They gave independently verifiable information that you can check for yourself:

• privacytools.io gives bad advice vs privacyguides.org
• privacytools.io uses sponsored products
• the team moved to privacyguides.org

Those should all be something you could check for yourself. If you're already interested in privacy tools, you should be able to verify as least some of that yourself.

That's fair to say. My source is someone who was indirectly involved with some of it, and an admin/moderator I trust of another privacy/security group. And like @sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works said, some of these things you can verify for yourself.

In cases like this it's often hard to find the truth, and there's always an amount of he said, she said; all I can say is that I personally trust these people, fwiw.