I'm not sure what other companies are trying the same thing. Staying with companies that definitely peddle your data and privacy versus investing in a company who hopefully promotes a better way seems pretty straightforward to me. What hardware and software vendors should the 'smart' customers be buying from?

A US-based VPN (or really any VPN) is only going to help someone so much, but what's wrong with Purism?

They have a distro that doesn't spy on you and hardware switches, and their upcoming phone seperates the modem as a USB peripheral to mitigate the modem's firmware.

I don't know much about Purism. What do you have against them?