Yes, you need to trust the VPS provider. But many people already trust Amazon with their credit card number, their home address, which books they read when, and which passages they highlight in them, to say nothing of all the other websites they use that Amazon hosts; trusting Amazon instead of Comcast is probably purely an improvement for them.
Tor is not operated by the US government; it's founded by them and partly funded by them. One reason is certainly to spy on Tor users; another reason is so that their own spies have anonymous internet access to exfiltrate stolen information; a third reason is to enable political dissidents in countries like Australia with onerous censorship regimes to access uncensored information.
If you want to use a nested VPN chain that isn't Tor, how do you authenticate to the last provider in the chain, the one that knows which website you're connecting to? Are you using a VPN provider that you pay in ZCash? Or do they allow anyone to use their server without paying, like a Tor exit?
The VPN that I connect directly to, I pay with a credit card. They know who I am, so why bother trying to hide.
All other VPNs in my chains, I pay with Bitcoin that's been mixed multiple times. I have a bunch of Whonix instances that I use for mixing and storing Bitcoin. They all hit Tor through nested VPN chains.
Each one has an Electrum wallet. It gets its Bitcoin from another Whonix instance through a mixing service. In any given mixing chain, I use a different mixing service for each step.
So then, generally, VPNs that I use less directly get paid with Bitcoin that's been mixed more times. And I never use the same Bitcoin wallet to pay for VPNs at different "levels".
Edit: You say:
> But many people already trust Amazon with ...
I trust Amazon with all those things. As my meatspace identity.
But I wouldn't trust them with information that associates my meatspace identity with Mirimir.
For many years, I've recommended AirVPN, Insorg, IVPN and Mullvad. And formerly BolehVPN and PIA. There was chatter about BolehVPN's logging policy. And now about PIA's acquisition by a firm with an iffy reputation.
Those are all relatively old, compared to mainstream VPN services. So there's been more time for bad news to come out.
I've also used older ones, such as Cryptohippie and Rayservers. They're among the first OpenVPN-based services. Cryptohippie used to be quite expensive, with a ~low usage limit. But now its price is comparable to many others, and I don't see a usage cap. It's not as fast as many others, but arguably far better secured against adversaries.
Rayservers is extremely old school. They only accept gold-based electronic currencies (Truledger and Loom). Those are pre-Bitcoin. I'm not sure whether they still work.
There are others that I use. But I'm not going to talk about them.
Sorry, I just realised my question was super ambiguous as to which part of your post I was asking "Why" to. I was specifically asking why you go to such large efforts to obscure your identity.
You've answered that, but it definitely seems a lot of effort to go to.
It would be really interesting to see a how-to writeup so that other people can obtain the same levels of privacy without having to go through the steps of learning everything the hard way like you did. Also, it would probably help your privacy if there were other people doing the same thing.
Tor is not operated by the US government; it's founded by them and partly funded by them. One reason is certainly to spy on Tor users; another reason is so that their own spies have anonymous internet access to exfiltrate stolen information; a third reason is to enable political dissidents in countries like Australia with onerous censorship regimes to access uncensored information.
If you want to use a nested VPN chain that isn't Tor, how do you authenticate to the last provider in the chain, the one that knows which website you're connecting to? Are you using a VPN provider that you pay in ZCash? Or do they allow anyone to use their server without paying, like a Tor exit?