Thankfully, for Arch and Arch derivatives, the AUR package removes this before building.

https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=atom-...

I've found VS Code a great alternative to Atom for that level of editor (fast and light). Don't tell me it does something equally as awful?

You should know better; it's made by Microsoft. However, like with Atom, you can disable telemetry:

https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/supporting/FAQ#_how-to-di...