VPNs are an authentication technology. Just like with emails, if someone – /e.g./ ProtonMail– promotes its own implementation by saying it's Swiss-based, it means the underlying technology isn't safe to use for the claimed use case.
VPNs are super useful to:
get a static IP address, to self-host, and
connect to an enterprise intranet.
But they don't protect against State surveillance. They can however hide your IP address with BitTorrent, which prevents every PeerTube video you're watching from being recorded. (The Mozilla VPNis a good one. It's based on the Mullvad VPNinfrastructure but Mozilla gets a share to develop Firefox, upon which Tor is based, that's an easy and convenient way to support them directly.1
To compare with the Tor project, the Tor developers are struggling to get money in. VPNs (as flaky anonymity technology, if not a scam) are a business model in themselves.
1id you know that Mozilla had given $500,000 to Riseup.net