people still believe that VPN is a safe option

What does that sentence even mean without context?

Safe against whom? I'm pretty convinced a VPN is safe against :

• your boss or manager if you somehow browse on your corporate network
• your flatmates or family member if you browse at home and do not necessary trust them or whomever setup the router
• your school
• the manager of the cafe you are using WiFi on

I'm pretty convinced might be safe against larger scale surveillance :

• your ISP if it is not doing deep packet inspection (and that's pretty much per country basis AFAICT)

I'm pretty convinced might NOT be safe against professional individual surveillance :

• state level professionals using exploits and actually knowing your name, not your nickname
• your VPN provider or the cloud provider you rely on to install the backend side of Wireguard or OpenVPN

So... no I don't think anyone can make your VPN pointless. Clearly the random person sitting next to me in a cafe can not. Only few people with the technical expertise or power can do that. None of that matters though if you already volunteer your information elsewhere publicly on private platforms like Instagram or YouTube though.