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Louis Rossman would love to hear from you. Here's a recent video where he covers the exact same situation as you with another company where the purchasing company disables functionality behind a subscription.

And is actively trying to prevent hackers from running stuff locally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66j9dsPhAjE

Nest itself did this too. My gen 1 (pre-Google) Nest did forced OTA updates. Once or twice it bricked itself; fortunately it was still able to receive updates and Nest corrected the problem.

Then they couldn't resist fiddling with the UI. Every new update changed the UI such that I had to relearn how to operate it.

That was the last straw, so I disconnected it from my wifi and just used it as a standalone thermostat.

And THAT'S why my smart home stuff is on a seperate VLAN that isn't internet connected!

Isn’t that illegal? like under consumer law maybe?