No, that’s not telemetry. That’s just server logging the requests.
Telemetry is when a program running on a user’s machine connects to some server in order to send it information it collected. Spyware is when it does it without the consent of the user.
I kind of agree with the video in the OP that telemetry is not necessarily bad. But I think it needs to be specified exactly under which conditions telemetry is not bad, and I can think of these two conditions that would make me not consider telemetry bad:
- It is disabled by default and has to be explicitly enabled by the user. This is to ensure consent by the user.
- It shows to the user exactly what info it is sending and every time it does it. If this is annoying, there could be an option to disable it, but it should be enabled the first time it happens.
What I vehemently disagree with the video is about snapd not being bad. Yes it is. Snapd is the devil. I’d rather run windoze than have snapd installed. The only distro that treats snapd properly is Linux Mint, bless their hearts!
Also, he is completely wrong about Arch. I use it on all my production machines, never had any issues. It does not break, because I’m not an idiot (at least not an exceptional one), and even if I were, I’d still use timeshift.