> regular people, who don't commit crimes and aren't a high value target for government agencies.

> While traveling to not really democratic countries the government can't spy on you (in many muslim countries the typical US/European browsing behavior is probably illegal).

Aren’t these two threat models already completely different?

IMHO if an authoritarian government considers what you’re doing to be a crime, you should not be doing it over a VPN you saw advertised on a billboard