Perhaps you are right, I could be remembering it wrong (but really I don’t feel like wading through that comment-section), the telemetry was just the tip of the iceberg for me, violating GPL licence and things like using google and yandex are among many reasons I just don’t trust them with my music.

It only became opt-in when people found out.

And it’s not the only problem I have with Audacity, this is from an article in slashgear

"…For example, it says that it collects data necessary for law enforcement but doesn’t specify what kind of data is collected.

There are also questions regarding the storage of data, which is located in servers in the USA, Russia, and the European Economic Area. IP addresses, for example, are stored in an identifiable way for a day before being hashed and then stored in servers for a year. The new policy also disallows people under the age of 13 from using the software, which, as FOSS Post points out, is a violation of the GPL license that Audacity uses."

The fact that they even considered this, made me lose trust in them. Tenacity FTW.