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Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

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Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

#61

Post by jitl »

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #58
jitl wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notion doesn't like making things opt-in. A feature that's opt-in will get like 1% of the use of a feature that's opt-out. A happier middle ground would be to enable by default and show a "I don't like this, pls turn it off" button the first few times. EDIT: shouldn't single out any specific role here. We think opt-out, enable-by-default makes a feature have far greater total utility. But we could do more to provide…

Make a pop-up with the opt-in/out for all the features on first launch with everything defaulted to on so people can turn features off and get notified that such features exist. You can also use this to gather metrics on what features people are actually interested in. Good compromise.

Yep, completely agree.

Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

#62

Post by const_cast »

XCabbage wrote: post #60
dakiol wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the explanation. I was about to install Notion Desktop today. I Won’t install it.

Why? I don't understand the objection to this. If the app was sending off any data to Notion without consent, that would obviously be a privacy issue, but why is it a problem for a desktop app to simply check if your mic is being used and offer to record?

The application is almost certainly sending off data to Notion without consent, you just wouldn't be able to tell.

If a company is willing to do even small privacy violations, I do not trust them at all. Feel free to run OpenSnitch or LittleSnitch - most apps are opening connections to many domains you won't recognize. Your guess is as good as anyone's what data they're exfiltrating. That is, of course, unless you use more privacy-preserving apps that are typically opensource.

Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

#63

Post by eddythompson80 »

jitl wrote: post #53
chinathrow wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make it opt-in and this would be not an issue.

Notion doesn't like making things opt-in. A feature that's opt-in will get like 1% of the use of a feature that's opt-out. A happier middle ground would be to enable by default and show a "I don't like this, pls turn it off" button the first few times. EDIT: shouldn't single out any specific role here. We think opt-out, enable-by-default makes a feature have far greater total utility. But we could do more to provide…

> Our PMs don't like making things opt-in.

Whenever people on HN and else where present you the mustache twirling evil Microsoft or Apple or Google C-suite/board who are trying to enshitificate a product or a tool because they don’t care, always keep in mind that the reality is often a lot more mundane than that.

The application that is “sneakily” listening to you and transmitting everything you say to their servers can be a legitimate product of a mustache twirling villain, but it’s a lot more likely (in my experience) that a group of 5 engineers and a PM were tasked by “Present relevant products from our company to the user” task and someone was like “what if we record what they are saying (or just zip-up their entire ~/Documents folder), run it through an LLM on our server and prompt it to analyze their convo or documents and recommend one of our products to sell to them? Sounds good to me, no?”

Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

#64

Post by sturza »

jitl wrote: post #53
chinathrow wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make it opt-in and this would be not an issue.

Notion doesn't like making things opt-in. A feature that's opt-in will get like 1% of the use of a feature that's opt-out. A happier middle ground would be to enable by default and show a "I don't like this, pls turn it off" button the first few times. EDIT: shouldn't single out any specific role here. We think opt-out, enable-by-default makes a feature have far greater total utility. But we could do more to provide…

Your PMs should not decide what your software does with my hardware without me giving my informed consent.

Our PMs don't like making things opt-in.

-> Your users don't like making things opt-out. Low usage metrics is a UX problem. Activating it without informed consent gives you bloated metrics anyway.

Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

#65

Post by toddmorey »

I have a funny story: I went to go to a notion doc and just intuitively pressed command-O in the app to open the notion doc I wanted. Of course that command doesn’t open notion docs—what that does is turn on audio transcription.

So two hours later, I realize I’ve transcribed at the bottom of our team overview page what read like the diary of a madman from fragments of conversation I was having with my wife and dog. I am glad I caught it and deleted it.

Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

#66

Post by meindnoch »

jitl wrote: post #53
chinathrow wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make it opt-in and this would be not an issue.

Notion doesn't like making things opt-in. A feature that's opt-in will get like 1% of the use of a feature that's opt-out. A happier middle ground would be to enable by default and show a "I don't like this, pls turn it off" button the first few times. EDIT: shouldn't single out any specific role here. We think opt-out, enable-by-default makes a feature have far greater total utility. But we could do more to provide…

>Our PMs don't like making things opt-in

Then refuse implementing it. Have some dignity for God's sake.

Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

#67

Post by savolai »

Pi9h wrote: post #13

If anyone is looking for an alternative to Notion without the bloat, I’m building https://docmost.com . It has a nice UI, real-time collaboration, diagrams support and more. You can self-host it too.

I’m wondering if integrating this with nocodb mentioned above would work, as i also use databases in documents.

Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

#68

Post by colechristensen »

jitl wrote: post #45
wustep wrote: post #41

Hey! 1. Notion records audio only during your use of the Meeting Notes feature. Here are the docs: https://www.notion.com/help/ai-meeting-notes 2. Notion desktop app has notifications about meetings that ask you if you want to use Meeting Notes, it recognizes this by detecting that your microphone is on (i.e. it does not listen to audio coming from your microphone). This feature is a setting in preferences btw, under…

To elaborate: The Notion desktop app will observe if there is a process running on your computer that is actively using your microphone, such as Zoom. Notion does not and cannot listen to the audio coming from your microphone ambiently or snoop on the signal received by another application. This detection is done purely based on the existing of a process using your microphone, not on the audio coming from the microph…

Yeah, no. You don't get to monitor my anything in order to provide features. I was never a user of notion and I definitely won't be. It is just an oversight of the OS that your process is allowed to see the list of other processes.

I do not want to be spied on and have 0 trust for any company wishing to do any kind of monitoring of my usage in order to provide or advertise "features" to me.

Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

#69

Post by incoming1211 »

wustep wrote: post #48
CubsFan1060 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it helps, this has been one of the most infuriating things for me in recent memory. I don't understand why this wasn't opt-in.

thanks, will fwd to team you're talking about the desktop notification in particular, right?

* team receives feedback

"Bin it, no one will turn it on, make them turn it off if they don't want it"

Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

#70

Post by TYPE_FASTER »

toddmorey wrote: post #65

I have a funny story: I went to go to a notion doc and just intuitively pressed command-O in the app to open the notion doc I wanted. Of course that command doesn’t open notion docs—what that does is turn on audio transcription. So two hours later, I realize I’ve transcribed at the bottom of our team overview page what read like the diary of a madman from fragments of conversation I was having with my wife and dog. I…

Did it transcribe the dog? How long until we get a LLM that can translate dog barks...
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