Good thing we only ever have intentional leaks, then.
> Is it really that damaging to your reputation if someone could prove that you visited Pornhub in the last year?
LGBT individuals have killed themselves over being outed before they were ready to. I'd wager that any leak that could positively link a person to a site will also include at least some activity on that site. But even if not, there are other people that do have things to loose from being connected to pornhub in any capacity. The simplest example would be anybody seeking sexual health/wellness information; it isn't the core purpose of pornhub, but they are a source that somebody in a sexually repressive environment may seek info from.
> ... extreme societal taboo on enjoying erotic cinema in the notoriously puritanical country of... checks notes France?
I think we're on different pages here. Your argument seems to be "we should let the good countries have nukes" and my stance is "nobody gets nukes, period". France shows the world that it's possible and less human-friendly governments take that as an invitation to copy, but worse.
The only winning move is to not play.
> ...you are accessing Pornhub via your residential ISP or your mobile phone, then your ISP already knows you are visiting Pornhub.
Assuming use of ISP controlled DNS servers, the ISP only knows the account holder's name. They don't know if it's a neighbor/guest that's cracked/borrowed the WiFi ... etc. VPN or even just not using ISP managed DNS circumvents this collection.
> Given that ISPs appear to be basically trustworthy
The word "basically" is doing a lot of work there. If you could have said "ISPs are paragons of virtue that are always guaranteed trustworthy" I'm sure you would have. But you didn't so we both agree that anything that follows is predicated on a bad-faith premise.
I still have yet to see a good answer to "how do you prevent borrow/theft/buying/renting/selling of ID vouchers?"