> Telemetry is godsend for developers, since it lets them track down actual product usage and issues.
Extremely true. Data gleaned from actual usage instrumentation is radically higher quality than self-reported.
> Telemetry is a privacy nightmare for users, since it sends data to the developers outside of an average user's control - data which is probably easily associated with an individual and kept for eons
None of that is usually true. In the common case, users don't care (after all, MS has the telemetry to estimate how many users disable telemetry). And product improvement data is pseudonymized and usually worthless after a version iteration.
I think the folks that have an anxiety about product use data collection don't realize how worthless individual data points are. The data is pseudonymized out of necessity if for no other reason; it comes in as such a firehose that it has to be immediately analytically bucketed or it overwhelms storage at the volume these tools get used. However, the telemetry options get defaulted to "on" because volumes of data are invaluable for concrete analysis of how the product is used, counts on feature access frequency, understanding pain points in usage flow, etc.
I've done some work in this space (not for MS) and am happy to answer any questions people might have that aren't "Who did you work for?"
>The data is pseudonymized out of necessity if for no other reason; it comes in as such a firehose that it has to be immediately analytically bucketed or it overwhelms storage at the volume these tools get used
Extremely true. Data gleaned from actual usage instrumentation is radically higher quality than self-reported.
> Telemetry is a privacy nightmare for users, since it sends data to the developers outside of an average user's control - data which is probably easily associated with an individual and kept for eons
None of that is usually true. In the common case, users don't care (after all, MS has the telemetry to estimate how many users disable telemetry). And product improvement data is pseudonymized and usually worthless after a version iteration.
I think the folks that have an anxiety about product use data collection don't realize how worthless individual data points are. The data is pseudonymized out of necessity if for no other reason; it comes in as such a firehose that it has to be immediately analytically bucketed or it overwhelms storage at the volume these tools get used. However, the telemetry options get defaulted to "on" because volumes of data are invaluable for concrete analysis of how the product is used, counts on feature access frequency, understanding pain points in usage flow, etc.
I've done some work in this space (not for MS) and am happy to answer any questions people might have that aren't "Who did you work for?"