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

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

#171

Post by ziszis »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #52
tfgg wrote: 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.

Why they do it? Easy. You are not the customer, the advertiser is. So as long as it is tolerable for a sufficient % of the audience, it is worth it.

Case in point, circumventing ad blockers. Audience explicitly doesn't want the ad experience, but Facebook wants to make more $. Facebook just announced a record quarter on desktop advertising fueled by successfully circumventing ad blockers.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/02/add-cash-plus/

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

#172

Post by deelowe »

the8472 wrote: post #110
svckr wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re 2): Pinterest. It's the cancer of Google image search. I don't get how Google's search ranking doesn't massively penalize that behaviour. I'd rather stomach an advertisement than the "plz register" BS.

Yeah, isn't it against google's policy to present different content to bots and to fleshy users?

Pretty sure it is.

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

#173

Post by goodplay »

morganvachon wrote: post #160
muntoo wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Watch Later is like 100 videos long. Ain't nobody got time for that.

You're posting on HN, I would think you would find a way to automate it. ;-)

I believe youtube-dl is capable of downloading entire lists, but I don't know if the watch-later list behaves as a normal list. One way to find out.

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

#175

Post by rch »

the8472 wrote: post #12

firefox -> about:config -> media.autoplay.enabled = false additionally the dom.audiochannel.mutedByDefault and media.default_volume settings may also be useful if you want slightly different behavior. If you want a more blunt tool you can also use content blockers to block media content until you opt into it for a particular site. > I know there are plugins than can somewhat do this, but no solutions are universal or…

The good thing about setting browser defaults is that people producing these offending sites eventually give up and change their behavior.

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

#179

Post by Shorel »

massysett wrote: post #6

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 can also change your browser, or with some browsers, a setting option.

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

#180

Post by kuschku »

pdkl95 wrote: post #148
lucaspiller wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are situations when you need to play video on load No there really aren't, not on page load [0]. Show a nice still with a big play button on it - people know what that means. It's probably going to load faster too, so people won't be stuck staring at a blank section for 15 seconds. Or even worse, start reading and scrolling the first two paragraphs, then wonder why some audio started playing. And as others ha…

> [0] That could be handled by allowing the media tag to be changed and restarted with a new URL during (and only during) the "ended" event[1]. That would allow continuing an already playing video with minimal side effects. E.g. only alow something like this: var video = document.getElementsById("current_video_tag"); var play_next_video = function () { video.src = "https://exmple.com/next_video_url"; video.currentTim…

And what if you want to support changing the video through remote control?

Say, allow the user to open the site on their phone and TV, and the phone shows play/pause/next buttons, the TV shows the episode, and the phone can be used to skip to the next episode?

(Data synced because the user is logged in on both, via a standard webbrowser)?

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