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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

#221

Post by badwolf »

morganvachon wrote: post #152
bbarn wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It actually triggers anger in me when I've started to read and something pops up over it. It's the least likely way to get me to click your thing.

Even worse for me is on mobile, scrolling down a news article, and suddenly this full page ad starts sneaking up from the bottom, with tiny text that says "keep scrolling to read the rest of the article". No thanks, apparently they didn't write that article to be read but rather to be a hook to get you to see that ad which takes over the screen. It's infuriating, bait and switch bullshit.

Oh god this is so awful. I just recently switched to an iPhone for work reasons. I used Adblock on my Rooted Nexus 6p, and never experienced this before. Now... all the frikkin time, to the point I rarely read news articles on my phone anymore.

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

#223

Post by Belenus »

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…

Have you ever tried to read a story, on those sites where it just shows you one picture at a time, and you have to click next to get to the next picture? Most of them are just ad machines, and it lags your browser so bad.

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

#225

Post by dustinmoorenet »

As an old Javascript developer, I don't see how the browser could do this without making legitimate websites suffer. You have the freedom to run JS code at any point in the DOM load, after an amount of time (setInterval or setTimeout) or after user interaction. And you can start and stop audio and/or video through JS. So you can't restrict automatically playing media without also restricting the ability to programmatically control the media for legitimate reasons, like media control buttons and hot-keys.

I think it is best to avoid shitty websites. My short list: Facebook, and TV network websites and their affiliates. There are lots of websites that do the right thing.

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

#226

Post by RyanOD »

morganvachon wrote: post #155
Ruphin wrote: post #115

What you are really asking is for Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS to make a better web _for you_. Because you don't want media to autoplay does not mean it is a good solution to just block it outright for everyone. Some websites have legitimate use for autoplaying media. Some users (believe it or not) actually _like_ their videos autoplaying when they scroll through their Facebook feed or whatever media site they visi…

Your Starbucks example is flawed. Starbucks employees don't barge into your office with a boombox playing at full volume and screaming at you about their latest drinks, then make you pay for the taxi that brought them there, simply because you opened an article about their new store in your area. That's what autoplaying ads and videos on the web do: They catch you off guard with loud, annoying audio that you can't al…

"barge into your office"? Seems to me when you visit someone's website, you're in their office, not the other way around.

I'm no fan of the auto-everything web, but I don't think your analogy here is sound.

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

#227

Post by izak30 »

I make art installations and UI/UX research. A modern browser is one of the best technical canvases. If you are working on browsers and you turn things off, please always allow me a backdoor for my own browsers to turn them back on.

Complex software control of multimedia and the whole browser experience gives me the ability to develop new ways of interacting with computers.

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

#228

Post by nutbutter »

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…

Number 3 Drives me absolutely crazy. Bloomberg and The Verge do this as an example. I'm fine with ads, as long as they don't break the page.

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

#229

Post by ythn »

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…

> Loading lots of extra elements causing text to jump around.

My computer is a little older, and this one is a dealbreaker. Sometimes a page is so heavy that it brings my whole computer to its knees. If I can tell a page is starting to load more than a reasonable amount of elements, I punch out as soon as possible.

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

#230

Post by hrjet »

bunderbunder wrote: post #132
lisivka wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So use an adblocker to give them lesson.

Yep, that's what I tend to do. Particularly on my mobile device, where I've settled into a scorched earth policy on ads. Sucks, though. I like having access to high-quality content, and I believe journalists deserve to get paid for their work. Unfortunately, the Internet at large has long since decided that just paying people for their product over the table is not what the norm should be.

Try using a script/media blocker, such as uMatrix, rather than an Ad-Blocker.

The disadvantage will be that sites which require scripts will break on first-access.

The advantages are better overall privacy + security, and that simple static ads won't be blocked and hence those authors will be compensated.

(Edited to better match parent's concerns)

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