Concluding that Element is a honeypot because it has a banner for opt-in analytics is taking an incredible leap. I’m sorry, but this is just a terribly unhealthy mindset.

• Nothing personal is send back to servers.
• This dialogue is already over 6 months there. They simply unlocked it for more languages.
• Signal is no honeypot, this is absolutely FUD.
• Element is no honeypot, anonymized statistics cannot be used to identify you. The firebase part was removed.
• The analytics are to track how many people use Element and some other useless things, not to deanonymize you.

Isn’t Element open source?

As long as it’s opt-in and they don’t harass you I don’t see the problem.

Compare this to companies that make this stuff opt-out and put the setting behind several menus and “really, are you sure you want to take money from me, I mean are you really really sure?” confirmations, then reactivate it at the next update.

Getting analytics isn’t a honeypot or an invasion of privacy.

Getting analytics without consent or as opt out is a honeypot or an invasion of privacy.

As long as a company or software takes steps to protect my data, asks me first, and doesn’t try to trick me into enabling it, I am fine with it collecting privacy preserving analytics on my usage.

Analytics are very useful for development. 99% of your users will not post about their usage of your app. They will either use it, or delete it if they get annoyed or rant somewhere/say the app is trash. With analytics (that respect privacy and are opt in), you can know what features are used by your silent majority.

Anonymous analytics are useful for developers though. As long as it’s opt-in and clear there’s no problem.

basically everyone these days ask you analytics, the best you can do is saying no and use open source stuff