explain telemetry better

[Thorin-Oakenpants]

          > then why do we disable it in AF

this is something I have mulled over for years - i.e it is somewhat at odds with trying to keep the mission on statement - e.g see removal of most personal section items. Also see how we still enable Safe Browsing except the real-time binary checks. The "problem" is the user base: they just want a "quiet" fox and if I excluded them or made them inactive, then it would just bloat most user's overrides.

That said - I should get around to adding some context, maybe in a new section. A bit like the intro to SB

Originally posted by @Thorin-Oakenpants in #1659 (comment)

[ghost]

Btw why keep a locked pref like toolkit.telemetry.enabled?

[Thorin-Oakenpants]

true, we can probably make that line inactive and keep it for the info value

[Thorin-Oakenpants]

just to be CRYSTAL CLEAR .. this is not about anyone's preferences or assumptions. I only deal in absolutes. If anyone is expecting to air perceived grievances or transgressions or talk about not trusting Mozilla, then expect a swift ban

To be EVEN MOAR CLEAR ... disabling telemetry will stay - I simply want to differentiate it from privacy/tracking issues. Telemetry is not a privacy issue - I am not talking about experiments (which is a subset and almost exclusively nightly anyway)

[Thorin-Oakenpants]

you can view all telemetry data in about:telemetry and auto-displaying it before sending would be a terrible user experience. The rest makes no sense just like the previous comment

THIS IS NOT A DISCUSSION ABOUT TELEMETRY ... this is an issue to explore adding some extra info to AF to differentiate it from actual privacy issues, maybe even give it it's own section, so it makes sense as to why it's in AF

[git70]

adding some extra info to AF to differentiate it from actual privacy issues, maybe even give it it's own section, so it makes sense as to why it's in AF

In my humble opinion, this is the best solution - a separate section with a small explanation that telemetry is not spying. Educational value is needed because for many people telemetry = tracking (I thought so myself until recently, before I realized that Firefox is not Chrome).
Leave it disabled as it is, but give it its own section because it deserves it.

Certainly, it depends on the individual user's threat model, but well-functioning telemetry (privacy-respecting and anonymous) is to the benefit of all of us, because it tells Mozilla what are the expectations of FF and does not make stupid decisions (elimination of RSS and Compact Mode interface view, for example).

Let everyone decide for themselves whether they will feel comfortable with telemetry, but they will have information to think about in a separate section.

[Thorin-Oakenpants]

Let everyone decide for themselves

That's the whole point of a template :)

[git70]

That's the whole point of a template :)

The concept of a template seems to me very theoretical ;)
Many users do nothing but upload user.js AF... so they go with the flow of default settings.

[Thorin-Oakenpants]

that's the whole point - we set default hard'ish then they find their own way. If they can't read a wiki page with 10 basic prefs in it to help them, then they shouldn't be here

[Thorin-Oakenpants]

one of the points - https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/10/testing-privacy-preserving-telemetry-with-prio/

[adrelanos]

Ticket re-titeling suggested:

Move Telemetry to its own Section and Improve Telemetry Disabling Settings Documentation

Because currently do something about telemetry sounds as if there are unresolved issues with telemetry disabling, which is not what this ticket is about.

[Thorin-Oakenpants]

We could probably add, thanks to @Obegg in #1845 that sanitizing profile\datareporting is a good idea since some pending pings of or whatnot may still linger and cause a DNS lookup - I mean the point is "quiet" fox, so lets help do that if people want it