Is a person running an exit node responsible for the requests coming out of that node? Or will it just make for a very awkward conversations with the authorities if someone requests CP or terrorist paraphernalia via your exit node?

I’m not aware of specific case law, but there has been an ongoing case regarding a Tor Exit Node and copyright infringement that suggest the exit node hoster is not legally responsible for the data, at least in terms of copyright infringement. Who know about other actions

https://torrentfreak.com/tor-exit-node-operator-dodges-bulle...

Well, if you just run OpenVPN, I suppose that you're using the conventional algorithm.

Aah, yet more bullshit on the Internet. Source?

I know those freebie VPNs do that, but many commercial providers are still sane.

>>> and one fears they'd use other users' computers as exit nodes

>> This is already standard practice for commercial VPN providers

> I know those freebie VPNs do that, but many commercial providers are still sane.

True. There are free VPN apps that rope their users into a residential proxy net. The combined userbase is sold to bad actors as a residential proxy service.

This is not what major VPN providers like Mullvad, OVPN or even Nord do.

The first two have a good reputation. Nord, not so much. However, for all it's faults, Nord is no bad actor - they're not in the same category as a ResProxy seller.

I'm a user of Mullvad, I can get configurations for Wireguard and OpenVpn through my dashboard. This eliminates the possibility of being used as an exit node as I can read the wg config and see exactly what it does. I think other providers should do the same with their systems. It allows for high flexibility.

Have any others? I haven't seen such pushback on using a VPN before, so I'm curious.

This is nonsense. VPNs would be long out of business if this was true.