Wow. That is a SERIOUS mischaracterization of the article and his conculusions. The third parties in question were services like Stripe (since he monetizes with subscriptions, not advertising) or Cloudflare. His whole point was he takes privacy seriously, but fundamentalist policy punishes good and bad actors equally.
But even all that aside, by your own words, it's not his treatments of the facts but his failure to account for the worst possible hypothetical situation that you have imagined in this specific area that is most important to you that makes him an unreliable journalist on any-and-all subjects? I would challenge you that this is an unhealthy purity test for him to pass.
Except that using CDN services is a privacy hole in itself - I don't know whether Cloudflare[1] currently collects or sells tracking data on usage (including referrer information) but there is definitely a technical capability there and no legal impediment. If they don't do it now then whenever a vulture capitalist scoops them up you can be sure they'll start.
1. To be clear, I am specifically referring to cloudflare because it's the service under question. I have no opinion on Cloudflare or knowledge of any specific and current privacy issues.
But even all that aside, by your own words, it's not his treatments of the facts but his failure to account for the worst possible hypothetical situation that you have imagined in this specific area that is most important to you that makes him an unreliable journalist on any-and-all subjects? I would challenge you that this is an unhealthy purity test for him to pass.