Audacity Is Spying On You Now

[Maes]

WELLLLLL..... in a really twisted form of logic one could argue that the adware, spyware, data selling etc. serves the role of a regular software license (ya know, the kind you normally have to pay for).

 

Except for the fact that virtually nobody of the bundlers openly presents it in that sort of light, and you can almost always opt-out or eliminate it somehow. However, unlike a certain guy once argued, doing so is not akin to breaking the terms of an EULA: it's more like the bundler of the crapware is taking a risk. The final user might install it all, some of it, or none, and any data collected may be worthless/unusable/bogus, too. Gotta piss with the cock you've got, in all cases. Calculated losses, amirite?

Edited July 7, 2021 by Maes

[mrthejoshmon]

24 minutes ago, TheMightyHeracross said:

 

This phrase doesn't really apply to a community-run open source project. Of course, in this case the issue is that the project has just been acquired by some shitty company so that's right out the window.

A point that I failed to iterate on in my original post, it was a project but now it is a product.

 

They aren't charging for it so they'll make money off you one way or another.

2 hours ago, NoXion said:

 

That phrase applies to shit like Facebook, but I can give a false name and block Audacity from accessing the internet while still enjoying its functionality where it matters. Seems like a poor business model to me.

You can do these things yes but I'd say a good number, over half maybe more will not do this because they either do not know about it, don't know how to block it or just can't be arsed frankly.

 

Ignorance is bliss and all that.

[roadworx]

12 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Another update:

 

My post is still going strong... but that reply (and a few others) have been mysteriously vaporized.

 

What a fucking tool that guy is.

 

But on the flip side, he has no idea, so hey. Mission accomplished. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

why am i not surprised the people who decided to do this were complete dumbasses

[Dragonfly]

15 minutes ago, mrthejoshmon said:

can't be arsed frankly

 

A stance I often take. I have nothing to hide, the general information they might gather about me or my system is information that's readily available or I would happily divulge anyways. I do suppose I'm part of the problem, though.

 

In audacity's case, for me, simply not updating to v3+ is the "can't be arsed" solution anyways, so win-win. :P

[Loud Silence]

Audacity just wants to get to know you better.

 

Seriously: i hope someone will find a way to abuse that telemetry thing, to annoy those bastards.

[Wavy]

6 minutes ago, Loud Silence said:

i hope someone will find a way to abuse that telemetry thing, to annoy those bastards.

It's free/open-source so I couldn't imagine that it'd be hard to do hehe

Edited July 7, 2021 by Wavy

[HavoX]

welp

 

I uninstalled Audacity last night, and now I might want to consider reinstalling Goldwave (and thank Arceus I still have that lifetime license I bought 19 years ago laying around!), despite its infrequent updates.

[TheMightyHeracross]

17 minutes ago, HavoX said:

I uninstalled Audacity last night, and now I might want to consider reinstalling Goldwave (and thank Arceus I still have that lifetime license I bought 19 years ago laying around!), despite its infrequent updates.

 

Why? You could just use a version before the updates or use this community build that was linked earlier which is up to date without the spyware. EDIT: or what NoXion said lol

Edited July 7, 2021 by TheMightyHeracross

[NoXion]

Or just block it with your firewall...

[HavoX]

uh

I was on an older version (prior to v.3) and never got a chance to use it. :shrug:

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Just a heads up, but MuseGroup is going to revise their privacy policy sometime soon.

https://www.musicradar.com/amp/news/audacity-spyware-claims

Apparently this was probably done as a response to the negative feedback they got.

Edited July 7, 2021 by Wadmodder Shalton

[DSC]

Just like what Ben Franklin said, sacrifice a little bit of liberty for a little bit of safety, and you get neither.

 

 

And yes, I know he said it in a different context, but it fits this whole ordeal perfectly still.

[leejacksonaudio]

Ars Technica has an article saying that the whole thing is overblown:

 

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/no-open-source-audacity-audio-editor-is-not-spyware/

[deus-ex]

1 hour ago, leejacksonaudio said:

Ars Technica has an article saying that the whole thing is overblown:

 

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/no-open-source-audacity-audio-editor-is-not-spyware/

 

Thanks for the link. I'll definitely have my eye on how Audacity proceeds further.

 

[Ar_e_en]

11 hours ago, mrthejoshmon said:

"If the product is free, you're the product"

 

 

Being free is only part of the appeal of these kinds of programs, being open-source is the other. As long as one big nerd who gives a shit exists - forks that remove this kind of data collection nonsense will come out for free. Hell, there are already a few forks out right now! Some more "interesting" than others:

 

[Ar_e_en]

6 hours ago, Wavy said:

It's free/open-source so I couldn't imagine that it'd be hard to do hehe

MuseGroup CEO: Man, this telemetry thing sure was a good idea :)

*One Month Later*

MuseGroup CEO: Why do we keep receiving midget porn?!

[Pirx]

their audacity, quite the irony.

[deus-ex]

2 hours ago, Ar_e_en said:

MuseGroup CEO: Why do we keep receiving midget porn?!

 

Because the result of the telemetry data evaluation says it's your favorite media, boss. 8P

[Serum]

There's far, far better FOSS available for audio, anyway. Ardour, LMMS, etc. Haven't seen any reason to use Audacity in years.

[TheMightyHeracross]

Ardour and LMMS are DAWs for music production while Audacity is a sound editor.

 

Again: completely different purposes. No one is making music in Audacity and no one is making video game sound effects in Ardour.

Edited July 7, 2021 by TheMightyHeracross

[Serum]

I'd be willing to bet that 90% or more of this "sound editing" that you're thinking of, regardless of what industry it's being done in, is being done in a DAW rather than a sound editor. No one thinks DAWs are exclusively for music production. Sound design/editing, podcasts, foleywork, everything is done in DAWs. It's a digital audio workstation, not digital music workstation.

The purposes aren't completely different, they're incredibly similar. In fact, the only difference is that one has a thousand-fold more features. If you're deliberately searching for something that's sparse on features, there's plenty of other FOSS like Ocenaudio.

Edited July 7, 2021 by Serum

[The BMFG]

14 hours ago, Maes said:

 

You know, I asked this question a long time ago to a certain person, and he pretty much told me "STFU and install the adware". Hard to conceal vested interests, huh?

you really do live up to your custom rank

[ENEMY!!!]

I 

45 minutes ago, Serum said:

I'd be willing to bet that 90% or more of this "sound editing" that you're thinking of, regardless of what industry it's being done in, is being done in a DAW rather than a sound editor. No one thinks DAWs are exclusively for music production.

Yes, I don't know for certain but I expect that this is probably true.  I've got into a lot of Native Instruments's stuff recently (at the expense of my own finances), and they have products like Thrill and Mysteria which are primarily for cinematic sound design.  They don't work with Audacity, they are typically loaded into a DAW with the aid of Kontakt or Komplete Kontrol.  Some of Mysteria's presets remind me a lot of the ambient sounds in Doom 3.  There are also videos about how music and sound designers do a lot of post-processing within their DAWs, of the sort that can also be done in Audacity.

 

I use the rather ageing Audacity 2.2.2, but I mainly use it for "just messing around", particularly with existing WAV files.  For example I recently experimented with giving Imp Trites a high-pitched version of the normal Imp sounds by using Audacity's pitch and tempo changes.

Edited July 8, 2021 by ENEMY!!!

[Biodegradable]

Interesting/depressing side story: The 4chan-based developers of the Sneedacity fork from the video @Ar_e_en shared hated the idea of competition so much, they harassed CookieEngineer (dev behind the fork @Sergeant_Mark_IV linked on Page 1) into abandoning their project. Apparently, the bastards managed to dox CookieEngineer and even had a physical confrontation with them at their place of residence where the clowns threatened them with an illegal butterfly knife. Violence did not seem to ensue, but those cunts successfully terrified Cookie into dumping their fork project. You can read about it in their own words on GitHub.

 

The Audacity kerfuffle isn't even a week old and we've already got bullshit like this happening.

Edited July 8, 2021 by Biodegradable

[Ar_e_en]

5 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

Interesting/depressing development: The 4chan-based developers of the Sneedacity fork from the video @Ar_e_en shared hated the idea of competition so much, they harassed CookieEngineer (dev behind the fork @Sergeant_Mark_IV linked on Page 1) into abandoning their project. Apparently, the bastards managed to dox CookieEngeineer and even had a physical confrontation with them at their place of residence where the clowns threatened them with an illegal butterfly knife. Violence did not seem to ensue, but those cunts successfully terrified Cookie into dumping their fork project. You can read about it in their own words on GitHub.

 

The Audacity kerfuffle isn't even a week old and we've already got bullshit like this happening.

Oh... fantastic...

-_-

[Wavy]

On 7/8/2021 at 11:13 AM, Biodegradable said:

Interesting/depressing development: The 4chan-based developers of the Sneedacity fork from the video @Ar_e_en shared hated the idea of competition so much, they harassed CookieEngineer (dev behind the fork @Sergeant_Mark_IV linked on Page 1) into abandoning their project. Apparently, the bastards managed to dox CookieEngeineer and even had a physical confrontation with them at their place of residence where the clowns threatened them with an illegal butterfly knife. Violence did not seem to ensue, but those cunts successfully terrified Cookie into dumping their fork project. You can read about it in their own words on GitHub.

 

The Audacity kerfuffle isn't even a week old and we've already got bullshit like this happening.

Why the hell would the idiots of Sneedacity get salty over cookiengineers fork of Audacity? FOSS isn't a competition and if it was then there would be real life flame wars between Doom source-port developers.

Edited July 26, 2021 by Wavy

[NoXion]

5 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

Interesting/depressing development: The 4chan-based developers of the Sneedacity fork from the video @Ar_e_en shared hated the idea of competition so much, they harassed CookieEngineer (dev behind the fork @Sergeant_Mark_IV linked on Page 1) into abandoning their project. Apparently, the bastards managed to dox CookieEngeineer and even had a physical confrontation with them at their place of residence where the clowns threatened them with an illegal butterfly knife. Violence did not seem to ensue, but those cunts successfully terrified Cookie into dumping their fork project. You can read about it in their own words on GitHub.

 

The Audacity kerfuffle isn't even a week old and we've already got bullshit like this happening.

What in the actual fuck. This is actually a whole lot worse than any of the telemetry shit that Audacity/Muse Group has gotten up to so far.

[The BMFG]

10 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

Interesting/depressing side story: The 4chan-based developers of the Sneedacity fork from the video @Ar_e_en shared hated the idea of competition so much, they harassed CookieEngineer (dev behind the fork @Sergeant_Mark_IV linked on Page 1) into abandoning their project. Apparently, the bastards managed to dox CookieEngineer and even had a physical confrontation with them at their place of residence where the clowns threatened them with an illegal butterfly knife. Violence did not seem to ensue, but those cunts successfully terrified Cookie into dumping their fork project. You can read about it in their own words on GitHub.

 

The Audacity kerfuffle isn't even a week old and we've already got bullshit like this happening.

damn. we really have people doxing each other over forks of audacity and threatening each other with knives

[HavoX]

6 hours ago, Wavy said:

Why the hell would the idiots of Sneedacity get salty over cookiengineers fork of Audacity? FOSS isn't a competition and if it was then there would be real life flame wars between Doom source-port developers.

 

Sneedacity team can kindly get fucked. I don't care

Yeah. Resorting to bullying tactics isn't the right solution.

Edited July 8, 2021 by HavoX

[mrthejoshmon]

Because yes, I would be more than willing to install software made by actual cyber stalkers and psychopaths who have actively hunted people down over petty shit, sure I would.