: # Atlas export DISABLE_TELEMETRY=1 # CloudFlare export WRANGLER_SEND_METRICS=false export VERCEL_PLUGIN_TELEMETRY=off # AWS export SAM_CLI_TELEMETRY=0 export CDK_DISABLE_CLI_TELEMETRY=true # ??? export DO_NOT_TRACK=true

Also.. Easily opt-out from telemetry collection https://github.com/beatcracker/toptout (last commit 3ya)

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#354

Post by dualvariable »

skydhash wrote: post #216
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…

> Git has horrible design and ergonomics. People say this and never has written about the supposed failure of design. Git has a very good conceptual model, and then provides operations (aptly named when you know about the model) to manipulate it. Most people who complains about git only think of it as code storage (folder {v1,v2,...}) instead of version control.

I've written my own toy git implementation before, I know how the underlying design works.

You're assuming that I have trouble understanding and using git, when I actually have 16+ years of experience with it, and I can use it just fine.

It is horrible to try to teach to new people. Those operations sort of make sense one you already know how it all works, and can see how the coders wrote it. But that is backwards, since it actively makes it more difficult for neophytes to understand it. "It gets easy once you're an expert" isn't actually good design.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#355

Post by ryanmcbride »

phillipcarter wrote: post #250
ryanmcbride wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man if I had a nickle for every time a PM asked me to violate user privacy for the purposes of making a slide that will be shown to their boss for 2.5 seconds I'd probably make enough to actually retire someday.

There's obviously misuse and abuse in the world, but telemetry from production systems out in the wild is incredibly useful for all kinds of decision-making. It's silly to dismiss it outright.

Sure but I'm talking about actual privacy violations that have been pitched to me over my career I'm not calling all telemetry a privacy violation.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#356

Post by account42 »

Sytten wrote: post #61
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 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.

Bats are mostly blind and manage to fly just fine.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#357

Post by account42 »

graphememes wrote: post #240
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're never going to win this argument, most of the people who post here have never actually shipped a product themselves and only work on isolated features and others have to handle / manage all of this for them so they have no real understanding of what it takes to do it the other crowd that pretends otherwise are larping or only have some generic open source project that only a handful of people use or they only…

> You're never going to win this argument, most of the people who post here have never actually shipped a product themselves and only work on isolated features and others have to handle / manage all of this for them so they have no real understanding of what it takes to do it

Have you asked those users or did you conclude this from (likely unrelated) "telemetry" you have gathered?

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#358

Post by account42 »

PhoenixFlame101 wrote: post #175
Arch485 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly - purely "data driven" decisions are how we end up with ads really close to (or overlapping with) some button you want to press, because the data says that increase click-through rate! But it's actually a user-hostile feature that everyone hates.

But collecting data and looking for insights doesn't mean you mechanically optimize features, especially user-hostile ones? This is just as, if not more, likely to happen when basing your decisions on what people say they want over what they actually do.

It's easier to not care about users if they are just numbers and you can tell yourself to ignore what they actually say.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#359

Post by account42 »

defmacr0 wrote: post #186
PhoenixFlame101 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But collecting data and looking for insights doesn't mean you mechanically optimize features, especially user-hostile ones? This is just as, if not more, likely to happen when basing your decisions on what people say they want over what they actually do.

If we were perfectly rational, then yeah, more data should never lead to worse decisions. However, it's easy to fall into the trap where being data-driven makes you only work on those things that you know how to measure.

Or worse, it makes you go look for data backing up the assumptions you already made.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#360

Post by account42 »

lukevp wrote: post #100
bfivyvysj wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say to your point that you can't not spy on me while also spying on me. Maybe just don't?

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…

You can write down your business transactions, sure.

Telemetry would be more akin to looking through your customers windows each day and noting down how often they use the tools you sold them. Not cool.

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