There was a recent DND episode about Android boxes sold on Amazon that came with access to pirates streaming services out of the box. Not surprisingly they were loaded with aggressive local network scanners for exfiltration among other things like being a botnet node. Despite this being proven and shown to people a lot of them just didn't care, many of the reviews just suggested turning it off when you wanted to do online banking or something!

This didn't particularly surprise me (unfortunately). Your average phone is loaded with spyware from "legit" American companies but plenty of them come with carrier spyware, adware or shady apps that auto install. Most people seem to be apathetic about this or have given up so the Chinese botnet device (that reliably delivers lots of illegal media) is just making the same kind of trade they're already making. Look at all the shit about smart TVs in the news recently that people have hardly stopped buying, those don't even come with free pirate NFL games. They've been told they were being spied on for years already and their response was that you're a tin foil hatter for bringing it up, they have nothing to hide or they don't care.

You almost can't blame them though. Even you put a lot of effort into protecting yourself from this stuff you're exposed anyway. Why should they do without their free streaming services when government agencies and companies that they don't even have a direct relationship with lose all their PII a dozen times a year and the DMV legally sells a dossier on them for 1.5cents?

The industry is dirty but people would ABSOLUTELY host a residential proxy in exchange for free tv/movies.

It'd be an instant "yes" from everyone making under 80k a year and for many making more.