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Comment by callc

1 month ago

I don’t.

I highly suggest everyone else does their darnedest not too either. Don’t do it in your own software. Refuse and push back against it at $dayJob.

I realize that my small contribution as a privacy and data-respecting SWE is extremely small, but if we all push back against the MBAs telling us to do these things, the world will be better off.

15 comments

callc

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caseyy  1 month ago

So long as a significant portion of companies harvest user data to provide “free” services, no well-meaning business can compete with their paid apps. Not in a real way.

It’s the prisoner’s dilemma, but one vs many instead of one vs one. So long as someone defects, everyone either defects or goes out of business.

It’s the same as with unethical supply chains. A business using slave labour in their supply chain will out-compete all businesses that don’t. So well-meaning business owners can’t really switch to better supply chains as it is the same as just dissolving their business there and then.

Only universal regulation can fix this. If everyone is forced not to defect, we can win the prisoners dilemma. But so long as even 10% of big tech defects and creates this extremely lucrative business of personal data trade that kills every company not participating, we will continue to participate more and more.

Read Meditations on Moloch for more examples.

thrance  1 month ago

You sadly can't fix a systemic issue by telling individual workers what not to do. There's too much money on the line.

  • namtab00  1 month ago

    And in sw dev, especially the US flavor, individual workers are highly directly incentivized to hit that next earnings target via vesting programs...

fragmede  1 month ago

Why do you assume it's MBA driven? As a software developer, I like knowing when my software crashes so that I can fix it. I don't care or even want to know who you are, your IP address, or anything that could be linked back to you in any way, but I can't fix it if I don't know that it's crashing in the first place.

  • walterbell  1 month ago

    Customers can (optionally) submit crash logs via email or support portal.

    Apple iOS provides crash logs via the following navigation path:

      Privacy & Security
    Analytics Data
      AppName-date-time.ips

    Notice Apple's choice of top-level menu for crash logs?

    • fragmede  1 month ago

      And of course you've reported every single crash you've encountered via email or support portal?

      Normal people don't email support with crash logs, they just grumble about it to their coworkers and don't help fix the problem. You can't fix a problem you don't know about.

      2 replies →

  • sneak  1 month ago

    Once it is running on a computer you don't own, it is no longer your software.

    To put it in the language of someone who mistakenly thinks you can own information: data about crashes on computers that aren't yours simply doesn't belong to you.