It has become a meme to be "outraged" about companies collecting any data. People don't analyze if this collection impacts them or not. They react as if the company wants their first-born.
Someone looking in the window and making an inventory of all my furniture doesn't impact me in any way. But it's still an invasion of privacy and wrong from the standpoint of common human decency. A concept that has become lost to a generation that's become acclimated to thinking this is normal. It is not.
I have no idea where you're getting this from. Governments regularly perform national census, and collect data from all kinds of institutions to inform their policy. Banks constantly analyze your bank accounts and activity. Utilities meter your use for both billing and their own planning.
This is not someone "looking in the window" this is two parties (you and the company providing some service or product to you) needing to exchange data so each can do their work properly.
Those "privacy standards" you cite that have existed for centuries... that's not a thing. It seems to be based on falsifying the history and present of how humans organize and govern systems out of ignorance. Data gathering IS the "normal". Of course it's been very limited and cumbersome before, now it's easier thanks to IT.
So if your only argument is a vague discomfort from this not being "normal"... you have no argument.
The electric company probably needs to know usage for billing. Microsoft does not need any information about Windows users for the product to work. Even things like fetching updates doesn't need to leak information, although I'll grant that it's a little bit more work to avoid leaking any data.
Honestly, it's amazing you can say this with a straight face? You don't think Microsoft needs to know which parts of its product crash or not, and are used or not, in order to deliver a well-working product?
I don't know if most of you here work with large-scale products, but Microsoft has no the luxury of going to every Windows user personally and asking them how's Windows and what you want more or and less of. That "conversation" happens through telemetry.
Just taking it from everyone without offering the ability to turn it off is very poor practice imo. I understand they want this data to improve stuff but I should have the ability to not contribute to it.
>Those "privacy standards" you cite that have existed for centuries... that's not a thing. It seems to be based on falsifying the history and present of how humans organize and govern systems out of ignorance. Data gathering IS the "normal". Ever thought that you and parent live in different countries with a different value for privacy? Even a "simple" thing like a census in Germany led to Constitutional Court ruling and the establishment of a new right, that of informational self-determination. And that was in the eighties and it was about a census in the form of a total survey to be carried out door-to-door by civil servants or agents of the public administration.
Now you private companies fathering more data more often than ever before. So it's worse, calling that "normal" is strange.
Probably companies haven't been able to serve billions of individuals worldwide, so they had less data. Microsoft has more customers, and has more data to process.
No one here is describing WTF is this "data" harming them personally with. It's not personally identifiable, and it's extremely mundane. Surely Microsoft will destroy your life by having some stats on how often people in a given region play Solitaire.
In other words, for TV they paid a small portion of the audience to record and report their habits.
Telemetry involves everyone by default and it's hardly optional unless you decide to actively fight it - speaking about Microsoft Windows here. The choices offered by Microsoft doesn't offer users true control over data they gather and process; hell, that actually applies to other big companies as well - you have just the illusion you are in control of what they managed to collect about you and the vague assurances, promises that they aren't up to no good with that stuff.
Government will most likely benefit from planning its politics having the data gathered from census while Microsoft might or might not use the telemetry data and honestly, seeing what they did with Windows 10 over course of all its releases, it doesn't appear they do actually use that telemetry data for anything. They don't even bother with users, power users opinions regarding the features that are causing issues in Windows.