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Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

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61–70 of 330 posts

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#62
post #37

Things that make me just close tabs straight away: 1) Autoplaying videos, especially ads. 2) Pop-ups / overlays. 3) Loading lots of extra elements causing text to jump around. Especially true if I'm just browsing around and click on something that looks interesting, the above will take that thing from "this might be worth 30 seconds" to "not worth it". Why kill that little dopamine boost someone just got from clickin…

Your know there are HN readers who write this crap. I wonder if they'll chime in on why they do.

Mortgage payments

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#63
post #37

Things that make me just close tabs straight away: 1) Autoplaying videos, especially ads. 2) Pop-ups / overlays. 3) Loading lots of extra elements causing text to jump around. Especially true if I'm just browsing around and click on something that looks interesting, the above will take that thing from "this might be worth 30 seconds" to "not worth it". Why kill that little dopamine boost someone just got from clickin…

I'm the same way. If there is an overlay or autoplaying video I just leave. However apparently most people aren't like us otherwise no sites would do it. And you can see that these sites get posted to HN, so at least someone is reading it. Personally though I prefer more pleasant sites.

I think that maybe the submitters are running a variety of ad-etc-blocking software, and so they're not seeing it.

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#64
post #31
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did that buy youtube is still on autoplay.

Y'know, youtube is one of the few sites where people actually want autoplay to work.

When you visit a video explicitly, yes. But when you jump into a specific channel you don't want a default video auto-playing all the time, which is pretty annoying.

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#65
post #3

Agree this is an annoyance - how would you propose keeping features like YouTube or Netflix autoplay/playlists in this scenario?

To be honest, I don't think either should auto-play anyway. I personally prefer to using the Youtube website on my phone vs the app because its a better experience. Given that situation, I am usually looking for the video description and/or comments rather than the video before I start watching it. Unfortunately, Youtube hides the description under a tap icon and you have to scroll past all of the recommended videos to see the comments. Its not an ideal experience.

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#66
post #15

This behavior is so bad that I have changed my browsing behavior. I visit only selected, trusted news sites, as "free" sites are horrible offenders here. Google is much less useful while on desktops as it is likely to return obnoxious websites. So far I have not had a bad autoplay problem on iOS. However a growing problem is obnoxious pop up ads that are difficult to escape. Overall more of my Internet usage is shift…

You're implying that the web has gotten worse, but in my experience it used to be much worse. Just the memory of the sea of pop-ups that you had to fight when browsing the web makes my stomach turn. However, there seem to be a recent trend in auto-platyng video, in fact this is not only happening on the web but on apps too like Facebook and Twitter.

At least FB and Twitter give you an option to turn it off. (PLEASE KEEP THAT OPTION FB.)

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#67
post #37

Things that make me just close tabs straight away: 1) Autoplaying videos, especially ads. 2) Pop-ups / overlays. 3) Loading lots of extra elements causing text to jump around. Especially true if I'm just browsing around and click on something that looks interesting, the above will take that thing from "this might be worth 30 seconds" to "not worth it". Why kill that little dopamine boost someone just got from clickin…

I'm the same way. If there is an overlay or autoplaying video I just leave. However apparently most people aren't like us otherwise no sites would do it. And you can see that these sites get posted to HN, so at least someone is reading it. Personally though I prefer more pleasant sites.

I would probably leave, unless I needed the site and couldn't get what they offer anywhere else. (Eg online shopping.)

But it's all hypothetical, since my ublock takes care of it. Of course, that also means that I am no longer much exerting any selection pressure on the market in that regard.

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#68
post #27
post #8

Facebook is IMHO the biggest offender in that category, dozens of "in your face" videos no one asked explicitly for... Luckily, there's a setting if you can be bothered - and luckily, for many marketing departments around the world many can't... "Look, how many views our videos have on FB"...

Or you can use likes and shares to influence the Facebook algorithm so that it never presents videos to you in the timeline. If you always like/share text posts and don't watch any videos, Facebook will stop putting videos on your feed.

Still, i shouldn't have to do either - neither liking sh*t i don't really dig, nor having to turn off some setting because somebody thought it is acceptable to just change the default behavior...

Also, i don't want to give them _even more_ data about me, even if that is an uphill struggle, more and more seeming sisyphus-like...

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#69
I think you are reacting like this because you're over using the medium(the web). For the average person its nice that their family's videos autoplay and autoloop without having to do something. Video and sound are big parts of the experience, which happens to not fit a certain advanced user group like you.

So a browser setting would work but not disable for all

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#70
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still an issue if you use a mobile wifi hotspot to go online and have limited bandwidth (like most of Japan for example).

I live in Japan, and while mobile hotspots are popular for airbnbs and tourists, I don't think most people have them here. Also, there are mobile hotspots with unlimited data. The rest of the country has unlimited fiber at home, so it's especially those people that want their youtube and facebook videos to autoplay. I see the point tough. It's bad on a limited wifi hotspot

A bit off-topic: Japan is weird. We could get data-sims as tourists, but I don't think we would have been able to make calls?
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