I would like to counter that: For that threat model (tracking/surveillance) a Trusted VPN is not useless, your ISP could be monitoring your dns traffic if not the IPs of the websites if using Encrypted DNS, VPNs mitigates that whole problem (thats just one example)
Also if you take a look at the other thread, while it is true that it could make you unique using it, if the behavior is expected it cant exactly be considered dns leaks, by defintion it is but it is at this point on a case-by-case/individual basis.