44
Poll about Fedora OPT-OUT telemetry metrics proposal
(discussion.fedoraproject.org)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
44 points (94.0% liked)
Linux
48033 readers
797 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Not just talk about implementing it, but also making it opt-out (i.e. enabled by default). If I understood it right, the author of the proposal even writes that that opt-in is useless, because nobody is going to enable it, which kinda makes it sound like they know that they're trying to push something on users that they don't want.
The question is, why don't users want it? I have already had a few discussions on the subject of telemetry and telemetry has almost always been portrayed as evil. Even when, for example, the transmission is encrypted and only the most necessary data is transmitted in such a way that no conclusion can be drawn about a specific user.
Is opt-out therefore a good solution? Not in my opinion. But I can understand the developers who use opt-out, for the reasons I mentioned. Because yes, telemetry can help to improve a program.
Personally I don't like companies tracking what I do constantly. If I had the possibility, I wouldn't allow my credit card issuer to profile me based on my purchases. I'm using "deGoogled" Android to limit Google's ability to monitor what I do on my phone, and I use both ad block and privacy badger in my web browser. I'm not saying what Fedora/Red Hat is considering is the same as what Google, Facebook, etc are doing, but in general, I'm against being tracked and monitored.
Now one might argue that software telemetry is much more benign, that they're only collecting data about their software and not about me. The thing is that I don't trust businesses to actually care about me, the end user, and I assume they're going to fuck me over the second it becomes the more profitable option for them. I could spend time and energy to read up on what data they collect from my computer, but that sounds kinda tedious and boring so it's not like I want to. And even if they completely anonymize the data now, I'm not confident that I would notice if they changed their ToS to allow them to collect more data and sell it to third parties at some point in the future. It's just so much more convenient for me if there is no telemetry to begin with.
But I can definitely see why company collecting data would prefer opt-out.
Well, there you go. My go to distro in desperate needs of my data. I know it's been only proposed but, I lost my trust with RedHat and Co.