Probably not. VICE is hardly a stranger to publicity stunts that go nowhere.
Not to mention, even if it is real, we’re talking about an outlet where their rap-sheet includes CEO/EICs sending date rape drugs to male advertisers, knowingly hiring alleged rapist and known sexual predator Terry Richardson(he was found out in 2004-5 or so, and they worked with him right up until 2010) and putting him in a position to continue his predatory behavior, literally selling content and editorial control of it to advertisers for about 30K, no separation between ads and editorial including writers having to censor stories about advertisers or prospective clients, making a big announcement about transparency and then immediately firing a bunch of people while trying to keep it secret as possible, burning sources through incompetence, plagarism, making up stories whole cloth, I could go on. For quite some time, in fact.
With a record like that, even if they did make a mesh community ISP, I wouldn’t connect to that shit if you paid me. At best they have proven themselves to be blindingly incompetent and rather careless, at worst, they’d sell you out for profit in a hot second. Well, actually at worst, just think of all the nasty things someone with less than nice intentions can do with root access and a pretty direct connection to your computer+internet connection, but I don’t have the technical expertise to even imagine the extent of the very profitable damage they could cause that way.
