While google use CWV as a part of pagerank (higher scores get higher ranking) most site owners will demand higher scores. They don't care why their site scores bad, or necessarily want any of those useless javascript trackers and animated widgets removed. They want a higher score and you had better well use every trick you can think of to get them there or they'll pay someone else to do it instead.

This is not a developer issue, this is a capitalism issues. Websites are used to make money, ergo they must rank high in search engines. A google engineer framing this as anything else is simply naive. SEO is a high stakes game, and they are the chief architects that made it so.

Don't get me wrong, personally I am happy that Google have forced sites to follow standards, move to more modern solutions and stop using so much javascript and other cpu and bandwidth hogging resources, but while they also continue to demand tracking of the world they are also contributing to the bloat, and being just a little bit hypocritical: "no bragging about scoring well in lighthouse, but it would be a pity if your scores went down and nobody could find you in a search ... ".