"Just look at the poor leftist Youtubers pushing NordVPN and tell me faces don't scream Stockholm syndrome" - I don't even understand what this means... I watch plenty of apolitical youtube that is sponsored by Nord (Mentour Pilot), am I missing something here?
I'm assuming the point the author was shooting for was that there was something a bit odd about political commentators pausing their rants about corporate greed and people over profit to deliver paid pitches for a software company, with the added suggestion they tended to look awkward doing it.
But yeah, it's clumsily delivered and a random political swipe probably doesn't help people trust a browser extension...
If I were to guess I would suggest that he might be referring to the modern pro-censorship leftists and NordVPN could be seen as a work around for that censorship. I think a lot of demand for VPNs is from right-wing people who don't want their posts about climate change, vaccines, immigration etc. to be tied to their home IP address. I think the modern view is now 'if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear' where before it was important that personal anonymity was maintained as a default even by those who don't need it so that a dissenters (those that do need it) could maintain anonymity and not have that behavior to be considered grounds for suspicion.
