Just look for any VPNs that are advertised specifically for China, Russia, or Iran. These are the cutting edge tech, they may not be so privacy-friendly as Mullvad, but they will certainly work.
So the solution is no-name providers using random ad-hoc hackery, chosen according to a criterion more or less custom designed to lead you into watering hole attacks.
Right.
Perhaps you should stop and think about why people living in countries where governments actually censor a lot hardly use these "well-established providers" to circumvent censorship. Tip: it's not because they're stupid.
The part about the unreliable ad-hockery is also true, albeit less critical. The fact is that you don't know what your adversary is doing now, and you definitely don't know what they're going to to roll out next. You don't have to be stupid to decide to take that risk, but you also don't have to be particularly stupid to not think about that risk in the first place, especially when people are egging you on to take it.
The greater purpose underlying both is to keep people from unknowingly getting in over their heads. I have seen lots of people do actually stupid things, up close and personal, especially when given instructions without the appropriate cautions.
And "services and providers" doesn't necessarily mean commercial VPNs. In fact those were way down the list of what I had in mind. Your own VPS is a "provider". So is Tor or I2P (not that those won't usually run into problems). So is your personal friend in another country.
Please re-read my post then. I do not call to look for VPN for your or anyone's particular country, I call to look for VPNs for these specific countries because they have the current bleeding edge blocking tech, and if VPN works there now, it will 100% work in every other country. If you're in China, you don't have to look for Chinese VPNs, some of Russian ones will work there too.