I joined Facebook contrary to my personal preferences but for what were valuable reasons. I have always objected to their invasions of my privacy, but I tolerated it for the sake of the aforementioned reasons. Until today.
Today, in keeping with a new policy they have been talking about for a month or two, they autoplayed a video in my news feed. I object to this on principle: there is no way (that I know of) to switch this behavior off, and they have no right to consume bandwidth like that which I pay for without my consent. Videos aren’t tiny. They also consume CPU and memory on my iPad (and therefore burn through my battery charge faster). So, since they seem to have denied me the opportunity to opt out of this rubbish, I have deleted my FB account. Tough luck Mark Z. (And given his public support of abortion I do not object to reducing his income stream a teeny-tiny little bit, either).
The effect there will be inconsequential. I know that. The effect here may be an uptick in the number of Etc posts that appear (yes, even more triviality, if that is possible). And possibly more tweeting, too (@aquinasetc).
“They” do not care about your privacy, despite their lying privacy policies. “They” want to extract as much about you as “they” possibly can. So protect your privacy yourself as best you can. Set limits and do not let them cross those limits (and do not cross them yourself). You can’t use the Internet without sacrificing some privacy, but that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t try to minimize the damage.
End of rant. :-)
Aquinas, Etc. 
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