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New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

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Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#81
post #28
post #9

Things 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…

I’m torn about endless scrolling. I wholeheartedly agree with a ban on auto playing sound or video. It’s gratingly irritating. It’s rather anti-human, experience wise.

Endless scrolling is bad pattern. Things should have a natural stop, some sort of effort to move forward.

It's not because of irritation but rather to protect easy preys from getting stuck.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#82
post #48
post #6

This sounds like complete joke. Next another bill will ban pagination?

Another bill will mandate that websites display a banner if the user has been there for too long (to protect internet addicts from being sedentary for too long). Pretty soon only big corps will be able to make a website because there is a phonebook sized stack of regulations you have to comply with.

Seems intentional.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#84

I'm the dev that built Netflix's autoplay of the next episode. We built it first on the web player because it is easy to A/B test new features there. We called it "post-play" at the time. When I worked there the product team at Netflix had two KPIs all new features were tested against: hours watched and retention. We would come up with all sorts of ideas to try out, and release them to small user populations of about…

I've never been able to understand why netflix benefits from autoplaying - you're not selling anything, you're just delivering content - so why does autoplaying, which presumably has some measurable, additional cost for bandwidth, end up benefiting the company?

Does the perceived value of netflix increase when autoplay is enabled? I really want to understand this, I've been strung up on this for a while.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#85
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

A spinner isn't a "video", it's just a moving graphic.

Our legal system has many problems, but one problem it thankfully doesn't have is catering to ridiculous pedantry like you find with software programmers. Anyone trying to argue spinners in front of a judge is going to have their case dismissed with prejudice, because clearly the intent of the law wasn't to ban spinners or other such UI elements.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#86

I'm the dev that built Netflix's autoplay of the next episode. We built it first on the web player because it is easy to A/B test new features there. We called it "post-play" at the time. When I worked there the product team at Netflix had two KPIs all new features were tested against: hours watched and retention. We would come up with all sorts of ideas to try out, and release them to small user populations of about…

[deleted]

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#87
post #59
post #11

Earlier 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.

> from desktop Netflix's settings

Isn't that an indicator that something's wrong when the company says "technically you can turn this off, it's just buried in the form of the product that people use the least. But technically you can turn it off."

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#88

I'm the dev that built Netflix's autoplay of the next episode. We built it first on the web player because it is easy to A/B test new features there. We called it "post-play" at the time. When I worked there the product team at Netflix had two KPIs all new features were tested against: hours watched and retention. We would come up with all sorts of ideas to try out, and release them to small user populations of about…

[deleted]

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#89
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

The spinner fulfils a purpose (by notifying you that the content is still not quite ready) and is temporary (it goes away once the content is loaded). That said, you could always just replace it with a static "Loading.." label.

Plus, it's not exactly "content".

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#90
post #2

“If I take the bottom out of this glass and I keep refilling the water or the wine, you won’t know when to stop drinking” That's not how drinking works. That's not how anything works.

Like when my brother decided to keep my glass full all the time at the bar. I got soo wasted, didn't even realise.
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