FWIW it was never an issue for Linux distribution packages of Audacity. It was behind a compile-time flag so distro build scripts could have been changed to disable the telemetry. In fact the flag was disabled by default, so distro build scripts didn't even need to change and would've continued producing telemetry-free binaries.
Only binaries from Audacity themselves had the telemetry, which (as usual) is why you should never use upstream binaries.
Only binaries from Audacity themselves had the telemetry, which (as usual) is why you should never use upstream binaries.