When people are shopping for an appliance, price is often the largest deciding factor. HP prices their inkjet printers low to lock in that sale. But in order to still earn a profit, they try to make money from the ink, so they lock down the firmware to block 3rd party ink.
People hate how expensive ink is, so they created Instant Ink, a subscription model. If you do a decent amount of printing, especially color printing, you'll actually save money. But it's widely misunderstood. You're not subscribing to ink, you're subscribing to printed pages. And so there are people writing nasty articles about HP because they'll pay $3 for their first month of Instant Ink, HP will send them an ink cartridge, they'll cancel their subscription, then have a Surprised Pikachu face when their printer then refuses to print with the Instant Ink cartridge, because for some reason they thought they owned the ink cartridge that they paid $3 for.
And of course, someone will take a picture of their printer refusing to print with the Instant Ink cartridge that they're no longer subscribed to and post it to /r/AssholeDesign.
And yet, HP still sell printers in the EU.
In America, corporations run the government and the propaganda machine. They've convinced half the country that any restrictions on corporations are attacks on the Free Market™ (and your freedom!) and are a slippery slope to SOCIALISM!!.
Unfortunately, several of the other printer manufacturers seem to have copied HP's approach. With similar results.
The Epson EcoTank range (eg specifically refillable ink tanks) seems like a good idea, not that I've used them yet. :)
They even went to the point of modifying their Amazon listing for their old label printer, so it has all the good reviews for the old product, but selling the new crap DRM-locked garbage product.
So all the newer reviews are people complaining, but the star average is still high for the moment.
Moreover, I seem to recall reading here on HN a fair bit about smart refrigerators and Samsung smart TVs with ads, and I can't see those revenue models going away anytime soon.
Look at HP. They used to be the go-to "reputable, always reliable" brand for printers. Heck, if you can still find the old Laserjet 4xxx series printers they're still good.
But HP in the last decade or so are on most people's shit list.