Would this set a legal precedent for regulating code or is there already a precedent? If this does set a new legal precedent, the future looks messy
New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling
61–70 of 248 posts
Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling
#62Madness.
Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling
#63Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I agree that it's hard to support legislation that's likely to have a lot of unintended consequences, it's also important to realize what's driving folks to introduce a bill like this. It's also worth pointing out that (in particular with Netflix) your example is its own counter-argument. You can't turn off autoplay, and that's the opposite of letting me make choices for myself. There's also plenty of other exa…
> You can't turn off autoplay I'm pretty sure you can turn it off for all devices from desktop Netflix's settings. I somehow don't have autoplay enabled when I watch any series.
It doesn't work if you're on PS4, which is where I watch. No matter what those settings are it always auto-plays the next episode and also the really annoying trailers. It's actually driven me to consume most of my content from Amazon instead.
Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling
#65Endless scroll has lots of legitimate uses, and there are a million more dark patterns where the dark use of endless scroll came from. Bills like this are not the answer.
Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I agree that it's hard to support legislation that's likely to have a lot of unintended consequences, it's also important to realize what's driving folks to introduce a bill like this. It's also worth pointing out that (in particular with Netflix) your example is its own counter-argument. You can't turn off autoplay, and that's the opposite of letting me make choices for myself. There's also plenty of other exa…
I think the choice is to just leave Netflix when you are done an episode. Maybe it's just me but I've never felt like the autoplay makes me much more likely to keep watching, it is just convenient so I don't have to go through all of the menus again. If we ban autoplay on Netflix, we should also ban cable I suppose (not a big loss, really), since cable will autoplay indefinitely.
This kind of sounds to me like "you can stop smoking by not buying anymore cigarettes". True, but glosses over the addictive aspects which led to cigarettes being regulated as they are. And this isn't an accidental property of these apps, they're intentionally engineered features to drive "engagement"/addiction.
Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can't turn off autoplay I'm pretty sure you can turn it off for all devices from desktop Netflix's settings. I somehow don't have autoplay enabled when I watch any series.
It doesn't work if you're on PS4, which is where I watch. No matter what those settings are it always auto-plays the next episode and also the really annoying trailers. It's actually driven me to consume most of my content from Amazon instead.
Are you watching Netflix on your PS4 in a web browser, or a Netflix app?
Personally, I'd love to ban autoplay videos, but I'm really concerned about web pages here. A custom app, to me, doesn't fall under this purview. Netflix can do just about whatever they want in their own app AFAIC.
For websites that have a legitimate use for autoplay, but are still websites and not custom apps, I would support making it a user-controlled preference that only works for logged-in users. Usually, people view YouTube as a logged-in Google user, so that can be used to allow them to turn on autoplay for that.
Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling
#68Things like requiring accept and decline checkboxes to be the same font seem somewhat reasonable, even if I disagree with it, but banning autoplay videos and endless scrolling is insane. There are legitimate uses for autoplay videos (ex. Netflix playing next episode, YouTube playing next song when you are listening to music) which I personally use all the time and appreciate, and endless scrolling is great when you d…
Yes!
Instead of coming up with insane laws, the government can point people towards tools that will help them. For example, the govt could simply point people towards a chrome plugin that prevents those features from working, or a plugin that removes the links of any sites that have those features.
Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling
#69If politicians could focus their efforts on actually solving problems instead of giving hand outs to their tort lawyer buddies, we might get a better system. The lawsuits would include: - autoplay of gifs vs web videos - does Pinterest count as an auto scroll ad - does an endless scroll populated with 50% real content count as non-ad? The law will just create more headaches for the producers and less innovation thank…
Outlawing X doesn't mean almost-X is completely fine. That said, none of your examples make much sense (to me). > - autoplay of gifs vs web videos Presumably the content is what matters, not the particular compression format. Does it show animated content continuously without being triggered by active user interaction? Yes, so it's an auto-playing video. > - does Pinterest count as an auto scroll ad It's primarily fo…
> Presumably the content is what matters, not the particular compression format. Does it show animated content continuously without being triggered by active user interaction? Yes, so it's an auto-playing video.
By that logic a loading spinner is an auto-playing video. Does me logging in count as "active user interaction" for showing me a loading spinner? I didn't request the spinner, I requested access to my skype chats.
Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling
#70China's anti-internet/video game addiction stuff isn't totally insane. The premise is actually noble.