This would be a huge improvement in the quality of these stories. There's a meaningful difference between something like Red Shell, where a few games gathered

This would be a huge improvement in the quality of these stories. There's a meaningful difference between something like Red Shell, where a few games gathered data that most others don't collect, and the stream of "apps log events!" stories which find some examples and present them as company-specific outrages instead of a nasty practice across the industry. Without understanding that, it's hard to have a useful discussion about tracking.