It kind of is. I don't want Richard Stallman knowing every time I open a file in emacs or run the ls command. Keep that crap out of local software. There should be better ways to get adoption metrics for your investors, like creating a package manager for your software, or partnering with security companies like Wiz. If you have telemetry, make it opt-in, and help users understand that it benefits them by being a vote in what bugs get fixed and what features get focused on. Then publish public reports that aggregate the telemetry data for transparency like Mozilla and Debian.

No. It's spyware. Software authors/vendors have no right to collect telemetry and it ought to be illegal to have any such data collection and/or exfiltration running on a user's device by default or without explicit, opt-in consent.

Why? Any non-opt-in product telemetry is spyware, and you have no idea what they'll do with the data. And if it's an AI company, there's an obvious thing for them to do with it.

(Opt-in telemetry is much more reasonable, if it's clear what they're doing with it.)

We can stop calling it spyware once it is not spyware (will never happen).

It is spyware tho.

If it collects information from someone, and they don't want it to, then it is spying.

I am deeply disappointed in how often I encounter social pressure, condescending comments, license terms, dark patterns, confidentiality assurances, anonymization claims, and linguistic gymnastics trying to either convince me otherwise or publicly discredit me for pointing it out. No amount of those things will change the fact that it is spyware, but they do make the world an even worse place than the spyware itself does, and they do make clear that the people behind them are hostile actors.

No, we will not stop calling it what it is.