GitHub community reacts very critically to adding telemetry to Audacity

The GitHub community around the open source audio editing program Audacity is not happy about the addition of telemetry to the program. It is an opt-in, although a dark pattern is used to persuade users.

The telemetry collects the variables IP address, session start and end, error messages, file types used, OS and app version and use of effects, generators and analysis tools. The developers use Universal Google Analytics and Yandex Metrica. That’s because the first one has ‘some very strict quotas’.

The developers underline that the telemetry only works in the builds created by the Github CI based on the official repository and that for those compiling from source there will be a special CMake option to attach the telemetry code, so that is also an opt-in. They also say they don’t do cross-site tracking and are considering replacing Google and Yandex with another service provider that “meets our requirements.”

The makers state that they currently have no information about stability per platform and how large the user base is, where telemetry can help. They also “can’t make informed decisions about which platforms to support” and they don’t have a good idea of ​​the scale of bugs when they occur.

The reactions to the announcement are overwhelmingly negative. As for emoji responses to the additional telemetry post, there have been over 3,000 thumbs down and 180 thumbs up responses. Some users say that as a result of this it is time for a fork of the software. Audacity was acquired less than a week ago by Muse Group, the company behind Ultimate Guitar.