The term "VPN service" has become synonymous with "proxy service that allows circumventing region locks that is implemented using VPN". These services are often pretty scammy and have come in the news often for harvesting user data.
These VPN services have little to do with the traditional meaning of a VPN. They don't provide a private network at all, they just use VPN tech to implement a proxy service.
Tailscale is not a "VPN service" in that sense, they actually provide software for setting up a VPN between computers you control.
Yes, that's what my comment is about: Tailscale is about privacy from the outside world for your network, not the privacy and anonymity VPN proxy services claim to provide.
Something being private and having privacy mean very different things in practice. I can stand in the middle of a field that is my private land, but have no privacy from people on the adjacent road looking at what I'm doing or listening to what I'm saying.
No they don’t. VPNs allow _access_ to a set of subnets that might not be accessible otherwise - normally from external to private. Even though usually vpn traffic is encrypted it’s not a rule or an inherent property of VPNs - see GRE and PPTP for example.
