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Why would data be useless?

I'd say there are times when bad data is worse than no data. Consider that the farther away you get from it, the parties involved are either unaware or unwilling to treat it as bad data, so they make make harmful decisions.

And opt-out or even mandatory data is without doubt quite bad to start with. And the interpretation of the data is rarely flawless or even pretends to be objective.

So if someone says that opt-in data is useless, I'd say that out-out data is just as useless.

And then we have to pretend that implementation, collection and analysis and then further actions would make it worthwhile.

Googler 1: Do we need this telemetry opt-out functionality? How many users are using it?

Googler 2: The data says 100% of users are opted in, so deprecating the obsolete and unpopular opt-out functionality is the evidence-based choice. Ignore the shrill demagogues on the mailing list saying otherwise, their anecdotes are meaningless.

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