Is that "telemetry" or just "low-effort achievements"? Lots of modern games have low-effort achievements, in part due to requirements to put in achievements even when the game developers don't want to do so. (Some games do a great job integrating achievements or even making entertaining gameplay elements out of them; others, not so much.)
In the case of RetroAchievements, perhaps someone was enthusiastically adding achievements to that game without thinking about how fun they'd be?
It's telemetry, and achievements have been used that way pretty much as long as they've been a thing. See Dan Teasdale's 2009 "Design Lessons Learned from Rock Band" https://vimeo.com/7087821 The relevant part starts at 32:35.
I absolutely expect that lots of games are using achievements for telemetry.
It would surprise me a little, though, if someone retroactively adding an achievement to an old console game is doing it for telemetry purposes.
My original comment was based on reports from some indie game authors talking about their development experiences, and going "ugh, I have to add achievements, fine".
Yea uh... I don't think it's for telemetry. These aren't the original developers of the games and most aren't even professional devs, they probably just think it's cool to add those achievements.
In the case of RetroAchievements, perhaps someone was enthusiastically adding achievements to that game without thinking about how fun they'd be?