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

211–220 of 248 posts

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

#211

Post by zajio1am »

fiblye wrote: post #132
madeofpalk wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't turn off gifs or canvas because it would just break too much internet. I could imagine and equal reaction thread here if google deemed some gifs and canvas uses "unworthy" and were blockable.

> You can't turn off gifs or canvas because it would just break too much internet. That sounds like a challenge. I think if there were a click to play button on gifs > N megabytes or > X*Y resolution, nobody would complain, nor would they complain about click to play on frequently updated canvases.

Why limit it based on resolution? When 'disable autoplay' is selected, i would like play button for all videos, animated GIFs or animated SVGs.

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

#212

Post by aembleton »

lvs wrote: post #151

The solution I've found is just to disable javascript altogether, then manually whitelist a small number of sites that don't work without js. Sure, a lot of the web stops working for me, but it's also probably the part of the web I don't want to see anymore anyway.

Just disabling 3rd party JS solves a lot of the problems. Still have to whitelist a lot, but it is easier than blocking which just feels like whack-a-mole.

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

#215

Post by Termious »

freyr wrote: post #203
Termious wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Techies don't like to think about it, but it's obvious. The only reason why Chrome has come to dominate the market is because Google leveraged their monopoly in search. And even beyond Google Search, if you used Google Mail or anything else by Google, they'd repeatedly put notifications telling you that Chrome is great and why don't you download it? Then there's using all those billions of dollars to pay everybody to…

Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer with Windows and made it impossible for users to remove it. That's not at all "pretty much the same thing."

Okay, do you care to address the core point of my comment? These are two examples of anti-competitive behavior. The details might differ, but the core idea of what they did and how they did it is the same (abusing their dominant position to anti-competitively disadvantage competitors). Yet Google gets a pass because "capitalism".

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

#216

Post by lumberingjack »

throwaway189262 wrote: post #64
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…

Publishers found gaping holes in their blocking and response is to give up. Firefox already has config options to disable image animations and canvas. I've had them on for ages and sites work fine. Maybe they can re-enable popup windows too since sites replaced them with interstitials long ago. Chrome's dominance needs to end, this is blatantly anti user. Google could have de-ranked sites with hostile behavior a deca…

I dread updates from google for there apps they break and change stuff that majorly upsets my workflow all the time. The worst I can remember was the no longer unlock screen with google assistant updates like a few years ago. I was at the hospitable in the morning after that update and many sad handless people could not use their life lines because of a fucking update.

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

#217

Post by srtjstjsj »

madeofpalk wrote: post #112
edoceo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BigG couldn't do that (disable other user hostile media) because it would interfere with ads. Now I'm looking for a gif and canvas blocker for FF mobile. Any hints on how to tune uBO?

You can't turn off gifs or canvas because it would just break too much internet. I could imagine and equal reaction thread here if google deemed some gifs and canvas uses "unworthy" and were blockable.

Canvas is video (or spyware). If I don't want autopay video, I don't want autoplay canvas.

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

#218

Post by Spivak »

beervirus wrote: post #87
debuggingnoob wrote: post #59

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.

I’m not sure Google is entitled to any charitable opinions at this point.

Why? The engineers in the bug tracker seem to be making this change specifically to improve user experience. Trying to plug the hole by blocking gifs, canvas, and whatever people would think of next seems worse than just letting them do the right thing.

Google is a huge company with very little of what could be considered a unified vision. It doesn’t make that much sense to talk about Google as a single unit but as many teams with vague corporate influences.

I think it’s reasonable to be a little conservative when any decision you make has to work for billions of installs and every unknown website.

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

#219

Post by airstrike »

smoe wrote: post #69
airstrike wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I subscribe to the idea that the tech community overlaps with the definition of "early adopters", who become zealots driving everyone else's adoption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle

I agree. But I think the early adoptors mattered back in 2008.I reckon, with the dominance they now have, they are fine with some developers moving to firefox while still having time to react if they pull too many "normal" users with them. Especially since Mozilla isnt exactly peak popularity in terms of vision either.

IE was also absurdly dominant back then. I appreciate the fact that we now live in a world where everything is integrated, so the costs of switching are higher, but it's not impossible

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

#220

Post by happymellon »

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…

Wouldn't they get penalised for having massive/slow page load requirements?
Post reply on HN