and they offer both crypto and literal envelopes full of cash as payment methods.

and they provide a guide for connecting to their onion service over tor.

This is just an issue of someone not understanding their threat model or the services offered.

For porn (in most of the us), the goal is geolocation spoofing to avoid ID requirements, not anonymity.

That said, I doubt edge achieves even that, since they likely keep their servers in the states. I was more talking about VPNs broadly.

I use one for Usenet, but maybe I’m too cautious.

If you’re at home or whatever it offers effectively no benefits

Porn.

Also my ISP sniffs packets enough to send copyright complaints, so I’d rather outsource that exposure to a country with privacy laws.