Audacity is not going to put telemetry in software after criticism from users

Audacity isn’t going to add telemetry to its software anyway. The company says it was surprised by the many negative reactions to that plan. The company may want to look at alternatives in the future.

Martin Keary, the new owner of Audacity, says in a GitHub issue that the development team was “surprised” by the criticism of the plan. Audacity decided to add Universal Google Analytics and Yandex Metrica to the software earlier this month. The company has already received many angry reactions from users, who called it a dark pattern. There were hundreds of angry reactions to the original proposal, even though it was an opt-in feature. The plan came just days after the company was acquired by the makers behind Ultimate Guitar.

The developers now emphasize that it was never their intention to sell data and that they always want to keep the service free. The company also goes on to explain that it only wanted to use telemetry to know exactly how people are using the software. “I thought opting in would take away the privacy concerns, but now that it doesn’t, we’ve decided to drop telemetry altogether,” Keary writes in the new issue.

Keary is keeping the option open to implement something similar in the future. “We can look at acceptable alternative solutions that serve the same purpose,” he writes. He also emphasizes asking for feedback from users. In the meantime, Audacity will continue its usual user research, including user testing, conversations, and feedback on GitHub and social media.