The article is about transitioning from Instagram to Pixelfed, i.e. it’s targeting people who already use Instagram. If an individual is an Instagram user already, then privacy clearly isn’t a consideration for them, and if it was, there are countless articles already regarding Meta’s approach to their data that don’t need to be recycled here.
If your concern is your data, then yes, don’t trust anyone but yourself. As has been said, there’s alternatives for that, including self-hosting.
Pixelfed’s advantages aren’t limited to potential privacy features though, which I agree would have been excellent items to raise in the article, such as a focus on photos and a complete lack of any algorithm forcing tailored content at you. But this is a how-to article, not a feature comparison. I’m sure we’ll see a prevalence of those in the future but it’s still early doors. I would argue that it literally does imply that Pixelfed is more privacy focused though - it’s right there in the title.
Loved my Windows Phones, I had three of them, and even released an app. I thought the app support, from a technical standpoint, was really good insofar as I could release the same app and have it run perfectly on phones, tablets and desktops. The issue I had with Windows Phones was how they just got steadily worse instead of better. They lost their uniqueness and became closer to Android clones with each iteration, and it was clear Microsoft weren’t fully behind the platform long before the app developers began to leave. Real shame.