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Comment by denton-scratch | Hacker News Reader

> So, by that logic, users who opt out of telemetry are aware of why they are doing it.

Ambiguous: they're aware of why who is doing it? I opt out of telemetry because I don't know why they're doing it - the data collectors. I mean, I know why they say they're doing it, but I don't know if it's true.

I also don't want my computing resources and network bandwidth used to further a goal that I might not support. Even if the only reason for collecting data really is to "improve the product", perhaps that'll result in them making the product dependent on systemd, which from my POV would be an adverse outcome.

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The reason they collect telemetry usually is why they say they do - to improve the product. If it's commercial software then, sure, the ulterior motive is to get more money out of you, but they're doing that by making you like the product more so, great?

And if you're worried that your user case (e.g. not-systemd) will be deprecated then that's a good reason to keep it on and be represented. I bet people who used Firefox's RSS feature were more likely than usual to turn off telemetry, yet that didn't save their feature. If anything, it may have made Mozilla more confident in removing it

> The reason they collect telemetry usually is why they say they do - to improve the product.

Even if that's true, organizations like to keep this stuff for longer than they should and are not immune to hacks or changing business priorities (like AI). If there was serious liability attached to leaking or "off-label" use of this data then I'd feel better about it.

Also, using telemetry to justify removing features is not about making the product better but about cutting costs. How is Firefox better without RSS support? The fact that only a small number of users use it tells you nothing about how passionate or influential those users are, nor how such a change will affect wider perception of your products. See also: how pissed off many on HN still are about the death of Google Reader even though it was a "niche" product.

> Also, using telemetry to justify removing features is not about making the product better but about cutting costs. How is Firefox better without RSS support?

Maintaining stuff has a cost in time and/or money. Added new features or fixing bugs has a cost in time and/or money. Time and/or money is limited, so decisions must be made on what is the best use of it. Removing features can (sometimes) result in a lot of savings in the form of simplified codebase (which means improved developer productivity), reduces surface area for bugs, etc. I (really) hate when products remove features, and I think it's often done assuming a lot more savings than actually happens, but there is some logic to it.

I don't know what Firefox used the RSS support savintgs to do, but if they used it to build containers (which I use constantly) then for me Firefox is much better. If they squandered that time, then of course it's not better off. But without having access to roadmaps and planning documents, it's dificult to know which tradeoffs were made.

> ... to improve the product.

That phrase can be viewed in many different ways, depending upon who the decision makers setting the goals are.

> If anything, it may have made Mozilla more confident in removing it ...

Of course. People know this, that's a good part of why people are against metrics.

It leads to dumbed down software, as there's always a 5% of features that can be cut (on every budget or dev iteration) to "focus more on the majority uses!".

Exactly. It all depends on what you mean by "improve".

If you deploy telemetry and go on to assume that it's giving you accurate information, that's a mistake. Blaming it on me for not letting them have their telemetry is victim-blaming.

Yes, you're right. I meant, users who choose to opt out are more competent users (or just more paranoid) and might sooner understand what telemetry means and/or does. Usually, and I am assuming, competent software users tend to have much more unique and specialized usage patterns than the average joe.

> they

This is the key actually.

they could be a single engineer tracking down a pernicious segfault.

they could be marketing "they gave us the data, we can do anything we want"

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