Using Google DNS, self-hosted resolver, or your ISP's DNS: NSA, your ISP, everyone and every dog at the middle of your link to the Internet can track and see your requests.
Using CloudFlare's DNS w/ DNS-over-HTTPS: only NSA (via a NSL or subpoena), Cloudflare and CloudFlare's upstream can track and see your requests. And I guess 10%-20% of the domain names already use CloudFlare, so for some domain, it's end-to-end encrypted, nobody but NSA and CloudFlare can track you. Even better, Cloudflare is experimenting with peering to upstreams (e.g. Facebook) using private encrypted connections, so the point-to-point encryption ratio would be even higher in the future.
Therefore, using CloudFlare is a net positive.
But one also needs to consider its second-order effect: is giving CloudFlare more leverage over the Internet infrastructure in the long run an acceptable choice over unencrypted DNS? I guess everyone has a different opinion.
In any case, if you really want a full solution, build your own https://github.com/yegle/your-dns
Technically speaking the NSA wouldn’t be seeing your DNS requests, they would be seeing your ISP’s, for all its users anonymised.
If you use Cloudflare or Google DNS directly from home (or your own resolver), then yes, the NSA and anyone else can track your individual DNS requests directly.
In that regard using your own ISP’s DNS is clearly superior.
Follow up question, do you trust CloudFlare not to manipulate the results of DNS more or less than Google?
However be unable to determine which specific site you were accessing.
I judged the company in a negative light when their ceo or cfo wrote an open letter rationalizing their ban silencing some obnoxious website over political belief virtue signaling.
A company that crushes free speech cannot be trusted.
I don’t even remember what the obnoxious or offensive website was but I know that offensive speech is protected speech.
Autocratic technocracy centralized into a few digital monopolies wrap our wrists into digital slave chains labeled “free”.
Cloudflare is not the government. A business can choose not to service someone based on almost any criteria, that's not "crushing free speech". You can then choose not to patronize the business based on that policy. This is an important part of a free market.
Emphasis on 'claims', sadly we have no way of verifying that they don't actually keep logs.
