I’m not sure if “things have gotten so bad”. The native English speakers who actually use this stuff are probably the ones who struggled with writing in school and have always been terrible at it. That’s obviously not everyone though, a lot of people are still competent enough to type their own emails.

Yeah it’s one of the reasons I prefer Proton. Not many VPNs offer that functionality now, unfortunately.

Mullvad. Its only real downside is its lack of port forwarding and it passes all the Lemmy purity tests. You will never be downvoted for recommending it.