The problem is, the "small group" is also the same small group who figures out how to disable or firewall the telemetry. So their use cases end up being ignored completely.

That's the downside to force-feeding telemetry to everybody without respecting individual user preferences. Some people won't like that, and will find workarounds to disable it. While those clearly aren't the users you need to pay the most attention to, they are among the users that you least want to ignore or disenfranchise.

The irony being that if telemetry had been voluntary, most of us would never have bothered turning it off.