Like all those “We value your opinion” customer feedback surveys. Yeah, you value it at $0.
If you have two feature-equal printers, but one doing data-collecting and $5 cheaper than the other, which one do you think will be sold out first?
I wish that manufacturers be forced to also show default/required data requirements on their products similar to how they already display minimum/recommended hardware requirements. This would at least increase consumer awareness of the issue, at best maybe abolish it entirely...
Force manufacturers to allow third party ink and to disclose data collection and you get a much different, better for the consumer, printer market.
So it's helpful when it's someone else's problem?
It is not helpful when the absence of competition forces you to accept one devil or another and little power (or time) to understand how your information is being gathered and used.
So what do you propose then? Every website have a paywall and block poor people?
If you aren't interested in sharing information without selling visitors data, your service isn't viable without charge, or nobody is willing to pay you, everybody is probably better off without what you're trying to offer.
I suppose the big problem is that everyone gets into the data broker business when they get big enough these days. It fundamentally changes the expectations of your relationship with the company.
It's a lot like the Vizio/Samsung/etc Smart TV privacy fiasco. Back when you bought a $699 21" Zenith tube television, their business model was transparently "we make and sell televisions." The up-front cost was sufficient that they weren't too concerned with a trickle lifetime recurring revenue. There's no real place in that business model to focus on a data gathering side hustle, and you as a consumer had no reason to think they'd be interested that you kept the knob on UHF all night.
Similarly, if HP's business model is legitimately selling printers and printer accessories, there's very little information they need but are not getting from their existing "what retailers order for restock" and "direct sales and ink-as-a-service" channels. Even the obnoxious personalized 'you print lots of photos, buy our photo paper' ad doesn't require remote data submission; you could calculate it on the fly locally and pop up a banner, just like with 'you've printed 29 pages, time for a new cartridge!" I could see system and document info for crash log purposes, but even that's a one-time permission request you can make on demand.
I guess what's amazing is how much the tail has come to wag the dog-- they'd rather creep out people and run the risk people finding out losing the $100-plus-years-of-expensive-consumable sale in order to get that sweet sweet consumer-profile data worth a few dozen cents per-user in quantity.
Honestly, I want to replace my arthritic LaserJet 5 with something offering duplexing and more than four real-world pages per minute, but new printers seem to be doing everything they can to be a distasteful purchase instead of an exciting one.
It is not in consumer products, period. Unless you are paying me for this information (in actual money, not discounts, not services) telemetry should be banned.