There's a mountain of difference between "can" and "will", and it's called "trust".

For decades, people have been using software on their PCs which can essentially delete all their data or worse, yet what are the chances of that actually happening? Of course malware would exist, but at the same time, the unrestricted nature lead to a seamless exchange of data and creativity unhindered by any bureaucratic permission-maze.

A world of "perfect" security in which malware and cybercrime cannot exist is basically a dystopian police state.

And we have found better ways on a newer platforms not to implicitly trust apps with unfettered access to user data and surprisingly enough, no one has started rounding up people en masse for looking at cat videos....

... That's how computers work, yes. If you have a way to make a VPN that doesn't see its own traffic, I'm all ears. In the meantime, I trust a VPN more than my ISP.

What gives you more trust in your VPN provider than your ISP?

Did you also trust Onavo’s VPN back in the day?

My ISP has told people they're tracking users, and can get away with it because there's effectively no competition. The bar is low.

I am, indeed, necessarily careful about VPN providers.

Have you personally audited your VPN provider? Or did you go by a pinky promise that they would track you and sell your data?

On a practical note, which VPN provider can reliably not reduce the speed of my gigabit up/down connection?

In my personal case, yes I have because I'm running it myself on a VPS. In general, though, the commercial providers that I would use have stood up to court orders / warrants, so I reckon they're fine.

Unfortunately, I don't have a fast enough uplink to comment on speed concerns.