$3 ink from a bodega

That’s actually a fair price for 3rd party replacement.
I used to work at a computer shop, and people only ever bought the cheapest available cartridges.
We also used to do printer repair, do you know how many printers had to come in because of shitty ink?
The answer is zero.

And anyway, in your example the printer manufacturer has no business tracking your ink usage, whether it’s by spying on you and phoning home, or recording this info in the printer’s memory.

People being excited about getting spam from a scammer.

What a time to be alive…

That’s a very charitable way of looking at DRM.

Company’s PR dept saying “we didn’t do it” is not proof of anything.

If they’re not blocking 3rd party cartridges, why even implement DRM?
Do they have so much extra money that they’re developing features they’re not planning to use just because they’re bored?