I'd guess this is because it only works in ssh PTY sessions. So it would have no effect on tunneling or when piping arbitrary data through ssh to a non-interactive remote command (unless you use the -t switch to force PTY allocation even when stdin is not a TTY).

No I don't think so. I mainly and pretty much constantly use SSH for logging in. I'm not one of those 'cattle not pets' guys lol.

And when I port forward I usually don't even tunnel it over SSH because all my stuff is on tailscale so it's also encrypted.