Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

support.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 248 posts

Re: Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

#51

Post by scrollaway »

simias wrote: post #45
spankalee wrote: post #31

(disclaimer: I work at Google, not on Chrome) The rationale here seems to be that by blocking video autoplay, Chrome incentivized sites shipping huge animated GIFs, or decoding video in JS and painting to canvas, both of which are very suboptimal for users. Another comment points to this issue: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=106364... quote: Unfortunately, full autoplay blocking is counter prod…

That's what happens when you let anybody and their friends run arbitrary code on the user's CPU. Javascript running by default was the original sin, and now there's no going back. IMO it ought to have been opt-in for the websites that really need it (i.e. web apps I actually want to use, not any random page I happen to stumble upon). There's especially no going back for Google for whom it's very much a feature since…

Animated gifs are not arbitrary code and require no javascript. You're not really making a point that actually counters GP...

Re: Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

#52

Post by [deleted] »

barkerja wrote: post #24
toyg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Works for Apple.

Not sure what you're referring to, but Safari has three configurable options for auto-play: - Allow All Auto-Play - Stop Media with Sound - Never Auto-Play This can be configured on a global level, or on a site-by-site basis.

[deleted]

Re: Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

#53

Post by tasogare »

spankalee wrote: post #31

(disclaimer: I work at Google, not on Chrome) The rationale here seems to be that by blocking video autoplay, Chrome incentivized sites shipping huge animated GIFs, or decoding video in JS and painting to canvas, both of which are very suboptimal for users. Another comment points to this issue: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=106364... quote: Unfortunately, full autoplay blocking is counter prod…

The gif excuse doesn’t make sense. If Google was really concerned about that they would also provided a way to block huge gif, in addition to auto-play video.

Re: Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

#54

Post by JoshTriplett »

spankalee wrote: post #31

(disclaimer: I work at Google, not on Chrome) The rationale here seems to be that by blocking video autoplay, Chrome incentivized sites shipping huge animated GIFs, or decoding video in JS and painting to canvas, both of which are very suboptimal for users. Another comment points to this issue: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=106364... quote: Unfortunately, full autoplay blocking is counter prod…

On the contrary, better to let them be horribly inefficient, so that they're noticeably worse than alternatives that don't do that.

The other problem, though, is that that makes adblockers a bigger performance win.

Re: Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

#55

Post by freeone3000 »

spankalee wrote: post #31

(disclaimer: I work at Google, not on Chrome) The rationale here seems to be that by blocking video autoplay, Chrome incentivized sites shipping huge animated GIFs, or decoding video in JS and painting to canvas, both of which are very suboptimal for users. Another comment points to this issue: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=106364... quote: Unfortunately, full autoplay blocking is counter prod…

Okay, then don't autoplay gifs and click-to-enable canvas. Webpages shouldn't be able to move before user interaction.

Re: Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

#57

Post by Razengan »

barkerja wrote: post #24
toyg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Works for Apple.

Not sure what you're referring to, but Safari has three configurable options for auto-play: - Allow All Auto-Play - Stop Media with Sound - Never Auto-Play This can be configured on a global level, or on a site-by-site basis.

Wow, the above comment was already grayed out in just 5 minutes, simply for stating some facts, as are all the other comments on this page which are critical of Google.

Sometimes it seems HN is heavily astroturfed by Google; They will bury any criticism and somehow bizarrely manage to turn it against other companies!

Any company that does such blatant manipulation just makes people despise them further.

Re: Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

#58

Post by baybal2 »

spankalee wrote: post #31

(disclaimer: I work at Google, not on Chrome) The rationale here seems to be that by blocking video autoplay, Chrome incentivized sites shipping huge animated GIFs, or decoding video in JS and painting to canvas, both of which are very suboptimal for users. Another comment points to this issue: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=106364... quote: Unfortunately, full autoplay blocking is counter prod…

Man, who came with that idea? I really want to know the name of that product manager.

It takes only one of those 4k video ads to kill my data package within seconds, with me not even having an idea of that happening.

With amount of stuff you threw at adblock before, I can not keep assuming goodwill from your side. Your explanation about "giant gifs" is so disingenuous.

Re: Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

#59

Post by debuggingnoob »

This thread is a microcosm of the problems with the world at large atm. 70% of the response are people frothing at the mouth outrages over those evil "other people" when the other people had nothing but good intentions. Then absolutely refusing to see those good intentions and painting everything as poorly as possible.

Re: Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

#60

Post by amluto »

userbinator wrote: post #39
spankalee wrote: post #31

(disclaimer: I work at Google, not on Chrome) The rationale here seems to be that by blocking video autoplay, Chrome incentivized sites shipping huge animated GIFs, or decoding video in JS and painting to canvas, both of which are very suboptimal for users. Another comment points to this issue: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=106364... quote: Unfortunately, full autoplay blocking is counter prod…

Then maybe the solution is to also have the option turn off animated GIFs and perhaps frequent canvas repaints too; and not simply give up completely ! In any case, just leaving the option alone so at least it has some effect like it did before, would still be better than essentially a full surrender.

How about restricting the frame rate of all elements until some heuristic determines that the user has interacted with them?
Post reply on HN