For all that, I have no doubt that a true privacy expert reading this article will laugh at all the things I’m missing. And that’s kind of the point: In the United States, and in some other countries, the deck is stacked against consumers.

Have you changed your use of social media after writing about some of the data practices of Facebook?

When I started reporting on Big Tech, a lot of the public criticism about social media focused on Twitter, a relatively small platform that happens to be popular among the American political and journalistic elite. Two years later, a lot of the criticism focuses on Facebook and Google — and Twitter is by far the social media platform I use the most.

That’s partly because I don’t find the Facebook experience all that engaging or fun. But partly it’s for security. Once I started reporting deeply on Facebook, I deleted all Facebook-owned apps from my phone, including Instagram. I don’t know exactly who has access to the data those apps collect, but while meeting with confidential sources, I don’t want to risk that an app on my phone might be sending Facebook my location.

The social media app I really miss is Instagram. I always had a private account, and I accept requests only from real-life friends and family. So it’s an ocean of sanity and genuine relationships compared with Twitter, which is a hell of random angry people. But when I log in — once or twice a week at most, usually on my wife’s phone — I’m now hyper-conscious that every like, thumb click and scroll may go into my permanent Facebook record.

Is deleting Facebook an effective way to protect privacy?

Not in the slightest.

It may interfere with Facebook’s ability to track you as a consumer. But almost every website you visit or app you have on your phone is to some extent tracking where you go and what you do.