>"Why is your TV spying on you somehow worse than your Roku, AppleTV, or whatever spying on you?"
Because this spying in the article is done on ANYTHING displayed from ANY device on the TV. That is MUCH worse than the spying performed by any one device, where you can control it better or just replace it. And those devices can only spy on things you do on THOSE devices, not others. I don't know about other people, but my "TV" is connected to a TiVo, a Roku, a Wii-U, a bluray player, my Linux computer, and potentially other devices).
So yeah, this stuff is much, much worse in the TV. So like I tell everyone- never connect your TV to the network, period. Just use it as a display, like a TV really should be in the first place- a monitor (and sometimes speakers; I use a "real" AV system that has real speakers located all over for real/full/rich surround sound).