[Release][v1.76.2] Local tracking events

Summit has received a ton of feature requests over the years. Over time, a group of features began to accumulate that all relied on the app to track some sort of statistic. Whether it was the number of votes per user or the number of times a community was visited, these features can all be derived from tracking events.

User tracking has a bad rep since it's often associated with ads and it's a hot topic when discussing privacy, however the data is undeniably useful. This is why Summit will start to track certain events beginning with this release. However, rest assured that this data will be stored on the client side only and it will be easy to opt out of.

This release also displays some stats generated from this data in the new stats page accessible from the "You" page.

Full changelog

  • Add convenience setting to export settings to share for debugging purposes. This will be available via Settings > Import & Export settings > Copy settings for debugging. Tapping on this option will export your current settings (excluding the database) and copy it to your clipboard for easy sharing.
  • Add a local tracking setting to enable/disable local tracking.
  • Add local tracking setting page with some stats and an option to delete all local tracking data.
  • Add a stats page to the "You" screen that displays some fun stats based on local tracking data.
  • Add setting to change the communities listed in the community selector sheet from top communities to frequented communities of the current account.

Update

Bumping version to v1.76.2 with no major changes. I just screwed up the versioning.

39 points · 7 comments · view on lemmy.world

7 Comments

sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al · 16 pts · 240d (1 reply)

Telemetry that makes products better is a wonderful tool and ensures features that are being used work properly and those that aren't being used aren't syphoning time away that could be used on better things.

idunnololz@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 235d

True. But just to be clear this update doesn't add any telemetry. The data collected stays on the device at all times and never leaves the device. I think the dictionary definition of telemetry is to collect and transmit data. This update only collects and I have no plans to ever transmit the data.

Sunshine@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 240d

People need to stop seeing optional tracking as a bad thing. Some contributors want to save the developer time by opting into telemetry. As the more ways to contribute the better.

I wish Rimu wasn’t so heavily pressured against implementing the read article indicator from Piefed comments because too many times people make a strong opinion underneath one without even reading through.

limerod@reddthat.com · 3 pts · 237d

Superb, thanks for all the feature and stability updates!

freeatlast_brazil@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 236d (3 replies)
[ removed ]
idunnololz@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 236d (2 replies)

10 minutes of investigating seems to show that this is an issue on feddit.online side. From my test the login request works and returns a jwt however when the client tries to make API calls with that jwt, feddit.online is returning that the jwt is invalid. I am fairly confident it's not on my side since the code works for all other piefed instances.

freeatlast_brazil@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 236d (1 reply)

I think you're right, tried again and it's working. Thank you

idunnololz@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 235d

Good to hear.