However, speaking from experience, relying on user feedback alone to drive development is doomed to failure.
People lie about what features they use, or will use - perhaps not maliciously, but they do.
Also, it simply doesn't scale - apart from sampling bias (think about the sort of people who would provide feedback), if you have millions of users (and many of these webapps/mobile apps do), you need to use things like automated bug reports, and telemetry data to get your stats.
There are sites that I do not frequent, simply because the ads are annoying, or I don't agree with that service's TOS - I simply don't use those services.
The examples you cited (Lenovo and Sony) are certainly ones I wouldn't use (although to be honest, I probably wouldn't have used them even before either - I'm still upset at Sony for the whole MiniDisc fiasco, and their sad obsession with proprietary vendor/lock-in standards).
If you don't want to use those services - then don't.
But the author complaining about Amazon Underground, when the whole point of it is that it collects app usage data (to compensate application developers) seems a big disingenuous.
If there is some wider issue around telemetry data and privacy implications, I'm certainly keen to hear it.