This is a tempest in a teapot. First of all, this is Fedora/Redhat. This isn’t a secret cabal wanting to steal your personal information for some illicit purpose. If fact, no one is proposing to gather any personal identifiable information. This is all anonymous info to understand how Fedora is being used and determine ways for improvement. The reason it is being proposed to be opt out is everyone knows very few people would opt in. This isn’t because people are adverse to providing this anonymous data, but rather that most people don’t care to change default settings. This is the reason why Google and Microsoft pay millions of dollars to have their search engine be the default in web browsers.
As it stands right now, if you use the internet in any capacity (social media, web browsers, email, reading news, playing games, search engines), you’re likely already providing more detailed, personal information that makes this proposal pale in comparison. The only way to avoid it is to do what Groklaw did several years ago and stop using the internet and email because of privacy concerns. It’s all about perspective. I seriously doubt that anybody complaining about this proposal is going to stop using their email or give up the internet.
Collect the data, have it be opt-out as proposed and use it to make Fedora a better distribution. The vast majority of users don’t care one way or another.