Nailed it!

If you assume that people actually want to do the right thing if it’s easy, and then you make it easy, it usually works.

Even when this isn’t enough, it should still come before anything else.

I hate them so much for all the reasons you mention and a few more.

But there are times that I prefer them over a 2-3 minute vidoe padded to 12-15 minutes for monetization.

Yep, all my smart thermostats are zugbee. No phoning home by design, so I don’t have to worry about missing functionality by not giving them internet connection.

And that goes for almost all my smart home. I only have wifi things when I couldn’t find a realistic zigbee option.

I do NOT want my thermostats to phone home. I don’t see any value of that.

But they are connected to MY smart home system (Hone Assistant), and THAT is accessible from the internet.

I get the remote monitoring and control that I want, and they don’t get any of my data. Perfect!