I buy smart tvs because they have ads on them, which makes the initial purchase price cheaper. Then I just connect it to my media server and never bother with the smart features.
Exactly. If you don't connect your smart TV to your home Wifi network, it can't connect to anything and exfiltrate your data. I doubt manufacturers are secretly putting LTE modems inside TVs.
This is not true. It connects to open wireless and updates your software and probably ads. There was a post on here a while ago about it which I can't find from a preliminary search.
Yes there is a reply that takes you a reddit comment [1]. However now it appears as though that commenter deleted their account so I don't know the validity.
