[TulliusCicero]

> it's disappointing and disheartening to not be trusted to choose my own preferences and explore the options in said app/service.

Except you are: if you're the kind of user who will take action and 'explore the options', why does it hurt you to have an opt-out instead of an opt-in? You would end up explicitly making the same choice anyway, right?

This is exactly why opt-outs for these kinds of features make sense: the average user would otherwise never even know the feature existed, and power users that are bothered by it are the ones who are willing to go into the options to disable it.