Seems like the simplest compromise is to just force the user to answer the question one way or the other. No default - ask them "do you want to enable telemetry

Seems like the simplest compromise is to just force the user to answer the question one way or the other. No default - ask them "do you want to enable telemetry? We'll use it for X..." and only continue the upgrade or install or first-run once they have provided an answer one way or another. Will it cause friction, with users and with tooling and automations? Absolutely. But I think the costs of that friction is not a tremendous ask in terms of avoiding the dark pattern that is defaulting to yes. In a perfect world, at least. In this one, end users are never going to win an argument about telemetry with google-borne systems, and definitely not for actually benign telemetry systems like this.