i miss youtube fads

VPNs are, by and large, private businesses asking you to hand over all of your internet traffic while fearmongering about "hackers", "tracking", and "internet freedom". they are in the same business as the ISPs they claim to stand in opposition to (the business of renting out bandwidth and, often, selling your data).

i'm exaggerating a little bit when i say "you have to be a fascist to run a VPN," it'd be more precise to say:

the profit motives of a VPN provider will usually run counter to user interests (it will always be more profitable to sell data than to not sell data)

large internet businesses attract right-wing CEOs like moths to a flame (fascists want to sit between you and the internet, and a VPN is a ready-made depository of user data)

the claims most consumers have been told about the protection VPNs offer are misleading and harmful (a VPN can hide your IP address. for most users, a VPN will not thwart hackers, protect your personal information, or make you significantly harder to track)

what i mean when i say things like "all VPNs are fascistic" is that we have no reason to take any VPN provider at their word. there is a very low ceiling to the technical basis of trust with a VPN provider, so the only analysis you can meaningfully perform is of the quality of the service and its pricepoint. everything else is just marketing copy that boils down to a CEO saying, "You can trust me with your data". You can't.

when internet privacy is at stake, you have to assume that everyone has your worst interests in heart. at best, a VPN provider is a massive ISP with a charismatic leader and an effective marketing team working to consolidate as much user data in one place as possible, without any proof that this data isn't being collected or monitored. at worst, a VPN provider is a misleading scam preying on uninformed consumers, selling out customers at every opportunity, and freely handing over all your data to whomever you despise the most. the way i see it: in doing business with someone who wants your browsing data, you must assume that they are going to do with it the most evil thing imaginable.

there are a few genuine reasons to use a VPN (e.g. torrenting without getting threatening emails from your ISP, accessing region-specific content from elsewhere, obfuscating your browsing habits from the people you live with). they're handy, many people have practical reasons for using them, i use one every day, and they're no less safe than your ISP. but they have to make their money somehow, and i have no choice but to accept it. there's very little reason for me to believe the words of one VPN provider over another