If what you care about is encrypting traffic, then set up WG yourself and have a free tier / $3/m machine do the relay. Or your router. It's so easy there's really no excuse not to.

If what you care about is anonymizing your traffic, then you need someone else's computer. That's the idea, to mix your traffic in with a bunch of other traffic.

I'm pretty sure that 50% of VPN companies are run by spy agencies

Some of the rest are probably run by criminals.

Oh yeah, let us not forget Facebook whose vpn app was created mainly to snoop on you other network activities

Edit: remember that you can roll your own temporary vpn: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials?q=vpn

It is really nice, OpenVPN is good, but it is definitely harder to configure, and slower. I also like that it is hard to shoot yourself in the foot with Wireguard given it is really hard to mess up and create an insecure config.

ProtonVPN is also at least a bit better than other commercial VPNs, specifically the "Secure Core" feature is quite good. Proton is one of only like two or three companies I actually trust when it comes to their security and honesty.

If a VPN isn't sufficient for your threat model, then you need to be using something like Tor, I2P, or Nym.

Most of the internet consists of somebody else's computers, doesn't it? Not that this makes shady VPN provider practices okay.

But if you would want a more secure alternative, there are options like Tor and I2P right? Or do you have something else in mind?

I think the point is that public VPNs don't provide much additional security. Basically they just let you act from a different location on the internet. Is your traffic safer egressing on to the public network from your current location, or from the VPN's location? In some cases the VPN may be better. In others, your local network makes more sense.