> They've been doing this for a long long time

Apple has only been doing this for 3 major OS releases, or about two years.

On Windows you can run WPD[1] and turn it off, and also firewall the hosts it communicates with using the OS's built-in firewall.

Big Sur won't let you block Apple apps now.

[1]: https://wpd.app/

I would be surprised if Debian did anything like this. There is popularity-contest, but they are very explicit about it and it's opt-in. Other than that anything else would be considered as a bug.