Some good answers here already. Step 1 is always not to connect the TV to the Internet. You can go further and remove the WiFi daughterboard and/or desolder the chip.

Step 2 is to connect a TV box, but if you replace Samsumg, LG, or Google by Apple or Amazon, you have made no progress at all towards privacy.

Having researched this topic extensively, there are two main options for real user control and privacy. First, you can run an ordinary Linux distro on a mini PC, with a "launcher" such as Plasma Bigscreen. It's fine with an airmouse, but you will be mostly running upscaled desktop apps that aren't remote or controller friendly.

The best solution is actually to keep the mini PC and compile Lineage OS (Android TV 17) for a generic x86 target. This is a true degoogled Android TV distro that can, with some more hacking, run any ARM TV app from F-Droid, Aurora or other source. It is by far the best solution in that it is a true 10-foot UX and is compatible with almost all TV apk apps out there. The downside is that this not exist off-the-shelf. I spent a couple of days putting this together with Claude and it takes several hours to compile. I also found several upstream bugs in the process and will be submitting patches to the AOSP and Lineage.

There's a big gap between LG and Samsung, whose terms of service states that they sell your data to advertisers, and Apple, whose privacy policy states that they don't do that. Of course, there's an even bigger gap between Apple who can access your data if they wanted to or were told to and a home brewed Linux media box.

Unless you view privacy as all or nothing, I'd say replacing Google with Apple is progress. I think the majority of people are more upset at the idea of how their data is being sold for advertising than they are concerned about being able to act completely out of sight of any actor.