I had trouble finding exactly what MDD collects, but my assumption is that it collects data about the hardware in use and what packages are installed, at a minimum.
Okay. So you can't explain how you are harmed by this data collection, and you have an opt-out mechanism you can use to disable it anyway. What are we complaining about?
I'm not saying I can't explain harm, I'm saying that the presence or absence of harm is orthogonal to the issue.
What I'm complaining about is the evasion of having to get informed consent to collect personal data. Opt-out is a way to try to cover your ass while at the same time being able to avoid asking for consent.
The argument for it is always the same: if we make it opt-in, then not enough people will opt in. Which is another way of saying "if people won't give us permission to collect data about them, then we need to stop asking permission."
Well, yeah. If opt-in doesn't lead to useful results, then you may as well not have the feature at all. But they want the feature, because it helps them improve their software. So, "collect data in a way that preserves as much privacy as possible by default, and provide a mechanism to opt-out entirely" is the least-bad option. It gives them the data they want, and it provides an opt-out mechanism for people who don't trust them with the collected data. It seems like the best compromise to me.
It's not really a compromise. It's devs declaring that they deserve access to this data regardless of what users want, and trying to make it less objectionable. It remains the case that this is a back door method of extracting data from users that they don't really want to give.
If users didn't mind giving it, then enough would say "yes" to the opt-in screen that it wouldn't matter. But they don't, so these devs are trying to impose the very thing users don't want as forcefully as they can get away with.
