There might have been some miscommunication between us. I fully support the fight for privacy and buy nothing that’s not truly under my control. I do not have a vacuum robot, I run Linux on all my computers, GrapheneOS on my phone, the only ‘smart’ thing about my car is its ability to detect when it’s dark so it can turn on my headlights, that sort of thing. But I don’t know you and your original comment didn’t make it clear to me whether you engaged in defeatist speech or were advocating for privacy.
The icon thing can be worked around with something like heimdall. I host my own docker container of it and just set that as my startup page in my browser. Looks much nicer than a blank page and everything happens in my own network.