You raise very very good points here. I agree whole heartedly with both of them.

#2 is particularly scary, why would anyone need to know when I and how often I run certain applications? Even if that data is anonymized.

I did hear a small victory mentioned by Little Snitch in the sense that upcoming versions may give them better access to block requests such as these that are currently locked down in the kernel. For reference, here is that tweet https://twitter.com/littlesnitch/status/1356612687631945730