I'm a bit hazy on this and how a smart TV interacts with the rest of the devices in a home, but for example, I have a 55 inch 4K Samsung TV in my living room, which I barely use. Occasionally I stream a movie on it, use it for music when friends visit and sometimes hook it to my laptop as a large monitor through HDMI but that's it. About 80% of the time it sits unused. With all that in mind, I don't see how all of its internal spying and tracking software is even important. How much information could it possibly collect if what it gets is nothing more than sporadic generic movie/music viewing?
I don't see the problem with this particular technology if it's used lightly, unlike a smart phone, for example, which can pass enormous amounts of personal and location information on you even if you're not addicted to using it all day.
I'm currently in the "smart TV but don't connect it to the internet" crowd. I think there are three broad criticisms.
Violating your privacy in unsurprising ways that provide no value to you: obviously when and how you use it, possibly including screenshots and audio fragments to help HQ determine what you're watching
Degrading your experience: basically just ads in places you don't want them that didn't exist when you bought it.
Violating your privacy in "surprising" ways that provide no value to you, and circumventing your efforts to stop it: what other devices are present on your home network, where your home is, connecting to unsecured wifi (or soon mesh networks with your neighbor's TV) to do so.
IMO these are the things to defend against. If they're not happening to you then that's great. It's also fine if they don't bother you. For example, if 3 is happening to me I'm not going to go to the trouble of figuring it out how to stop it, though it will change my future purchasing decisions.
I don't see the problem with this particular technology if it's used lightly, unlike a smart phone, for example, which can pass enormous amounts of personal and location information on you even if you're not addicted to using it all day.