I'm in the same boat as you, I really really liked NanoBox because I could just not worry about deployment and I could stand up and tear down my whole infrastructure quickly after I was done with testing.
I was also concerned that NanoBox had gone quiet for a while, and I am a little scared of there being a DigitalOcean lock-in.
However... I love DigitalOcean and they seem to be going from strength to strength - looking at their block storage, managed databases and Kubernetes offerings as things I want to get playing with soon.
I'm confused by this, how do you avoid commercials. From watching the off NFL game there's even like pre-commercial commercials. "Brought to you by <some american car company> and <drink> the official drink of <whatever> and McDonalds - I'm loving it".
Most of the points linked in the buzzfeed myths article are linked to gov.uk sources. Do you feel that these sources are themselves propaganda? I'm not sure which of the points can be confirmed or debunked now except maybe for the oil revenue one.
As for the second article, how to spend your extra £1,000, yes, that one is atrocious.
You could run an Alpha character out there now. If you've not played in a couple years there are now free to play account types with ship / skill restrictions. You can't log an Alpha and an Omega (Subscribed) accounts on at the same time, but it could give you an indication if the coast was clear.