> with the context mostly being HDD manufacturers who want to inflate their drive sizes

This is a myth. The first IBM harddrive was 5,000,000 characters in 1956 - before bytes were even common usage. Drives have always been base10, it's not a conspiracy.

Drives are base10, lines are base10, clocks are base10, pretty much everything but RAM is base10. Base2 is the exception, not the rule.