Smart fridges don’t even improve storing food.

I won’t buy a smart fridge until they can play Tetris with the food inside.

We’ve seen how this goes: Eventually if you need a new fridge, you won’t have a choice.

Nah, fridges are simple enough that I guarantee it’s trivial to rip all the smart bits out and still have a functioning fridge. Or just buy and old one, my grandparents still have their fridge from like 1970s and it still works.

I guarantee it’s trivial to rip all the smart bits out and still have a functioning fridge

Unfortunately, it is not. The “smart bits” are doing the job of a control board in a dumb fridge. If the tablet shits the bed, you won’t get cooling until you factory reset it and get the tablet working again.

I’ve never had a fridge with a control board, it’s usually just a compressor connected via a two-connection control thingy which prevents the fridge from starting too often, and a relay that’s controlled by a thermostat. If they managed to replace that with a control board… Why?

Just about every fridge sold (meant for residential use, in the US) in (at least) the last 10 years has a control board in it. The only exceptions are the really cheap and small top-mount fridges, and even then it is only the ones with physical knobs that might not have a control board. Anything with buttons or a display has a control board. Many appliances with knobs also have control boards (sorry to everyone buying laundry based on “it has knobs, I trust it more”).

As for why - because they can. What are you gonna do, not own a fridge? Keep paying someone to fix an old one (or learn to fix it yourself)? Very few people will do that. Most people will bend over and pay.