Yes, it does.

Recommendations to purchase a smart TV but never connect it to a network are futile, as well.

Not necessarily. Never connecting it to the internet is much better advice than trying to block it’s connections. After that it’s not (usually) difficult to open the back of the TV and simply disconnect the wifi adapter itself. In my experience it’s either a separate board connected by a ribbon cable or the same type of wifi adapter that is commonly found in laptops. If the antennas can be accessed then so can the adapter.

The real user benefit will be very small

Time and time again alt stores have been used to distribute fake apps and malware on Android, and the victims are often those users who haven’t asked for sideloading and are unlikely to use it intentionally.

Can you offer any evidence to back up either of these claims?

All public searx instances:

https://searx.space/