Tom RitterMar 5

I've been seeing a lot of comments online about how browser telemetry is just a way to spy on users and we never actually use it, and it provides no value.

We can debate whether you think someone (Firefox or otherwise) overcollects telemetry, or doesn't collect it in a privacy-preserving enough way. And you should be able to turn it all off, for any reason.

But it's been instrumental for me, personally, to ship multiple security improvements to Firefox - and I'm just one of hundreds of developers. I wrote up some more here: https://ritter.vg/blog-telemetry.html

telemetry helps. you still get to turn it off - ritter.vg

Tom Ritter's personal homepage, where he rambles about tech-related topics.

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@tomrittervg I used to have telemetry enabled, your CEO announced that Firefox is becoming a modern AI browser, I disabled telemetry.

FWIW, I think that telemetry is a way to help developers, but the question now has become - do I even want what the developers want to build?

I think there needs to be an underlying sense of trust the users have for the developers, and I'd say trust was a lot higher back when all this stuff was opt-in.

Mar 5 at 4:28pmWeb