I'm a normal person who watches sports streams and maybe 2 years ago I downloaded a torrent of some art movie. My ISP is Comcast. How does your advice apply to me?
Using a VPN shifts your risk. Your local ISP can't see as much of your activity, but another company that probably has a business model of reselling your data to governments, intelligence agencies, and ad companies now can. If your concern is masking piracy, maybe that shift of risk is worthwhile, but you still want to avoid some of the more obvious bad actors[0]. You certainly should not have all your internet traffic going over a VPN all the time.
If you're at all worried about being targeted for political speech or you're part of a targeted group, then you need to be more careful. This map is a bit outdated, but it does give some insight on who to avoid [1].
Ironically, Mullvad is one of the more trustworthy VPNs out there and still the one I'd recommend.
What? This is something that's incredibly well documented at this point. Many VPN companies operate as arms of data broker and media companies or they resell data to them. Some of them didn't start out that way, but with the way acquisitions have played out, that's where we're at now. I replied in the parent comment if you're interested.
If you're at all worried about being targeted for political speech or you're part of a targeted group, then you need to be more careful. This map is a bit outdated, but it does give some insight on who to avoid [1].
Ironically, Mullvad is one of the more trustworthy VPNs out there and still the one I'd recommend.
[0]: https://www.koi.ai/blog/urban-vpn-browser-extension-ai-conve...
[1]: https://windscribe.com/blog/the-vpn-relationship-map/