Search engines are recording really detailed information as you type, as you browse other websites using their invasive trojan-like analytics. With this data you can probably identify anonymous users from their behaviour (even if the ipv4 address is "encrypted" hah). All it takes is for data from one company to end up at another company and I believe this happens very often.
I think the problem is that you need less and less information to personally identify someone as you have more data. We are not intelligent enough to know what data is identifying or not so therefore the only option we have is to stop giving out our data.
Tell me, who exactly is running ML on this data? They're going to great lengths to anonymize this data. If they wanted identifying information, they'd just upload your unixname, they wouldn't anonymize and then de-anonymize with ML.
I don't even know how you conflated the metrics on menu clicks with uploading paste data. That's ridiculous. Did you even notice you made that leap?
I don't know what data they collect now or what they will collect later so I am just speculating. But I am sure the ToS has a section about how they can change the terms however they wish.
Please tell me about the great lengths they go to anonymize this data because I believe it to be very difficult to do, and absolutely not in their interest.
Edit: With pasting habits I meant if you paste with shortcuts or go through the menu, not the actual paste content. Sorry for the confusion.
So what? VScode can also be used as web app already, it's not about what others do or don't with their online services. The question is about the expectation and respect to the end user, having telemetry on by default is disingenuous to say the least.
One single link to your identity, and you now have user tracking. If course, there's probably easier ways to achieve it.
* How many times you clicked Edit -> Paste vs Ctrl/Cmd + V. This is not personal information. It cannot be used in any way to identify you.
* Your location/medical information. Guard this with your life if you must. Share it with literally no one. If it's uploaded somewhere, delete it asap.
All our information falls on a spectrum between these two extremes. Let's please acknowledge that not all information is super sensitive, that it's ok to share information like the paste example.
Second, this information can be useful, and can change the direction of the products we're building. For example, the Office team wanted to re-design the old menu bar interface to surface the features people were using the most. You know what people used the menu bar for the most? EDIT -> PASTE. You'd think everyone knows about Ctrl + V, but apparently not. The vast majority of the world used to click Edit, then click Paste. Knowing that users were doing this allowed the interface to be moulded to suit the needs of the silent, non shortcut using majority instead of HN power users - https://imgur.com/a/WLm4UJd.
Third, if you acknowledge that this information is useful, then it follows that it's only useful when it's opt-out. If it's opt-in and only 0.01% of your users opt-in, you can't make any reasonable conclusion from the data because it wouldn't be representative. If you tried to convince folks that no one uses keyboard shortcuts to paste based on this tiny data set, they'd laugh you out of the room. Collecting opt-in data in this case is almost useless.
Fourth, products that collect this info become better. If you're ok with webapps collecting this but not native apps (like VS Code), then the consequence might be that web apps end up being much better than native apps. Whether you prefer that or not is moot, but personally I like having options. Let's not force native app makers to stop collecting non-identifying information when the downside is minimal/non-existent.