People on HN don't object to telemetry because they don't know what it might be used for. It's patronizing and useless to just respond with a naive psuedo-explanation.
edit: My 'argument' against it: when is enough? At what point does it become bike-shedding? Tricky to answer; isn't one. Transparency is paramount.
I'm for Telemetry, generally, but enjoy the universal ability to opt out. Either through your mechanisms or mine. At a point it becomes a matter of trust and need. More feedback loops, if you will.
Trust isn't necessarily regarding privacy, either. What about simple efficacy? For all of the Telemetry today, I don't see substantially more-effective software than what we had in the 1980s. More profit, sure - but not necessarily effective or reliable. It's possible - and reasonable - one may not trust Telemetry is going to good (read: effective) use.
The requirements/standards between a mobile game powered by endorphins and say, a web browser, are considerably different. Sorry, they were patronizing first.
On the other hand, I personally don't like a pair of eyes looking over my shoulder, physical or digital.
People don't understand or don't want to understand that digital telemetry is not different from somebody looking over your shoulder, taking notes, and making "Mhm..." sounds.
When done without consent, both are equally invading personal space, and I don't want my personal space to be invaded like that, as a person on HN, who understands what telemetry is.
You know, somebody coming to your cubicle and taking something without asking is rude, in some cases unethical, even damaging. It's the same thing with computers. No application/website ever should be able to collect information about me without my consent. It's called a "personal computer".
If the application needs telemetry from me, they can ask (not tell we're doing this, but ask), and start the moment I consent. The moment I withdraw my consent all telemetry and data collection should stop. Moreover, I shall be able to see all the telemetry data in its full glory to make my own assessment of what's collected and how.
If you don't know, Go tried this, even with an arguable provable way of anonymization, people roared back, and the decision is changed to "opt-in".
For some applications, I explicitly consent to telemetry because a) They ask, b) They show what they collect and do with it, and c) I do respect and trust them because of the previous encounters I had with them.
The moment they break this social contract, they lose telemetry, and in most cases me as a user.
...and I have nothing to hide.
Parent: "You bet, champ." <buys shoes>
Child: <Same speed, but happy>
Or a perhaps more familiar metaphor: rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.
Telemetry can absolutely be useful. It can also be a toil fountain. To your point, how they behave/use this matters.
Are you comfortable and happy now?
Of course it can be useful & good, but letting people know about what you are doing and asking before doing it is even better, no?
Do the telemetry collectors have something to hide, so they do it covertly or without consent?
I won't say I've read all of it, of course: the distribution does a lot of work for me [with earned trust]. I'll risk Fedora over BigCo whims any day.
You can do that by simply going into about:preferences#privacy and unchecking "Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla"
> I shall be able to see all the telemetry data in its full glory to make my own assessment of what's collected and how.
That's all available in about:telemetry
Firefox is open source and so is the set of telemetry it collects, the schemas are published openly on the web. Every request to add new telemetry is reviewed in a public bugzilla ticket. It's not a mass of dark surveillance capturing unknown information, it's all done in the open in public.
No one on HN has any objection to explicit opt-in usage statistics. Telemetry is not the problem. Lack of consent is the problem. Software developers sliding themselves into end users' local machines without invitation is the problem—devs who feel entitled to take things, simply because they have the technical access to take them. And devs who don't even understand the difference.
Absolutely, let's keep this pattern going!
Of all the diverse viewpoints, FOSS extremists and privacy fundamentalists, the core facet of "you can submit statistics to our popularity survey if you want" is not something I've ever seen anyone object to. The objections are always to some other facet of telemetry.