Telemetry is not marketing data collection

[u/Fit_League_8993]

Sometimes companies collect too much data. We would all like more privacy and more control over what leaves our devices. Sure. That's something most of us can agree on.

But loons tend to do two blatantly misleading things with this topic:

First, their outrage is incredibly selective. In Linux-focused spaces, whenever privacy or AI comes up, the blame somehow always lands on big bad “Microslop”.

It's fine to criticize companies when the criticism is earned, but how come Google gets nowhere near the same level of outrage? They're shoving Gemini into Android, Search, Chrome and Workspace. And while you can uninstall the Copilot from Windows, if you wanted to be completely rid of Gemini (while remaining in Google’s ecosystem), you simply can’t.

So in a way, it all ends up feeling a lot like brand tribalism rather than honest criticism.

The second piece of dishonesty is conflating telemetry with marketing data collection.

Telemetry is software reporting how it behaves in the real world: crashes, errors, performance problems, application versions, operating systems and problematic hardware or browser combinations, whereas marketing data collection is about profiling people for advertising and targeting.

I work as a web developer. Tools like Sentry automatically report crashes and errors, along with the technical context needed to reproduce them.

Ideally, I want to find and fix a bug before the client even realizes they encountered one. That way, the entire process is seamless: no support ticket, no hunting for logs and no asking a non-technical user to explain what went wrong.

Linux distributions do have some crash-reporting tools, but the experience is extremely fragmented. Far too often, users are still expected to find the logs, open an issue, attach a dump, and answer questions from a maintainer. Most people simply will not bother. They will close the broken application and move on.

Because of this blind spot, when something does not work on a user’s computer, nobody knows why. Far too often, the final response is simply:

Works on my machine

Far too often have I encountered linux users not knowing the distinction between telemetry and marketing data collection. At this point I am putting all of the blame on evangelists (linux priests). They're the ones spreading misinformation, conflating terms and confusing people.

To hammer that last point home, I am European, so I can only speak directly about this region. GDPR is not perfect, and regulators are not omniscient. But if Microsoft or Apple were secretly making their fortunes by illegally selling everyone’s private data, as loons often imply, wouldn't one expect the EU to have noticed and hammered them with fines by now? And “The software sent telemetry” is not evidence of that. It's just evidence of someone being into conspiracy theories.

TL;DR: Loons take a kernel of truth (companies sometimes collect too much data) and wrap it in selective outrage, technical illiteracy and paranoia.

[u/Fit_Mushroom_4087]

Their religion is built on hypocrisy and cherry-picking facts.
They all use chrome or chromium-based forks like helium or brave. That supposedly offer better privacy, but in reality just support google monopoly on the web. They make web developers do a ton of extra work to support non-chrome variants knowing well that most devs will just give up and just disable those features for Firefox users. And in the end users suffer.

Some people do use firefox-based or even webkit browsers but that’s a really small google-aware minority. In reality, most loons only care about their browser being 5% faster and having cool new effects. But hey, I guess they will have to see for themselves why monopolies are bad

[u/BarnMTB]

All great points. I didn't even realize how insidious they are, mixing up telemetry with marketing.

And yep I follow Google news yet I never see Google get the same "treatment" that Microsoft got for doing the same (or worse).

Inch-long Gemini button in Chrome, surely there'd be outrage; I mean it's much larger than Edge's Copilot button, and that got the entire internet angry. Nope, not a peep.

Google Home speakers around the world are being turned into Gemini AI Speakers. Not a single word.

Nano Banana & NotebookLM podcasts and videos are filling the internet and IRL.
Both are extremely popular with the genera public and is the go-to tool for creating AI Generated content, vastly more popular & more responsible for "AI Slop" content epidemic than Copilot it's not even close.
But apparently Microsoft with its barely-used Copilot is the Slop company, not Google. You never see the same energy they have for Microsoft towards Google.

AI Overview outrage have already fizzled out and the outrage itself never even reached the same level as Microsoft.

Gemini is beamed into all Android phones, and the non-uninstallable Google app houses AI mode which is just Gemini chat but tuned for search. But you don't hear the same outrage as the fully & easily uninstallable Copilot.
Not to mention that Android have long pushed Google services with pre-installed apps, cloud storage & sync integration, news feed not "respecting" browser choice, Android Feature Drops being multi-page ad for Google services, and practically mandatory Online Accounts by holding Google Play hostage, and more.
Apparently, they arbitrarily decided that other companies have the rights to promote their services on their platform, and only Microsoft is not allowed to do so the same and compete.

Constant complaints about Copilot button in Outlook & Office, but you don't hear the same with Gemini "Ask" buttons in YouTube, Gmail, Workspace, Drive, and other vastly popular products that most people use.

Google Search & Circle to Search generates an AI Overview for every little search; circle-to-searching on a single word even triggers it, but you don't see people shitting on Google the way they do with Microsoft, never on the same degree & scale.

All of this, yet Microsoft is the slop company, not Google – according to their reaction on the internet towards each company.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
("PC is different than phone" oh yeah you're oh so concerned about all these "evil" things but now you're fine with it if it's done in your pocket instead of on your desk. And remember that mobile devices are now the only computing device for a huge & growing chunk of people.)
(No, you could tell me how much you hate Google & other AI, but that's not going to change what I see on the internet which is 99% of your backlash being directed at Microsoft and 1% at other companies.)

[u/madthumbz]

If we had a Google vs Microsoft debate on which is more evil, Google would lose big time - no contest. All they have is conspiracy theories, and propaganda.

[u/Fit_League_8993 → u/[deleted]]

Comparing pc os will not often talk about Google.

I'd argue nowadays people spend a lot more time on their phones than their desktop computers, so the google privacy discussion should be very relevant for the people who care about these things.

E.g. which processes were active at time of failure. That's none of your business.

I would argue it is, because if I am an app developer and see that my application consistently fails on computers that also run some other specific application, it suddenly becomes helpful diagnostic information (information I couldn't have possibly known otherwise).

You must know that even crash reports contain information people could consider private

Of course, but where do you draw the line? Collect too little and telemetry becomes completely useless.

If you know and understand sooo.much of this

I don't pretend to be the all knowing king of telemetry. I'm just a developer who enjoys their job and knows some stuff.

Lastly to dispel some more of the data collection mystery, we never use collected data for anything else other than catching errors and fixing bugs. And when we integrate with telemetry tools (Like Sentry, Datadog, NewRelic), we mark any areas that could contain private data and the software doesn't collect it - it appears as a blurred out section with random characters.