Audacity Is Spying On You Now

[Teo Slayer]

So, let me guess, it's a software which allows to you mix and record audio, and it turns into a spying tool? That's no cool

[TheMightyHeracross]

17 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.

 

OK I didn't want to be that guy but I'm gonna be that guy- we have absolutely no proof. And this story is extraordinary enough even for 4chan's standards that we need a bit more evidence before jumping to take this guy at his word.

[NoXion]

As a matter of law, sure. However outside of such a legalistic view, the denizens of 4chan haven't exactly earned themselves the benefit of the doubt.

[Beginner]

Spoiler

On 7/8/2021 at 4:13 AM, 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.

 

I've read diagonally all the nine threads linked in the post and, well... He'd better back up any of his wild claims with something more substantial than "dude trust me" because I'm calling bullshit on that. What's dumber is that drama was kickstarted by the developer himself after he couldn't deal properly with "funni xdddd" fork name getting the most votes in the poll.

[Biodegradable]

13 hours ago, TheMightyHeracross said:

OK I didn't want to be that guy but I'm gonna be that guy- we have absolutely no proof. And this story is extraordinary enough even for 4chan's standards that we need a bit more evidence before jumping to take this guy at his word.

 

35 minutes ago, Beginner said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I've read diagonally all the nine threads linked in the post and, well... He'd better back up any of his wild claims with something more substantial than "dude trust me" because I'm calling bullshit on that. What's dumber is that drama was kickstarted by the developer himself after he couldn't deal properly with "funni xdddd" fork name getting the most votes in the poll.

 

Indeed, lads. This is why I qualified my post with "Apparently" to leave room for scrutiny. After all, there was indeed no evidence provided and it's important to keep them critical thinking skills sharp. I personally don't care enough about it to do any proper detective work on some bullshit drama between the programmer and a bunch of 4chan shitposters. I just thought it was at least interesting on the basis of explaining why one of the Audacity forks we only just discovered suddenly going belly up. If the story turns out to be a elaborate and nonsensical lie, then I look forward to the YouTube videos explaining the nonsense. :^P 

[kinker31]

On 7/7/2021 at 11:12 AM, 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/

Good read!
...I also really wish "Panic!" wasn't the first response around here, but unfortunately exaggerations, half-truths, subjective interpretations, and sometimes even whole-cloth lies travel the world twice over ^{(even without the added boost you get from appealing to anger)} before the truth's even able to get it's shoes on.

 

EDIT: I should probably clarify I mean the internet in general, not just this forum exclusively

Edited July 10, 2021 by kinker31 : nuance

[RevenantFTS97]

On 7/5/2021 at 4:53 AM, Biodegradable said:

It's funny what you can get attached to, huh? Real shame.

Life always got something to surprise you, mon ami ;)

 

BTW, I have a question. I have Audacity version 2.3.2 installed on my computer. Am I free of the spying?

[Biodegradable]

11 minutes ago, RevenantFTS97 said:

I have Audacity version 2.3.2 installed on my computer. Am I free of the spying?

 

Yes, you're fine with anything older than Version 3.

[deus-ex]

1 hour ago, Biodegradable said:

 

Yes, you're fine with anything older than Version 3.

 

To put the record straight with regards to telemetry in Audacity, any version of Audacity up to v3.0.2 is free of telemetry and fine to use. Telemetry functionality will be implemented from Audacity v3.0.3 onwards, which is soon to be released.

[Biodegradable]

Cheers for that clarification, @deus-ex. I'll add that to the OP.

[scalliano]

Until such times as Tenacity pull their finger out and offer precompiled binaries, I'm firewalling that shit.

[Maes]

Well, there used to be oldversion.com just for cases like that, but it seems to be acting up these days (Cybersquatted? Hacked? DDOSed?).

[deus-ex]

Audacity v3.0.3 was released today. On Audacity's website, a Privacy Notice is provided which explains the new data collection feature in greater detail.

I could not find any information in Audacity's license/terms of use that restrict its usage for people under the age of 13.