Personally, I am ok with the explicit choice with “dark pattern” that Michael proposed, provided the data is fully de-anonymised (e.g. differential privacy), as discussed in another breakout topic, and if we release the data publicly no one would be able to de-anonymise it. I would go so far as to accept explicit opt-out if this is the case. Link to other thread.
However, my main concern is how this looks to people we’re trying to attract, as very well discussed by Joseph from the Fedora Marketing team. Link to Joseph’s brilliantly argued comment. The optics on this are horrible, and if we force a suggestion in the installation setup, the privacy-minded people would think that we might be playing tricks like this all over the OS. Coverage on Fedora would just label us as another telemetry-pushing distro that is being strongly manipulated by Red Hat (despite this likely being unfounded). Unfortunately, it’s not only the truth that matters, perception does as well.