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

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291–300 of 330 posts

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

#291
Chrome for Android blocks autoplaying videos. To get around this, sites now use JS to decode and render video into a canvas. For example: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=178297.... As one might imagine, this is not so great for power usage…

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

#292
post #287
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> firefox -> about:config -> media.autoplay.enabled = false Unfortunately, this isn't available for devices with a monopolized browser. (iOS)

I can't tell you how many iOS users are tricked by "Oh, I can get Chrome and Firefox on iOS" that don't realize it's just skinned webkit. Totally dishonest.

I'm actually impressed that Chrome on iOS manages to be less stable than Safari since it's using the same engine...

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

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> youtube is one of the few sites where people actually want autoplay Not me. I usually open a few tabs at the same time and have to stop every video manually. That's pretty annoying. I wish it didn't have autoplay.

Chromium is the Browser you want. You can load a bunch of tabs an it only starts autoplay when you finally switch to the tab you want to watch.

Best viewed with IE (tm), revisited.

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

#295
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…

> What you are really asking is for Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS to make a better web _for you_.

Well, what's wrong with that?

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

#296
post #36

In my opinion, the problem isn't with auto-playing videos per se, but rather the audio that comes along with it. For example, GIFV is a format that uses auto-playing videos to replace the GIF, and by doing so cuts down on Internet bandwidth usage. I'd suggest that's a legitimate use for auto-playing videos. I only really get annoyed with auto-playing videos when I hear the sound from them, so perhaps the fix should b…

Well, part of the issue is the audio is part of what they want you to hear because it's considered more effective than just text moving. Animated ads were tried, and I'm going to assume that they weren't considered as effective given the fact that we have video ads instead of Gifv ads. My outsider-looking-in perspective leads me to believe there must be a decent amount of money in the auto-play video ads else the new…

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough before. I'm not expecting advertisers to respect the wishes of individuals. I am suggesting that there should be some form of user control over video auto-plays. The question is what form this user control should take.

For example, perhaps whitelists for domains that are permitted to have audio content could be a good solution. These whitelists could be controlled by the user. You would then only opt-in to sites that had content you wanted to listen to.

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

#297

CNN especially gets on my nerves. They seem to have gone out of their way to do everything they can to make sure all plugins/extensions that try to block it fail.

Bloomberg (linked here a lot) insists on loading HUGE high-resolution videos, where someone starts talking loudly immediately.

They take forever to load but they give you no UI for "pausing" or just choosing not to load the video until it's loaded and playing.

I try to make Ublock Origin rules that block that video element, but the element name keeps changing, it seems.

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

#298
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I like it when I open a youtube page and it automatically plays.

Easily handled with a prompt:

  "This site is attempting to auto-play media"
  [Allow once] [Always allow site] [Block site]

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

#299
post #246

In the past, I was responsible for analytics around a decision to autoplay or not autoplay videos on a media site. The site did both mobile and desktop videos. * voluntary customer feedback was universally negative * bounce rate decreased substantially (around 40%) * total interactions with the page increased almost 3x (clicks on significant UX elements such as like/subscibe/additional video plays) * interactions for…

In summary, what users say they like and what they actually like are wildly different. The average user seemed to engage more when we removed the burden of first interaction. They're clicking by mistake, trying to make the overlay go away!

No, they're clicking visually distinct, non-overlapping UX down the page.

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

#300
post #284
post #246

In the past, I was responsible for analytics around a decision to autoplay or not autoplay videos on a media site. The site did both mobile and desktop videos. * voluntary customer feedback was universally negative * bounce rate decreased substantially (around 40%) * total interactions with the page increased almost 3x (clicks on significant UX elements such as like/subscibe/additional video plays) * interactions for…

The number of times I have to click a bit everywhere at random in a panic because some shit autoplay sound or video started yelling and I can't figure which one it is and where it is :-[]

Presumably you don't click on a button that says share and then click facebook, and then complete the share action in a panic. If you do, I love you and would love to find out how to induce your kind of panic in more people.
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