The VPN industry is generally pretty shady & tries to sell users services that do them no or even negative good by making silly claims.

When a service isn't being honest in their advertising, it makes you think about what else they're being dishonest about.

I used Mullvad for a few years and was largely happy with it. I got a multi-year deal on ProtonVPN that was too good to pass up, so now I'm on that. Overall, I think I liked Mullvad better so may go back to it when my time is up.

I used NordVPN back quite a few years ago. Once they started advertising on cable tv shows, I knew it was time to jump ship. A VPN service spending that kind of money is either burning through cash too quickly to survive, selling user data, or a government honeypot.

It shows scale and also makes them a bigger target for lawsuit which get's settled through access.

Check out what vpn have been sued over the last year (they all have been no log companies) and you will quickly realize that logs are being shared by anyone of size. The smaller the service the better.

It affects my decision making because the stuff that gets plastered across podcasts and YouTube videos is often crap the hosts themselves clearly haven't even used. Just my opinion based on the times I've actually researched the products I've seen sponsoring content. YMMV