Almost all Antivirus softwares are collecting Data otherwise they could not provide such a good protection. 
They need Cloud statistics and stuff like this.
The community option has always been for submitting file samples. The updater has always sent some brief info about its operations during the update and nothing has changed about it (but I believe the word “Statistics” is kinda unfortunate, as it doesn’t contain the kind of information mentioned below - like malware detected, number of files scanned, number of infected URLs visited etc.). It’s basically the info about the versions (avast! and its modules, virus definitions, OS, …).