That is a valid point. I don't think Yelp are bad people, just that in the context of this story, they're the "bad guys" doing the data collection.

If you count any sort of data collection as "bad", then you'll never help improve the products you use, can't get mad about features you use being removed, and have no right to complain about bugs. Data collection is important for software developers to improve their products, but it can be done in good ways. There's no visibility here on what Yelp is collecting, but I doubt it's that bad.