What we should do is pay a small boy to go around town breaking windows, and then grandmas should pay someone to either replace their windows, or to install some sort of decentralized window-protection hardware. This would create a lot of low-level ok I can't keep typing these words anymore.
What we should do is stop cramming processors and networking hardware into everything willy-nilly just so some advertising company can make 1/20th of a cent off my eyeballs.
Your suggestion that the solution to the problem should be handled downstream, out of my grandma's wallet, is frankly insulting.
What I'm not suggesting is that we should pay a little boy to run around shitting on people's lawns and turning over trash cans. In fact, I'm going to be bold and suggest that we not do that.
edit: as far as I can interpret, your argument seems to be that every company using advertising to make money, and making their televisions smart in order to help them to sell more advertising, should just stop. That's not a plan.
† ok, technically incorrect; our putative granny could have a xeriscaped lawn. And our society could get better at packaging.
Legislate then to stop. That’s a plan.
We the people hold a common understanding that our God given time upon this planet be for the benefit of the almighty, ourselves, family and neighbours, and that surveillance and advertising companies are predatory in nature, disagreeable in behaviour, and hereby forbidden on pain of all directors and shareholders thereof being put in stocks and having rotten fruit threw upon their faces and their abusively gained assets confiscated and distributed amongst the surveiled.
Which is why they should pay someone. The reason the tech should be open and decentralized is so that Samsung doesn't have control over it, the grandmothers can choose a vendor they trust.
This would also create a lot of low level tech employment, a B2B market for management software, a market for physical support, etc.. I could manage servers for at least 200 grandmothers; 200 grandmothers would probably mean 5-10 calls a day, a quick check of new threats and exploits, a bit of research into new features that my grandmothers might be interested in, a check on their backup status. I might have to call a service to visit one of my grandmothers and make sure that their physical appliance is installed correctly, or to replace it.
I always think that this criticism is due to a lack of imagination. I know how to take care of a home server, and I'm lazy about it. I would be entirely happy to send somebody $20/month to do it for me, as long as that person were my employee, not some massive corporation who works against my interest.