Hacker News Reader

Why would an Electron frame allow them to track you more easily than a native desktop app that has access to your whole (userspace) system?

Not your parent. Just clarifying.

1. Electron apps also have access to "your whole (userspace) system".

2. Electron has npm, which makes it ridiculously easy to add analytics code to your app. See, for example: https://www.npmjs.com/package/electron-analytics

If it's just for tracking, why not ship a JS runtime and run the tracking in a separate thread. No electron needed.

but electron does have a JS runtime included?

Too much work. With Electron, one can just `npm i electron-analytics` and done. Without Electron, libraries like that will have to be patched (at least) to be usable with the custom runtime.

Oh, don't forget the legions of cheap javascript newbs fresh out of boot camp that they can hire!