The use case is people that are urged to view something that is blocked (torrent / adult / gambling). They want it now, and they don't want to get involved with some shady company that slaps on a 2 year contract and keeps extending indefinitely. These people instead find "free vpn" in the web store and decide to give it a try.

VPNs are just one example. How many chrome extensions do you have that you don't use all the time, like adblockers, cookie consent form handlers or dark mode?

Me personally? I'm using Firefox with EFF privacy badger. No others.