I’m all for sanctioning them too. Economic sanctions are the bare minimum we should be doing to genocidal authoritarians.

Political agenda is a funny euphemism for imperialist invasion and genocide.

404 Media is worker owned; you should pay them.

Where are you getting free VM hosting?

The comment was in reference to VPN services. Sadly, given theres no right to privacy, you must pay to not be tracked.

i feel like most of your argument is rendered moot with encrypted dns solutions like DoH.

You misunderstand. Large ISPs run their own DNS servers which are preconfigured into the devices they sell. They are the intended recipient and you’d just be encrypting it in transit to their servers.

Another reason to use a VPN is that ISPs have every motive to sell your browsing data and they do. Unlike many other groups tracking you, your ISP inherently has your meatspace name, address, and payment information making their data easily collatable and very valuable.

If you use the default DNS on their provided router they can even tell if someone purchased an XBox, Playstation, or any other smart device just from update and telemetry lookups.

As the article says, by using a VPN youre using someone else’s ISP making that info worthless.

If your threat model includes preventing ad networks from gathering data, a VPN absolutely is a tool to prevent that. Do you have to pay for a service? Probably not if you’re technical enough; a VM in a data center is probably sufficient.