Yes.

The original function of VPNs was to give you a secure backhaul to your office when you are off-site. This is still a valid use case.

Then people started to discover they could consume regional content by using a global, public VPN. This is still a valid use case, however content providers could easily detect and block this if they were incentised.

The last case, which was never true was security. Stopping your ISP or government from monitoring what you are doing. Yes your path to the exit node is probably secure, but with the 14 eyes agreement as well as many other agreements, this simply means you are being observed and reported back by a different agency to your home agency.

How many VPNs do you hold the private encryption key for?

Now, NOSTR VPN's, where you hold your own key 🤔

But you're still being observed at the exit node.