punished the users by having them install non-essential drivers manually?

If the drivers are being loaded by the monitor and not something like windows update, M$ has virtually no control over it.

the drivers are not loaded by the monitor. they are loaded by windows update. like when your motherboard loads bloatware into your windows install, that too is actually windows update doing it for the request of the motherboard. it would be pretty wild if peripherals could install random software without coordination of the OS