Comment by hrunt

It is /exactly/ because the media company can promote its partnered VPN. A huge driver of user signups in the commodity personal VPN space is affiliate referrals, and usually those affiliate sites are "review" or "how-to" sites. While the affiliate relationship is usually stated, it implies that the site makes money off the referral. In a lot of cases, the site actually makes its money by preferred placement of the VPN provider on their site. A VPN company often even writes or edits the content for the site.

If you're a VPN company, it's actually cheaper for you to own the sites and populate them with your own product than it is to pay a site for placement, especially if you own four or five VPN brands. Heck, sometimes, they don't even acquire sites. They just start them and spend money to get them to rank well.

I don't trust review sites in general (even if they don't contain paid recommendations, they still rank by which affiliate will net them more money), but I /really/ don't trust sites that cover or rank VPN providers. Personal VPNs as they are pitched to consumers are just shy of snake-oil, and almost all the content written that touts them is revenue driven.

Background: I previously helped start and worked for a VPN provider.