Running a VPN for 10 people is very different from running a heavily-advertised VPN for thousands of people.

You got away with it because those 10 people are trustworthy and didn't use the VPN for malicious activities (or they managed to fly under the radar).

Now try actually advertise that VPN like the big VPN providers do and see how you fare. You'll get your droplet and entire DigitalOcean account shut down in no time, and the administrative overhead of having to deal with all the abuse reports and support queries will make it unsustainable.

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> The insane 3 year or 2 year deals are obviously subsidized by continuous sign ups, meaning constant in your face ad placement is necessary.

So essentially it's a pyramid scheme then.