But that’s the thing. When that Video was made, almost all of the advertising was focused on the same BS the article is disagreeing with.

I remember lots of NordVPN ads by uninformed nontechnical creators just reading the provided script. Saying that Balaklava wearing hackers will steal your credit card data just by being in the same cafe as you, and only an expensive VPN subscription can protect you from that.

This sort of advertising is what Tom Scott critizied back then. IIRC he even said that there are real use cases, but that you shouldn’t believe the fearmongering. Same as the article.

The fearmongering advertising was the problem, not advertising the service itself.