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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

#101

Post by fuzz4lyfe »

somebodythere wrote: post #82
umvi wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It always is when it comes to regulation. If you find a regulation that seems to benefit the consumer more than the incumbent firms you don't understand that market well enough.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#102

Post by esoterica »

djrogers wrote: post #57
bigsassy wrote: post #13

An app I worked on had a similar feature to Snapstreaks, but it was used to help people quit smoking. This bill would have killed this feature that helped many people lead healthier lives.

This bill would only apply to social media sites, so unless your 'quit smoking' app was such, it woulnd't have affected it at all.

I hope you enjoy paying your lawyers tens of millions to litigate the definition of a “social media site”.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#103

Post by leereeves »

jerf wrote: post #97
digitalsushi wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The probability of you cancelling Netflix in a given month is inversely proportional to the amount of Netflix you or your household watched [1]. The expense of a marginal delivery of a particular episode's worth of resources is a great deal less for Netflix than the revenue of your subscription. [1]: To a first approximation, anyhow. I bet there's a bump at zero, where people just entirely forget Netflix exists but t…

I suspect there's also an inverse relationship at the high end, because of people like me who'll subscribe for a month, watch all the new content, then cancel.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#104

Post by vtkacenko »

jsilence wrote: post #91
rsweeney21 wrote: post #75

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…

Yeah, ever so often when I want to continue watching the current series I realize that autowatch made me watch the whole season while I was asleep on the couch. Really wish autoplay would stop every three or four episodes.

It does stop for me.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#105

Post by lloeki »

modoc wrote: post #72
lloeki wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find autoplay on Netflix highly inconvenient. Disable it and you can continue to watch the next episode with just one button press. There is no need for navigating around. Also super useful when you happen to fall asleep in front of the TV so that it doesn't keep pumping all the way through the night. Autoplay on Netflix is IMHO a dark pattern to feed on attention and FOMO.

Is it any different than traditional TV?

I don’t find traditional TV to be any good. Having no autoplay is an improvement.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#107

Post by Fjolsvith »

floatrock wrote: post #87
mFixman wrote: post #59

Earlier 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.

> 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."

Definitely something is wrong because offering the ability to turn it off seems to be the way to fix the problem.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#109

Post by Bjartr »

magduf wrote: post #77
GhostVII wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But autoplay do you mean sounds and videos that autoplay when you go on a website, or sounds and videos which are automatically queued up after something you are already watching? Because I agree that the first is very irritating (there is nothing that I hate more than Netflix autoplaying previews with sound), but I find queuing up the next video very useful.

It seems pretty self-evident that "autoplay" means something that plays automatically. Queuing isn't playing.

Considering other discussions in adjacent threads, it's quite clearly not uniformly self evident whether auto-play does or does not include continuing an existing "play" session with new media.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#110

Post by waitwut2 »

mFixman wrote: post #59
zbrozek wrote: 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.

What do you mean "desktop Netflix"? You mean the web site? Please let me know where this setting is! I would love to turn this off but have never found a way.
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