Speaking as someone who used to spec Vizio TVs a thousand at a time, they were going for quantity before they were smart. The profit margin on a Vizio TV was around 4% in 2005 and at quantities of a thousand, wholesaler discounts were 1.5%. Compare and contrast with Philips, who would offer you a whopping 15% discount in an environment where the traditional reseller discount was 40%. This is the principal reason my entire industry died while I was away. Of the 20-odd installers, distributors and consultants that were the ecosystem when I left it in 2007, three are still standing.

Vizio was the American face of LeEco, a Chinese National Champion, until even support by Chinese state funds wasn't enough to prop up LeEco's business model at which point they were absorbed by Sunac, another Champion firm. Vizio sued.

Vizio's TVs, as with so many Chinese TVs, are cheap for the same reason Solyndra couldn't make any money: the Chinese are subsidizing their production at a loss in order to take market share from Korea and Japan. From 2001 to 2004, 80% of the large-scale LCDs in the world were made at one Chinese factory and different brands just bought their panels off different places on the yield curve. By 2010 95% of the large scale LCDs in the world were made at about four Chinese factories and foreign firms only had access to two, as I recall.

Your Samsung TV is so cheap because the Chinese are forcing the world to compete on Chinese terms. Samsung is a Chaebol, and has never not been subsidized.

The data Vizio is selling isn't worth much. Every little bit helps, sure but it's like Amazon Kindles: would you pay an extra $20 to have the thing not show you ads?

Your arguments fundamentally presume that there are no externalities and that both parties are operating with perfect information. Take your 2% facial recognition opt-outs. The question is not "am I willing to forego the convenience of facial recognition for my privacy" the question is "am I willing to antagonize every gate agent and security official for my privacy." It's much like the TSA's porno scanners: when traveling alone, I would absolutely refuse to use them, require the TSA to pull me aside, stand there with my arms crossed while they ignored me for fifteen minutes, glower at them while they picked apart my luggage and call their supervisors over when they decided that I couldn't fly with cheese. "I don't want to use your porno scanner" is shorthand for "I want to fight the TSA" and both parties know it.

Opting out of an airline's system means antagonizing the humans you do have to interact with. Those humans control things like first class upgrades and, if you fly American, who gets bumped. Opting out of any system any airline comes up with gives the airline employees carte blanche to antagonize you at every point of interaction.

Privacy advocates see these systems as antagonism and bullying in no small part because the employees who enforce them use them for antagonism and bullying. To view it as a purely economic transaction is myopic.