A VPN is also the only consistently good way to do ad-blocking on mobile. Mullvad, for instance, recently introduced ad-blocking, malware-blocking, and tracker-blocking in its mobile app. Previously I had to rely on the painfully poor ad-blockers that Apple allowed in its walled garden, and ads got through all the time. With the VPN, I am able to visit websites with virtually no ads appearing.
FWIW, my family, friends, and I have been using nextdns on idevices, consoles, “smart” tv to almost completely block ads and tracking via dns black holing. Pihole does the same if you prefer selfhosted. Recalcitrant apps like YouTube have no known solution because they take care of their own dns resolution. But for most other use cases (browser, telemetry, iOS apps) it works very well and I almost never see any ad anywhere.
