Try apologizing for your poor behavior. You didn't "communicate poorly;" you offended people who used your software, and betrayed their trust. You can either make this thing opt-in, or "ease the opt-out process" and continue being a jerk.
I personally don't care about the tracking, since I don't use homebrew, but corporate f-you non-apologies annoy me. No one is complaining about "poor communication;" they're complaining about a feature they dislike. An actual apology would be something like "I apologize for adding this feature, and I am removing it."
Try apologizing for your poor behavior. You didn't "communicate poorly;" you offended people who used your software, and betrayed their trust. You can either make this thing opt-in, or "ease the opt-out process" and continue being a jerk.