So recently I heard that Audacity, a full-featured audio editor, was
recently purchased by a company. That's weird, but the headline was
that they added spyware capability, euphemistically called
"telemetry."

They're going to send data to Russia, law enforcement, and seemingly
anyone with clout who asks. OK. This is how to kill a project branch
101. I'm absolutely dumbfounded. This isn't MS buying it. This is some
nobody music(?) company that I've never even heard of. Did they think
this would work? A privacy policy for an offline app?

The solution is simple: use a fork.

Once again my faith in humanity takes a hit. Capitalism needs to be
forked to have ethics and respect for consumers.