If it's a Pixel anyway, GrapheneOS has a few nice security and privacy features that LineageOS doesn't have (yet?).

I think both are pretty great and much better than most alternates.

I'm so quick to install a custom ROM, I forgot the Meta spyware comes pre-installed on many phones. Ugh.

Check that "Filter lists > Privacy > Block outsider intrusion into LAN" is enabled and you should be fine

Meta should be broken up and its leadership barred from working in tech (or politics)

Yeah it makes me laugh when people talk about "don't use cookies" or "block ads" like companies didn't switch to more advanced techniques (like hell, I saw a paper where they could fingerprint you just simply by how you interact with the webpage) 15 years ago.

There is no way to use the modern web without getting fingerprinted.

and its leadership barred from working in tech (or politics)

Well “block ads” is also shorthand for “block as many 3rd-party requests as possible while maintaining the desired content” which absolutely improves your privacy and prevents a lot of fingerprinting scripts from ever loading.

That's the thing though, websites have gone away from "fingerprinting scripts" and have started finger printing you by what you serve, how and when you access it, and other things that they can all collect purely on the server side. The rest is just for advertising and data collection for improvements.

So you got all your friends, family and coworkers and acquaintances using Signal?

I prefer nightly because about:config is accessible unlike on the mainline version. Does Beta also allow that?

All of this is far easier to subvert than tracking scripts (and cookies and port scans) which literally as evidenced by the article in the OP are not techniques that companies have "gone away" from at all, at least not by entirely replacing them.

Most of the people I talk to regularly, yes. I also use Discord for less private stuff, less personal contacts, and for video chat when I play D&D. I text with my wife and one friend who I mostly discuss D&D with. Both of them have Signal if I needed to reach out to them privately or while abroad. For the record, I would like to get off Discord but audio and video quality are really important to me and I haven't found a good replacement yet.

I also have a seperate (company paid) phone for all work communications. There's ups and downs to that but it definitely contributes to my ability to be restrictive in what apps I put on my phone.

I feel like that's all you need. You don't have their apps installed, so the problem is already solved. If you use uBlock Origin to block their trackers, the problem is solved. So you've solved it twice.

Google doesn't do global roll outs with their updates. The anti adblock stuff especially. They target only some % of randomly selected users to spread confusion online, and I would guess their hope is to frustrate people into disabling ad blockers on Youtube after reading a bunch of misinformation and placebo bad advice when looking for tech support.

So you got all your friends, family and coworkers and acquaintances using Signal?

Only the ones I like.

Joking aside, yes. I've found that just letting a friend or relative ask exploratory "how bad can WhatsApp be?" questions for about five minutes gets them to start the switch to Signal.

I can't take any credit, Meta decided to lean in hard on spying on people.

You were shadowbanned for watching youtube in a web browser with adblock? Sounds excessive.

For those use Universal Android Debloater Or Canta with shizuku from android to install for the current user.

Beta does and unlike nightly doesn't update every night.

There's also Fennec on fdroid if you need something stable with about:config support.

Yes and no, I've treated the symptoms, but not the problem. All it takes is a trillion dollar company buying a new domain every once in a while to foil uBlock, and now that it's more known, anyone can create an an app that opens ports and listens for trackers.

Would love it if Firefox would let me block all requests to localhost.

Isn't that Proton's tagline?