it's really hard for me to understand what the meaningful difference would be between penalty for opting out vs. bonus for opting in. don't those amount to the same thing, in practice?
They probably can't advertise service as $49.95, then add an additional $20 charge if you opt-in to the privacy plan.
They probably would need to at minimum advertise both prices in their marketing copy.
probably not a viable option because a VPN offers complete privacy from the ISP, and only costs $5/month.
Why is it hard for the majority of users to use a password manager?
Because most people on the planet are busy and don't give a damn.
It also takes a few minutes to change your smoke-detector batteries...
I'm not sure how you de-incentivise something like that.