I'm a little surprised at how accepting people are here relating to the Amazon feature in Ubuntu. I would assume that there are a lot of critical thinkers here as comp sci people tend to have that mentality. Possibly not!
The usual excuses are "we can turn it off etc" or just shrug it off and carry on.
Have you thought long term? If you don't make a stand with this feature, one will eventually be added which can't be turned off or is far more invasive.
If spyware is a continuum from onerous to innocuous, then at the moment Canonical's string sending/sharing is somewhere near the innocuous end of the line. But it's still within the continuum.
By excusing it as innocuous and (for now) flippable, we shorten the line.
And then shorten the line again for the next thing that finds itself happily closer to the innocuous end of the line.
The usual excuses are "we can turn it off etc" or just shrug it off and carry on.
Have you thought long term? If you don't make a stand with this feature, one will eventually be added which can't be turned off or is far more invasive.