Wrt 1.: A lot of "common non technical people" believe it makes browsing more secure and private, often in ways which VPNs do _not_ provide. And evading region

Wrt 1.: A lot of "common non technical people" believe it makes browsing more secure and private, often in ways which VPNs do _not_ provide. And evading region blocks is a neat additional benefit (through I also would argue that the need to avoiding region blocks varies quite a bit over time and depending on which country you are in). Also due to nation specific news sometimes spreading international, some people in regions where there is no major abuse of power of network carriers might think there is. E.g. similar how e.g. people in countries with only a small problem of police violence often think of it as being as bad as in the US due to how many "US sourced" stories they directly and indirectly hear. Lastly some VPNs try to provide additional security measurements, like blocking connections to known malicious sites and servers. The problem with such services is that they can be abused, and do you trust them? At least I do not trust many VPN providers.