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Comment by Seirdy | Hacker News Reader

Being enrolled in a study should require prior informed consent. Terms of the data collection, including what data can be collected and how that data will be used, must be presented to all participants in language they can understand. Only then can they provide informed consent.

Harvesting data without permission is just exploitation. Software improvements and user engagement are not more important than basic respect for user agency.

Moreover, not everyone is like you. People who do have reason to care about data collection should not have their critical needs outweighed for the mere convenience of the majority. This type of rhetoric is often used to dismiss accessibility concerns, which is why we have to turn to legislation.

(POSSE from https://seirdy.one/notes/2022/06/03/opt-in-telemetry/)

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> Being enrolled in a study should require prior informed consent.

It's right there in the License Agreement that you accept when you install VSCode. And unlike some other EULA's, it's close to the beginning of the document, easy to read, describes data usage and explains how to opt out of it. I honestly don't see what more can they do to get user consent.

You might argue that many users don't read License Agreement and I would agree with you concerns IF this condition was unexpected and/or malicious. In this case it is neither.

> Harvesting data without permission is just exploitation.

Exploitation is just a word. I could also call your usage of VSCode "exploitation" because you are exploiting the work of MS engineers.

What matters is whether it does any tangible harm or not. In my view it doesn't.

> Moreover, not everyone is like you.

That's why I added a caveat "unless you are very paranoid".

> This type of rhetoric is often used to dismiss accessibility concerns

I don't see what accessibility has to do with it.

> That's why I added a caveat "unless you are very paranoid".

So everyone who disagrees with you has to be “very paranoid”? You may not agree with or understand the motivations of others, but summarily disparaging them is bad form.

I'm sorry, "very paranoid" is just a colloquial way of saying "very security conscious".

I think part of the issue that the “very security conscious” people are wary of is trusting an entity like Microsoft not to quietly increase what data they are collecting beyond what is actually beneficial to users. I love the idea of using telemetry to improve products and I know that crash reporting, when introduced back in office, led to fixes for an absolutely staggering number of bugs (I worked at MSFT at the time and know that crash reporting led to legitimate and gigantic leaps forward in software quality), but I also think the agreement needs to be very very explicit about what types of data they will collect and include promises that they won’t be expanding this definition for other purposes. They really need to spell out, in plain and convincing language, that they understand this concern and promise not to violate that trust in order for me to check the “yes, collect my data to improve the product AND FOR NO OTHER REASON” checkbox.

It won't happen because the powers that be don't want it noticed much less spelled out in 24pt bullets. Even if there were some kind of enlightened CEO that set policy, it would just be a few quarters before (being replaced by a Balmer-clone) that said-policy would get thrown out the window.

The EULA you agreed to would no longer apply, and no software provides EULA diff tools.

"should not have their critical needs outweighed for the mere convenience of the majority"

I *strongly* disagree here. A small subsection of the population should not be able to impose their self-percieved "needs" on the remaining 99%. You're the individuals who care about this, it's your responsibility to put in the necessary foot work.

It's incredibly arrogant and presumptuous to try and argue that any overwhelming minorities desires should be seen as needs and imposed upon everyone else and drawing a comparison to accessibility is disingenuous at best. You aren't literally unable to use an application because they don't spell out every bit of minutia regarding their telemetry, nor are you born with physical/mental disadvantages that somehow necessitate your privacy policy desires.

No one is preventing you from monitoring your own network activity, sandboxing your machine, using a VPN, or a multitude of other steps you can take to monitor and protect your privacy.

Blaming the victim, eh… Any other profound ideas you'd like enlighten us with?

I'm not blaming the victim because they aren't victims. They voluntarily choose to use software and are upset when it doesn't live up to their arbitrary standards, standards they themselves are doing nothing to reach when it's perfectly within their abilities to do so.

If you complained about how much you hate trackpads but refused to buy a USB mouse I wouldn't say that mice should be mandatory accessories bundled with every laptop sale, I'd say you should buy a mouse yourself or stop complaining about it.

Now imagine that Trackpad came in a Mouse box, only the fine print alluding to what was truly inside.

When confronted, they manufacturer states... but trackpads don't sell as well! There are perfectly good alternatives if you just read and truly care!

not to defend VS Code telemetry, but it's clearly stated in terms anyone can understand (something many OSS projects fail to deliver)

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/telemetry

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