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Comment by kzrdude | Hacker News Reader

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kzrdude

Lots of open source software uses opt-out telemetry.

Sure, I also want it to stop, but there are so many doing it.

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> but there are so many doing it.

Really? That's a weak argument if ever I heard one.

Perhaps it's time to take a stand and say "no more!"

What's to stop them adding in something else later that "accidentally" grabs IP addresses, and sends them "accidentally" to their third party analytics company who doesn't give a shit about your privacy. That company then takes their other data, joins it all together and adds to the picture of you that you never asked them to create!

When you open this door, there is no closing it.

The argument comes down to this (for me, at least): You got the software to this point without telemetry. Why do you need it now? Is the application all of a sudden unusable?

Edit: I forgot! They already take your IP address but my point still stands!

I disable telemetry whenever I can. But the major vendors already use it everywhere (Firefox, vscode, the rust installer, just a few examples) - I've disabled it in all of those, but most don't, and we don't always pay attention to apps that add this as a "feature".

Correction: rustup (rust installer) did collect telemetry but it seems to be removed now. https://github.com/rust-lang/rustup/issues/341 The reputation may stick, as we know :) No worries now.

audacity have done a text book piss off the community on going commercial.

They have done everything wrong.

banning use of the for under 13s not a good move IMHO.

They have a load of money and want to know how audacity is used?

How about just ask?

I mentioned this in the last thread here, but due to COPPA, generally it is illegal for businesses operating in the US to collect data on children under 13, even if you ask (there are exceptions but usually you need to prove that you have the parents' permission). They are doing what is required by the law, and in fact it was probably already illegal for children under 13 to use the product in ways that could generate personal data. So nothing has really changed, it seems they are only explaining what the situation already was.

If they hadn't started collecting data, the age of their users would continue to be irrelevant.

It still is irrelevant, if you use it offline, or you opt out of the analytics. Yes, an adult will probably have to set it up that way for them, but this has always been the case with any internet-enabled computer: it falls on the parents (or the school, childcare service, etc) to set up parental controls and oversee the child's online activity.

I think their approach is pretty sane - I don't know if it started out that way, but 'opt in only' seems like the defaults we want. But like parental responsibility, that's aside from the main point.

The fact that they are collecting this data now subjects them to COPPA requirements, thus the restriction to people over 13. If they hadn't started collecting data, they would not have had to comply with that restriction.

That seems to not really be relevant, if you want to have a data-driven development process, then you have to, you know, collect data. If you said they should just use email or github issues or something, and have people submit their feedback manually, those have the same deal, and they still would have to comply with COPPA regarding that data.

Yes, that is true - they would have to comply regarding the data collection. However, they would not need to impose limitations on the usage of application itself, only on the tools/platform used to submit the data.

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