En-dashes, set off with spaces, are an acceptable substitute for unspaced em-dashes in some style guides. See for example this Canadian government guide: https://nos-langues.canada.ca/en/writing-tips-plus/en-dash.

The use seems to be more common in British than in American English.

Because most people are ESL and really don't care.

I didn't even know there are multiple types of dashes.

I did know about multiple types of quotes because they kept breaking code on blogs. Still didn't care, but at least I learned how to spot and fix them.

Really looking forward to having the wrong kind of dash in code, but at least with current tech that seems like it won't happen.

Why wouldn't they. Never studied them. Never even thought twice about the dashes in a sentence. Didn't realize they were different till like a few months ago when everybody suddenly started focusing on how "AI" it makes everything look

I would think to most people, (myself included!), it's just a 'dash'. A sentence was written with a dash - you could just ingest and read past it, like a comma.

Not saying this is accurate usage, maybe just real world usage.