If you really want to do the world some good, substitute by something that
a) isn't boring and overused
b) isn't almost indistinguishable from what you're substituting
c) isn't non-free with onerous licensing terms especially when used in the web
d) isn't worse and unoptimized for screen, non-print purposes
Now queue the font snobs' complaints ;)
I just dislike looking at the weak copy of Helvetica that Microsoft calls Arial, so I will replace it with some neo-grotesque that is close to the designer's intent. Helvetica is an easy choice.
(Note that Arial itself was intended as a replacement for Helvetica when Helvetica is not available. Now that design in Arial is more common, it hardly feels wrong to replace Arial with the original -- and more-pleasing -- Helvetica. Personal preference yes, but what higher motivation is there?)
Don't get me started on Verdana.
But they did a pretty good job with Tahoma at least.
a, b: The point is to correct what amounts to a a slight, unsightly, visual error. What you are suggesting is repainting the room in a new color, because there was a spot missed when applying the first layer of paint.
c: I already have a license for that font and I am not forcing it on anyone else. This is like saying "Don't boot your mac into MacOS - it's non-free!" I know, I paid for it.
d: I have a retina display. My pixel density is big enough that I don't need to bend the font to fit into the grid.
But my vote for the print (and PDF) typeface that has I would be very happy to never see again (at least in anything that isn't a mathematical formula) goes to Knuth/TeX's abominable Computer Modern.
It’s actually not about font snobbery, but about mocking Apple about their design standards.
It’s a joke, not sure why people are taking it so seriously.
Google fonts is full of usable stuff. Just have the courage to pick something that isn't mainstream yawn-inducing boredom. The other points are almost automatically satisified. For GDPR reasons, copy the font file to your webserver (caching won't work anyways in modern browsers).
But if you really really want something safe, easy, no-thinking-required that works for almost everything, on most devices, is readable on screens, looks modern but sufficiently boring and inoffensive, has big unicode coverage: use Roboto.