LG runs its own spyware already (content recognition).

This does raise the question if other Smart TVs with the same third party apps have the same issue.

The LG WebOS Store is a different beast.

Just browsing the list of apps raises eyebrows for even the most non-tech audiences. 99% of it is spam, with maybe 1% being well known apps like YouTube.

The rest are weird IPTV Players, Wallpaper apps. It feels like a portal into 2009 apps, but its not.

2009 indeed. Their app store was an absolute cesspit even in the early, pre-WebOS days and it hasn't changed much since, like, who would install any of this and why? Even the "official" app selection isn't the best. OS aside, they are pretty good TVs and quite popular, so I find this mind-boggling.

In the article they mentioned that Amazon and Roku block apps from using these SDK’s, and specifically after Roku recently made a change to disallow this kind of thing, many of the affected apps were withdrawn from the Roku app store. The implication is that those other smart TVs don’t have the same third-party apps because these apps were specifically created to act as a foothold for these residential proxy networks.

Vizio was caught taking screen grabs and sending them to a server a few years ago.

Basically all smart TVs do that. It is how they provide "contextual" features based on the content you're watching, like the names of the actors visible on screen.

Not really. They do it to sell to advertisers what you are watching