> all major ISPs are state owned That is not important. In Russia even private ISP are required to install a firewall to block access to sites that are spread

> all major ISPs are state owned That is not important. In Russia even private ISP are required to install a firewall to block access to sites that are spreading illegal information (and they are also required to install a device that is monitoring whether the blocking policies are followed). There is also a law that will oblige ISPs record and keep customers' traffic in the future. > When you're say Comcast, you only see the connections your customers make and accept, you can't see what VPN servers are doing. A user of VPN typically has a single outgoing connection to a data center IP and that is easy to detect for an ISP. There is no need to see the VPN server's connections if you see the user's ones. > where government control is less prevalent and the government is overtly democratic, false positives will result in anger in the populace In those countries there will be no censorship and no need for a VPN. Also, most people don't use tools like VPNs and use Internet mostly for sites like social networks. Even if there are 1% of annoyed customers that cannot use VPN or SSH, the rest 99% won't notice that.