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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

#231

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

IvanK_net wrote: post #207

I completely disagree with this proposal. All websites should be allowed to play sounds any time they want to. Without it, webapps can not reasonably compete the native apps. I am a developer of web games and being able to play the sound from the beginning, without any interaction from the user, is one of the most essential parts of the game experience. If you visit a website which unexpectedly plays a sound, you sho…

> Without it, webapps can not reasonably compete the native apps.

This point, on its own, sounds rather nice to me. After all, the various implementations of modern HTML and Javascript that allow these 'webapps' to function are the same ones being abused ad nauseum by news organizations and other media entities.

I don't deny the usefulness of these modern web development features. I also recognize that because most of the world is on Google Chrome, this makes cross-platform support easier for developers. However, I also realize that web apps are popular because of how much easier it is to track, monitor, and collect users' data and behaviors when they are forced to access your application from the browser.

My observation has been that auto-playing media in browsers is a common strategy to artificially inflate a site's media engagement figures. The strategy is cheap, prays on users' media illiteracy, and is incredibly dishonest. Worst of all, it allows media companies to sidestep the more expensive problem of producing engaging, high-quality content in favor of dumb little gimmicks to keep inflating their engagement figures. I don't know about everyone else here, but if the content is interesting to me, I'm willing for my right hand to leave the keyboard for about 0.5 seconds in order to click the 'play' button with my mouse.

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

#232

Post by jeffmould »

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…

One of the biggest violators of all of these is Mashable. Their site is so frustrating to visit I have it blocked completely now.

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

#233

Post by Shorel »

hub_ wrote: post #186
Shorel wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There is a disable autoplay in Firefox as a hidden pref. Enabling it break YouTube (offender number 1) and Vimeo. Vimeo's take is that it is a bug in the browser hence it should be fixed. But then Vimeo are the same that told use to use Safari on Linux because Firefox "didn't support HTML5" (it did, just not encumbered H264 codec, but when you are lying, do the extra mile).

It works perfectly fine in Opera, in case anyone wants to use a browser with that option that's also not broken.

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

#234

Post by dotGetClass »

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…

Slide show listicles

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

#235

Post by ccvannorman »

Last night I watched episode 8 of Cosmos (I highly recommend Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson) and learned that for 2+ decades (from 1920s to 1940s), oil industry knowingly propagated bad science that poisoned millions of people in pursuit of profits.

Sadly, pop-ups and auto-play videos lead to more profits, at least perceived/short term. No amount of whining by us will change a board meeting at a medium-large company result. "We need to do X that will piss off Y customers but result in Z more profits." Companies always choose profits.

I'm on board with getting these things changed but appealing to big corporations because "it sucks" is never going to amount to "but it makes us more money." We need a different strategy.

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

#236

Post by xenadu02 »

JadeNB wrote: post #192
LamaOfRuin wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was also true of popups. It still is. Yet it became such a scourge from people misusing it that browsers interested in providing their users the best experience provided an option to disable them (where we are now with auto-play) and eventually turned on that option by default. Pop-up blocking became a feature users would switch browsers for, forcing all vendors to add it. If advertisers continue to use auto-pla…

> > 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 visit. > This was also true of popups. It still is. Is this analogy really correct, in the sense that there are legitimate , user-focussed cases for pop-ups? I know lots of web-sites want me to see pop-ups, and som…

Not only is the analogy correct, the problem has the same solution: require evidence of user intent. Pop ups work just fine when spawned as a result of a user clicking on a link. Videos can start playing when a user taps or clicks on them.

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

#238

Post by whyoh »

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…

>firefox -> about:config -> media.autoplay.enabled = false

That doesn't always work. Some videos don't play at all (even when clicked) and some others play automatically anyway (rare, but it happens).

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

#239

Post by hashhar »

For Firefox:

For Flash, change the Flash Plugin setting to Ask to Activate. For HTML5, switch `media.autoplay.enabled` preference `about:config` to `false`.

Or try out FlashStopper [1] to stop both HTML5 and Flash.

[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/flashstopper/

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

#240

Post by Roboprog »

Gracana wrote: post #112
TeMPOraL wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the other day I met the guy who makes all that crap on-line I told him you can have my cash But first you know I've got to ask What made you want to live this kind of life? He said there ain't no rest for the wicked, money don't grow on trees I got bills to pay, I got mouths to feed; ain't nothing in this world for free I know I can't slow down I can't hold back though you know I wish I could Oh no there ain't no…

Formatting text this way makes it hard to read on mobile and in text browsers. I couldn't even reply just now, my text wouldn't show up as I typed it, I had to click "edit" so I could view and edit my post by itself. [edit] dang, can something be done about this? Flagging for format? Maybe a little drastic, but try reading HN in elinks, you'll see that a long line breaks the whole page. How about line wrap? Desktop u…

HN needs (maybe has???) markup to break lines without double spacing as distinct paragraphs.
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