Is there any device you might connect your TV to that actually provides Ethernet over HDMI (at all? unprompted?)? People keep citing that ability, but I can't remember ever actually encountering devices that do it.
Even if this actually becomes widespread (indeed I am not aware of any consumer device providing pass-through network access through its HDMI port), I'd expect most devices to have a toggle for this or a privacy-friendly company like Apple might even make the lack of that "feature" a selling point.
The world is a sad place, the fact that we have to pay a premium so we don't get features.
We need companies to rise up against this bullshit. It won't matter until the customer base is educated in privacy.
We need a massive campaign to spread privacy awareness. Only then, there could be a market. Apple can afford to do this because they're big and they already have a customer base. A mid-sized company trying to sell privacy oriented products in a mass market is going to be left in the dust.
