"Since Garmin at least made money on the hardware, collecting my health data is just icing on the cake; for Strava, my health data is the cake."
I dont see a difference between what Garmin and Strava do to your data. Ultimately, Strava is trying to provide you some more insights using your health data. It ultimately depends whether you want it or not. Isn't this the same with all the services these days?
> Ultimately, Strava is trying to provide you some more insights using your health data. It ultimately depends whether you want it or not. Isn't this the same with all the services these days?
If this were all, they wouldn't need dark patterns to manipulat you into giving them their health data even though you actually want something completely different from the service.
Your heart rate is health data. Uploading an activity includes pulse data, which is useful to analyze to see performance etc. Not having health data on Strava would make the service meaningless. Stop spreading this FUD all over the thread. It's not a dark pattern, uploading this data is exactly what Strava is made for...
> uploading this data is exactly what Strava is made for...
Do the users know this as well?
Skimming Strava's homepage, all the UI that is shown is either generic social network stuff or about presenting location data - and this was also what OP expected the service to do.
The only text on the page that could imply health data being used are general statements about how Strava can "analyze your performance" and help you getting better.
There are no mentions at all about particular health data points such as heart rate. (But plenty of mention of location data points such as position, elevation or speed)
This does not indicate at all that collecting and analyzing health data is the main thing that Strava does.
> It's not a dark pattern, ...
Putting a user setting behind three redundant confirmation screens with confusing options is a dark pattern no matter the context.
If you skimmed Strava's homepage, the first feature listed [0] is "Track and analyze every aspect of your activity." with an animated heart beat. If you have to misrepresent Strava all the time to get your point across you should consider it might be invalid.
I was looking at www.strava.com, not the /features page.
Even there, it's just this one image and the mention of "analyzing performance", the rest of the page describes the social network and location tracking aspects.
I'm not disputing that Strava offers services that analyze your health data. They clearly do and this wouldn't be a problem by itself. (If they don't pass on the data)
What I find disingenuous is that the marketing paints this as an optional feature that you could activate in addition to the main areas "location tracking" and "sports/health-focused social networking" - however, the actual sign-up flow (according to the OP) seems to go from a different premise: That analyzing health data is actually the core functionality of the site.
If they were marketing this as a site where you can analyze your health data, all would be fine. But then you could just make providing health data access a mandatory step of sign-up - users probably wouldn't be surprised since the service was obviously useless without access.
But pretending you're a general health/sporting portal with optional analysis functionality, then nagging the user into giving you access is shady.
Note: I didn't verify that the sign-up flow is still like this, so they might have shifted from being health focused when OP tried to sign up to being located focused now, I don't know. This would be better, even though it's not clear to me why they would have needed to nag in the first place.
It's not that incidental. From what I can tell, Strava's business model is about selling users more detailed analysis of and insight into their own health and performance data.
I think what the author is trying to say here is that Garmin has a way of making money off them—selling hardware—and thus doesn't need to sell user data as well. Strava has no way of monetizing outside of selling user data.
I'm not sure this is entirely true though, I've seen hardware companies sell out their users for a few bucks. Likewise, Strava has ways to make money from users—via Strava Premium services.
I have no idea how well these particular companies handle data specifically so it's hard to say.
In addition to membership fees, Strava also gets revenue from marketing partnerships. Brands pay them to set up custom "challenges" which Strava users join to try and win prizes or contribute to charity. They also have sponsored integrations with several device vendors so that every activity you record with one of those devices is a clickable ad.
Curious about which part of my post you think is false. Perhaps you didn’t read my entire post and just blindly posted before you got the the second paragraph?
I dont see a difference between what Garmin and Strava do to your data. Ultimately, Strava is trying to provide you some more insights using your health data. It ultimately depends whether you want it or not. Isn't this the same with all the services these days?