These little tracking pixels have been around for absolutely years, more commonly in html emails 1x1 pix hidden status.
You probably know my feelings on social networking and have never trusted them, so I don't have any facebook/whatsapp/instagram accounts, etc.
I still use MailWasherPro to filter my email and it only downloads a small portion of each email (to analyse), viewed in plain text. I can flag any email that it hasn't flagged. When I click on Wash Email, it deletes all emails that have been flagged at email server level, calls my email program where I download the remainder.