It's just an Android tablet, and it appears to be rootable: https://www.reddit.com/r/pelotoncycle/wiki/index/howto/root

Not sure how recent those instructions are.

this makes how locked down it is even more ridiculous.

commercially available single purpose computers are such a scam

Yes, they're an environmental disaster.

It’s with this mindset that I went the Zwift route with an iPad and my own bike. But boy is it hard to get everything to work together! With peloton you could just climb on and start pedalling. With Zwift there’s always a sensor that won’t connect at first. There’s a reason these tightly integrated systems are popular. I wonder if peloton would be this seamless if the tablet was open. Too many configurations make things messy for the typical consumer.

Without installing or rooting anything, if you tap the correct part of the about screen it pulls up a browser and you can go to netflix.com (there's instructions floating around for this, I can't remember the exact incantation)