Telemetry is one of the biggest controversial topics in the Linux community. Many people believe that telemetry is entirely meaningless, because developers can “just” ask their users. Some people also argue that users can opt into telemetry if they want to participate, but most of these users are in consensus that opt-out telemetry shouldn’t be there in the first place. However, I don’t believe that asking users or explicitly opting into telemetry helps to a degree where developers and designers can form educated conclusions, as both methods share many issues regarding gathering data accurately. In this article, we’re going to explore the issues around asking users and opting into telemetry, and then I will explain why opt-out telemetry is a better approach to gather accurate data and forming educated conclusions.
People have deserted whole projects over telemetry. Audacity comes to mind. Telemetry is obviously not popular with people who are already sacrificing so much over privacy.
There’s no point in trying to sway linux users in favor of telemetry, because most of us already know it’s only a privacy risk and doesn’t do much. Does Gnome really listen to its users feedback anyway? If yes, why is there still no typeahead in Nautilus despite constant user feedback? Why is there still no way to have a dash to dock without extensions?
Opt-out is not a solution because you’re asking people to scrub every package and figure out how to opt out. It’s time consuming and must be done with every fresh install.
A good example of the uselessness of telemetry is Firefox. They keep removing features used by advanced users in Firefox because Mozilla thinks those features aren’t used a lot. Turns out, most advanced users of firefox don’t enable telemetry because they seek privacy from their browser.