This is quite the caricature of what's happening in that thread.
> The truth comes out.
The truth was never hidden. It's all laid out quite plainly here: https://julialang.org/legal/data/.
> If providing usage statistics is something that the Julia developers already know the vast majority of users do not want to do
There are three reasons someone might not opt-in: they don't want to, they don't know about it, or they simply don't care. To ignore the latter two is simply disingenuous.
> The rest of this discussion devolves into "Everyone else is doing it". The lone dissenter finally gives in to peer pressure.
That's certainly not my read of the 200+ post thread.