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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

> The plugin is installed by default and visible in the right tray so it’s basically an advertisement (...) a paid service

A persistently visible ad for a paid service you don't want, in a paid product you paid for? That alone is a justifiable reason for the outrage.

But the more important bit is that, if legal says "no", then "but it's inert" isn't an answer people are willing to risk their employment for.

Also:

> if it turns out it’s phoning home with training data by default then I will also change my tune, but it doesn’t seem to be doing that

We live in the age where open source package managers and build tools come with built-in, opt-out invasive telemetry, and I'm talking bona fide OSS, not something by Microsoft. It's reasonable to assume that the plugin is, or at some point will be, phoning home, until proven otherwise.

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> A persistently visible ad for a paid service you don't want

Are you referring to the spiral-like “AI Assistant” icon in the right tray? Because that you can easily hide. (Right click → “Hide” → gone.)

> A persistently visible ad for a paid service you don't want, in a paid product you paid for

While I know what you mean, it’s a very tiny and rather subtle icon.

which you can remove in two clicks

No, not the side bar. It's permanent and visible every time you go to the plugins in settings with "Freemium No License"

“If you open settings and go to the plugin section it’s always there” is very different from “it’s always on your screen”.

The plugin for Ktor is always there too. I don’t use that. But I’m not raising a fuss.

You gotta be kidding me.

> A persistently visible ad for a paid service you don't want, in a paid product you paid for? That alone is a justifiable reason for the outrage.

Oh, you mean like up- and cross-selling CTAs in, well, virtually any SaaS product under the sun? If that was a reason for outrage, we’d spend the work week screaming. Or is it that you just want to be enraged because an LLM is involved here?

Maybe we should have a higher standard for quality developer tools than enterprise shovelware?

Are you arguing that this kind of advertising is a good or neutral thingm. Or that life just kind of sucks and we need to get used to it? I'd rather push for better software and advertising practices, personally...

Seems neutral or good to me. Without advertising users don’t know a feature exists they want.

Neither, really. I hate ads as much as the next guy, but a) people seem to have no big problems with upselling in the myriad of other subscription services they use (at least I can’t remember regular ”outrage“), and b) a few subtle buttons in the UI that offer to buy an extension are hardly as atrocious as some people here act like.

Life does kinda suck and we do need to get used to it, I guess. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive for a better world, but until we don’t have a working alternative to advertising, I’d rather have models like JetBrains than Adobe…

I think this example is a great example of a benefit of telemetry. If your telemetry tells you that a _very large number of people_ are using it, and you have complaints from a number of people who have _never used it_ (or disabled telemetry), that tells you there's value in what you're doing.

Some people will never be happy, e.g.

> We live in the age where open source package managers and build tools come with built-in, opt-out invasive telemetry, and I'm talking bona fide OSS, not something by Microsoft. It's reasonable to assume that the plugin is, or at some point will be, phoning home, until proven otherwise.

That's a false equivalence to OP's point - there's a _stark_ different between telemetry and phoning home with training data.

> If your telemetry tells you that a _very large number of people_ are using it, and you have complaints from a number of people who have _never used it_ (or disabled telemetry), that tells you there's value in what you're doing.

This is how you lose thousand seats enterprise licensing deals without even realizing it.

> That's a false equivalence to OP's point - there's a _stark_ different between telemetry and phoning home with training data.

Yeah, arguably the former is worse. In the latter case, the data is actually relevant to the product and there's a chance of the user directly benefiting from it.

> A persistently visible ad for a paid service you don't want, in a paid product you paid for?

Yes, this bad, but outrage described in the article is not because of this.

All unhappy customers are complaining the plugin sends the data and they cannot uninstall it.

It is opposite: they need to enable it, accept terms and start paying for the service and only then they concerns might be correct.

I am not even JetBrains user but this is just a FUD for me

Yuck.

Where can I find a list (even partial) of OSS tools with opt-out telemetry?

What's the gripe with telemetry? That data is used to improve your experience with the product. Otherwise, developers are flying blind.

> What's the gripe with telemetry?

Reasonable question, but it's a big topic that deserves its own forum.

Agreed, perhaps I shouldn’t have stoked that fire.

I'd really love some insights into usage patterns for the app I work on - but it's such a minefield that I'm not going near it.

And yeah. It would probably help me improve the software.

Why don't people let the police install cameras in their home!? It just cuts down on crime. If you aren't committing crimes you have nothing to worry about.

This is an incredibly bad read on what telemetry is and a terrible analogy. Total hyperbole and non sequitur.

Most telemetry in the real world is literally just like Sentry and "oh there's a crash or error. Here's what the user may have done when it happened" or "this feature is not used as much while this one is very popular". Equating it to police spying on people and imprisoning would-be criminals or innocents is utter nonsense

Counterpoint: the owner of a brick-and-mortar retail business is able to observe the behavior of customers as they peruse their store.

Counter counter point: What I do on my computer is different than what I do in a public space

Valid, agreed. Privacy might be assumed when using a computer whereas people in a public store understand that they’re in public.

1. Developers managed just fine in times before pervasive telemetry was normalized.

2. How "data driven" development usually fails in practice, and is a false promise - that is indeed a big and interesting topic, spanning across issues like Goodhart's law, or whether the data is used to "improve your experience" as if the user was a Thanksgiving turkey.

3. But even if you are of pure intentions and able to avoid all the pitfals of 2, I have no reason to believe that. As a user, I don't know you, I don't trust you. All I know is that, before telemetry became something developers suddenly can't do a good job without, it was the domain of spooks, criminals, and shady advertisers. We used to call it "spyware" and classified it as a form of malware. What reason do I have to believe you are and will forever be using this data in my interest, and not against it?

4. Between HIPAA, GDPR and various cybersecurity policies of one's organization/employer, your benign, unadvertised, opt-out telemetry may be landing some of your users in hot water - and it's the major reason why organizations keep getting stricter about what can or cannot be installed on work machines. Savvy users will prefer to avoid your telemetry-rich product, rather than to take the risk of a fuss with IT or Legal if the product captures some bits of protected information.

Goodhart's law is a good point. I've seen that play out numerous times.

> A persistently visible ad for a paid service you don't want, in a paid product you paid for? That alone is a justifiable reason for the outrage.

I get that it feels icky but if you're going to get this outraged about every company that includes an upsell in a paid product you're going to die young. It's hard to think of a paid product without some kind of upsell.

My work MacBook Pro nags me to sign up to Apple Music. My home PC wants me to upgrade my OneDrive account. Google Photos thinks I should buy more storage. The Economist's paid podcast feed wants me to take a subscription to the magazine.

this tacit acceptance of aggressive advertising is exactly why it keeps showing up everywhere.

Hard to agree this is considered aggressive.

It’s all the rage and tons of people are already paying for CoPilot plugin, only makes sense for IDEA to capture their share of the market but letting users know the feature exists. Other than that it’s not in the way at all.

There's nothing I can do about it, so I can either accept it or be angry all the time.

> There's nothing I can do about it, so I can either accept it or be angry all the time.

This here is exactly why telemetry is worth little with general users, and why the whole tech market is supplier-driven: over the past decades, most users have learned to expect software to be broken, devices to suck (except for the vacuum cleaners). They've learned to live with it, only occasionally making futile requests for help to their tech-savvy friends or family members (the well-known "can you fix my computer? it's slow because it got viruses" thing). Telemetry is not observing the frustration, but the coping, so there's very little signal related to quality and usefulness in it.

So please tell me, specifically, what I personally can do to affect actual change. Instead of just criticizing me for not giving myself a stomach ulcer being angry all the time.

This wasn't meant as personal criticizm, I apologize I made it come across as one.

I meant to highlight your comment, because you uttered the exact words and sentiment I believe best describes the relationship between technology and most of population. This is relevant to the parallel subthread on "what's the gripe with telemetry", and also why we're getting increasingly many little frustrations we're asked to accept. This is why, IMO, the whole "we make what data tells us users want" argument and approach is flawed - the audience is captive, so the data only shows what people are willing to live with.

FWIW, I too believe in choosing your own battles. I don't complain about every little frustration I have with tech either. But I try to not accept it as OK either - for one day, I may be in the supplier position, and I'd like to remember this then, and not make shite products.

>if you're going to get this outraged about every company that includes an upsell in a paid product you're going to die young.

Most products that do this tend to be free or one time paid experiences, and it's a single pop-up. I don't necessarily mind someone telling me "hey thanks for using X try Y from us!".

The dynamic changes if I explicitly pay to, in part, not see stuff like that. I don't pay for anything of google except $20/month for some drive space, I won't complain much about ads.

Dynamic changes even more when it's a part of professional tools. Sell a carpenter a new toolbox, but don't mess with their wrench. I don't mind Jetbrains telling me "hey, Rust IDE is here take a look". But don't tamper with Rider or whatever other IDE I'm using in the meantime.

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