I don’t either but I think the blame is often misplaced, most of them literally don’t know any better. They go to an ad network’s website, check a box agreeing to the deal, and receive a prompt to read on air.

Now of course they should be doing their own due diligence, but this is the state of podcast advertising right now (and has been for a while, see: BetterHelp controversy)

The bullshit is coming straight from the VPN providers themselves, fear mongering for profit.

I think the blame is appropriately placed here, no one is forcing them to take sponsorships without due diligence. It’s not exactly secret knowledge that these VPN providers can be scummy.

I feel sorry for average non-technical people who get hoodwinked into VPNs. The majority of people have absolutely no need for a VPN for "privacy" reasons, particularly these days with wide adoption of TLS which prevents ISPs from reading and/or injecting content into streams.

Modern cases for a VPN:

1. The few countries/regions with severely corrupt governments/ISPs.

2. Accessing region-locked services; eg. another country's Netflix.

I use the TunnelBear VPN because it has a 500MB/mo free limit and I use their different servers in different regions to check the localization of prices/text on my sites.

I feel like if someone is hawking wares on their channel they should at least use it/have faith in it/do their research. Tom Scott has a great video about VPN sponsorship and how he turned down a sponsorship from a VPN company because of the copy they wanted him to say and debunks the ads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVDQEoe6ZWY

Mad respect for him, and if he ever suggest a paid product in the future i'd trust him. Conversely i really dislike when they clearly don't use the product, or are shilling a product that i KNOW is bad - looking at you raycons. I can't help but lose respect and definitely distrust every sponsorship they have.

tl;dr integrity matters, raycons are really not that great, and i'm tired of hearing the same copy over and over: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb58b7ob2yQ

Tom missed the biggest factor in VPN companies' exaggerations - that they call themselves "VPNs" because of the positive connotations of "Private", even though they're just proxies and have nothing to do with VPNs.

...and even the ones that use actual VPN software don't actually have anything for the "N" part of "VPN", so they are still just proxies.

But I guess it makes it easier to refer to than "proxy for all protocols."

I've only used my work VPN, so I just assumed commercial VPNs had similar mechanics. They don't lease IP addresses?

There's a tunnel from your computer to the VPN entrypoint, but the point of a VPN is to become part of another Network of computers that is Private and could thus not be reached otherwise. There's no private network of computers for these "VPN" services. They're just a proxy to the internet.

VPN ads that are truthful and delivered with integrity are still disrespectful and disgusting, because advertising is a cancer.

Advertising isn’t black/white. I want to see ads telling me there’s a local farm selling produce a few minutes from my house. Or that the new Marvel movie is coming out in a couple months.

These things bring value to my life. How else would I know about them?

I think that's pushing the boundary on what can be considered advertising these days. It's a question of choice. Advertisements are foisted upon (mostly) unwilling viewers to convince them to buy things they don't want or need, or at least to cause them to make a choice based on brand identity rather than a rational evaluation of the value provided. This is bad.

What you're talking abut is something else entirely. If I'm watching something on Hulu, and the show stops to show me an ad for a Marvel movie coming out in a couple months, that's intrusive. If I deliberately go to YouTube to watch the trailer, that's a free choice. They're such completely different experiences from the user's point of view that it's a misnomer to refer to both as "advertising".

Likewise, my parents have solicited mailers from local groceries because they want to know what vegetables are in this week. There are all sorts of websites and other mechanisms for letting people know about events and opportunities going on in their area. Me sitting down to watch some sports or something and getting bombarded by ads (by Arby's, not a "local farm") is not the same situation.

If you want a bright line, imagine a world with no profit motive. Would we still have movie trailers and fliers to let you know about local farm produce? I think so. Would there still be television advertisements and lies about VPN services on YouTube videos? Obviously not.

Yeah, even Cancer isn’t black / white. That concentrated mass showing up on your CT scan might have a chance to be co-living peacefully for the rest of your life. And removing them is actually causing your body more harms.

Yeah, I don’t think many people seeing those ads realize a VPN is almost like choosing a different ISP.