My previous washer was about 30 years old when the tub finally rusted out at the support. It would have been 25 years had I not pathched it twice with water resistant epoxy when it first sprang a leak. It had a simple mechanical timer knob that handled the sequencing and timing of cycles. Couple of other knobs set the water temp, spin/wash speed, and optional rinse. It was dumb as a brick and cleaned my clothes.
Now my $1200 LG washer has WiFi (I NEVER connected it on purpose), beats the shit out of everything you put inside, and heavily soiled items come out stained and half clean. I emailed LG asking if they offered you access to their dumb cloud API and the answer is No unless your are a partner company. I hope this thing does not break down in the next 10 years but I doubt that.
Speed Queen still makes quality laundry machines, buy those next time. No WiFi!
I think some appliances (TVs, perhaps?) have been caught connecting to any open AP they can find, even if you don't give it credentials to your network.
When these need replacing, I'm buying a speed queen.
How do you change that, though? Our grandparents repaired things because they were expensive. In the 50s, a washer & dryer cost $500. In today's money that would be over $5000. And income has gone up even more. Purely in economic terms it has become considerably less appealing to fix a broken appliance.