You're right, of course, but a VPN at least lets you make sure that the service that can snoop on your data doesn't want to snoop on your data, because they know you'll just leave them for another, more privacy conscious, provider if they do.
VPN providers have incentive to compete with each other and commitment to user privacy is an important selling point. ISPs have zero commitment to privacy and almost no reason to compete since users have no choice.
You're right, of course, but a VPN at least lets you make sure that the service that can snoop on your data doesn't want to snoop on your data, because they know you'll just leave them for another, more privacy conscious, provider if they do.
Only if you can tell that they're doing so. If they create two companies with no apparent connections, how would you know that VPN company A was selling your data through Marketing company B?
We are now getting pretty far down the rabbit hole.
Is this possible in theory, if your packets go in all directions (IPs) encrypted, not sure how you reassemble, but in theory, would the information then be whitewashed? I guess I'm asking, is it possible in principle, can you leak no information (including metadata) from IPv4?
I don't agree with that analogy. The VPN takes away the ISP's snooping abilities, but gives snooping abilities to another company that wouldn't otherwise have it.
