I'll venture, it's a natural if misdirected immune reaction from people who are all too aware they are being tracked ceaselessly and relentlessly, all day, everyday, not to their benefit. So sure, this one piece of software swears its own tracking is just for debugging purposes... But why risk it?

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."

First, it was never meant to be opt in.

Second, that's like saying you don't see the problem with the Nuremberg laws.

Taken out of context, they're bad.

Taken in context, they're the first step towards something much, much worse.

And when such a canary in the coalmine dies the rational response is to not understand how it died and proceed further down the mine.