people who are motivated to have their data recorded

I mean, it’s not like it’s sensitive information. hw-probe excludes such information.

I know about the tool. I’ve used it. I don’t report my system data. I’m not “motivated” to have it recorded. I couldn’t care less about their data gathering.

Since you’re relying on people actively reporting their data they need to be motivated to actually do it. That doesn’t mean they’re afraid of what is being gathered (though have you seen the Linux community?) just that they haven’t, for whatever reason, taken the time to do so.

For the rest of it - I was just giving sample potential sources of bias. I wasn’t proposing any of those as actual flaws. Just that their polling methodology couldn’t account for any of them or whatever actual biases may exist in their data. It’s just a list of self-report crap.