The common “why doesn’t someone just make a “dumb” TV for people who don’t want this crap?” question has an easy answer. Dumb TVs do exist, they’re called “commercial monitors” or “commercial displays” and just show the audiovisual signal given to them by whatever else you hook up, in the manner of old TVs before additional apps or spyware were a thing. As implied by the name, stores and other businesses use them to show what they want without the added guff of the apps and ads they wouldn’t be able to fully control.

Important detail: commercial displays tend to be fuckoff expensive compared to smart TVs of comparable size, quality, and feature set.

“Hey,” you may be thinking, “how do they get away with charging so big a premium for an appliance fewer features?” And you wouldn’t be out of line to think that. However, what’s going on is more insidious.

The higher price of a “dumb” TV is more correctly thought of as the real price of the appliance. The reason you pay so much less for a comparable “smart” TV is because the companies behind all the apps and spyware, the preinstalled shovelware apps which get you interested to subscribe to their services (Netflix, Hulu, Prime, etc.) and/or send you advertisements, as well as the spyware companies who profit from all the data about you that gets phoned home as you use the thing, pay the hardware manufacturers to put their shit software onto the device at the factory. That money made by the manufacturer from the shit companies goes, at least partially, toward lowering the price of the TV to entice you to pick it up at the store instead of a competitor’s TV.

Look at that big chunk of money you save buying a smart TV over a comparable dumb display, and consider that amount as what it’s worth for the shit companies paying for the opportunity to monetize you and your household.

Then, if you have the wherewithal to pay what is now easily considered a ridiculous amount more for an appliance that isn’t part of a system meant to take permanent advantage of you, you can do so. Alternatively, you can find clever technological ways to buy the cheaper “smart” one but counteract the ways in which it monetizes you, whether technical ways like jailbreaks or simpler methods like never letting the thing onto the Internet no matter how much it begs or enshittifies your user experience. (This strategy will stop working once it becomes cheap enough for the shit companies to just include their own connectivity with internal wireless that doesn’t need your network.)

It’s a continuing battle.