I would say to your point that you can't not spy on me while also spying on me. Maybe just don't?
Aggregating request statistics server-side unless you're only generating those requests to spy on what I'm doing on my computer is more like the not-spying you're talking about.
You’re making a distinction that puts you in the privileged judge position of evaluating if a service is making requests just so you can spy vs what the app author’s might believe is a critical design feature in how they want the product to operate.
I agree, but once you cross the borders out to the internet, I'd say you need to stop seeing that as "Me sitting at my computer at home", because you're actually "on someone else's property" at that point essentially. And I say this as someone who care greatly about preserving personal privacy.
Watching people move their mouse and click stuff on “your webpage” is fucking spying. It’s in my browser. On my machine. Not running on your hardware.
Tracking what I do on my own computer doesn’t stop being spying because the program I’m doing stuff in can make network requests. WTF.
Well, I was mainly talking about network requests, which are quite literally served by "my hardware" when your client reaches out to my servers, and they agree to serve your client. I do agree that it sucks that browser viewports now also are considered "mine" from the perspective of servers, but you do have a choice to execute that code or not, you can always say no.
I don't think it's as much "this attitude took over", people saying that the internet is the wild west and warning you "browse at your own peril" has been around for as long as I can remember.
The attitude that’s changed is that in the 90s and 00s a program that sent information about what you’re doing that wasn’t necessary and expected for how it operates would have been instantly, popularly, and unequivocally labeled spyware by a programmer crowd. Now it’s normal and you get a bunch of folks claiming it’s ok.
Are some companies spying on you the way you say? Yea, probably. Most of us just want data to know what's working and what's not.
Telemetry would be more akin to looking through your customers windows each day and noting down how often they use the tools you sold them. Not cool.