VSCode has deprecated "Enable Telemetry" and now auto-enrolls you into their new Telemetry option even if you've disabled all the previous telemetry settings.<p>Screenshot <a href="https://imgur.com/a/nxvH8cW" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/nxvH8cW</a><p>The changes apply to the most recent version of vscode (version 1.61.0 released Oct 7).
Hi all, I work on the VS Code team. This came up the other day in stand up and the initial plan was to deprecate and eventually remove the old setting. Several of us pushed back and said while we may deprecate the setting in favor of something else, the old setting should always be respected due to the sensitivity around telemetry.<p>If there's any confusion around this messaging it's because this discussion literally happened 2 days ago. I'll reopen <a href="https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/134660" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/134660</a> to make sure we clear up confusion.
Microsoft has really been pushing the telemetry lately. Edge phones home far more than any other browser. Windows itself has no way to fully disable data collection (only the option to send "basic" or "full" data, including which websites you visit--oof). If you use Pro and you are enough of a power user to feel comfortable editing registry settings, that's what is now required to turn telemetry off, and even then it's hard to know you did it correctly. And this type of tracking is pervasive across the entire Microsoft ecosystem, including within Xbox, Minecraft, Teams, and now VSCode. It's disappointing to say the least.
As someone who's worked on multiple power-user GUIs professionally, telemetry can be genuinely useful for improving the product. You can discover features that are never used and should be removed so attention can be focused elsewhere, and others that are used frequently and deserve more attention, and others that users may frequently have trouble with and should be fixed or improved.<p>I'm not saying this justifies dark patterns, and I have no firsthand knowledge of whether Microsoft is exclusively using this data for legitimate purposes. If it were me I'd enable it by default but make it clear and easy to disable for those who care. That said: I don't think the knee-jerk assumption that this is a wholly evil thing is justified.
Source: <a href="https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_61#_telemetry-settings" rel="nofollow">https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_61#_telemetry-setti...</a><p>You are not enrolled into the auto telemetry yet, the deprecated options are still respected for now.
The new telemtry has the levels of on, crash and off. Useful if I want not to contribute my device info, but still help them with issues with the software itself.
Microsoft tries to make you think it’s not, but VSCode is proprietary if you download the official builds. Don’t use it!<p>The Vscodium project [0] exists and provides builds directly from the source.<p>This version has <i>none</i> of the user-hostile behavior! It also makes you realize Microsoft’s new round of EEE overreach when you see that the maintainers have to provide the extensions through their own repository and the default C# debugger doesn’t work for licensing reasons (everything else works perfectly).<p>Don’t trust Microsoft. Use the <i>code</i> they give you (which is generally fine), not their proprietary products (which are generally very much not fine).<p>[0]: <a href="https://vscodium.com" rel="nofollow">https://vscodium.com</a>
Reminder that Sublime Text is constantly being improved and might be worth a look if you haven't tried it in a while ~ <a href="https://www.sublimetext.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.sublimetext.com/</a>
What is this telemetry? My OS, computer model, IP, and VSCode version? Why is this so bad in comparison to any other web application or many other apps these days? I know many are up in arms about it, but what exactly is the hidden danger here? More ads about computer studs sold via a the meager Bing ads market?
So, recapping vs code:<p>* They implemented proprietary sync protocols<p>* They obfuscate how 'settings' are saved - no, the settings.json is not what the editor uses and they hide stuff in the internal sqlite db they use<p>* Capping open versions of the product<p>* And finally, inserting proprietary "licensed" stuff and code that purposefully breaks if you're not licensed
Microsoft microsofting. By which I mean making confusing UX choices that no user would want, with bad presets, and that get misinterpreted in the comment-o-sphere as dark patterns infringing on our freedoms.<p>They're transforming the control of telemetry to a different option. The problem is that the new option doesn't default to being based on your old telemetry opt-out value, it just defaults to "on" as if you just downloaded VSC. And this leads people to reading all kinds of evil intent into it.<p>But it's probably not. We've all worked on big complicated products at big, slow companies, right? This is just bad design.
Check out <a href="https://vscodium.com" rel="nofollow">https://vscodium.com</a><p><a href="https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium</a><p>Builds of VS Code with telemetry stripped out
Microsoft thank you. You brought us the LSP and as thus every editor has the same capabilities as your spyware anti pattern. No need to use Vscode anyway.
Use vscodium unless you need specific MS features. Alternatively inspect your outgoing traffic and block the telemetry sources.<p>vscode will still try sending data to those servers but won’t be able to reach them. Little overhead.
I have not trusted M$ since the mid 90s when I first installed Slackware Linux (after using OS/2 2.0 for a year or 2).<p>I was using Vscodium occasionally and despite it being very easy to use, I'm going to uninstall it now and just focus on emacs and neovim. I do not even trust vscodium since the original codebase comes from tainted origins.