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

New autoplay policy in Chrome

blog.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 178 posts

Re: New autoplay policy in Chrome

#161

Post by dhimes »

rtpg wrote: post #107
koolba wrote: post #51

> As you browse the web, that list changes as Chrome learns and enables autoplay on sites where you play media with sound during most of your visits, and disables it on sites where you don’t. This way, Chrome gives you a personalized, predictable browsing experience. Predictable in a user application is the same result from the same action every time. UX changing based on opaque logic and heuristics is anything but p…

yeah, this seems like such an intense thing to do My bet is that they did this to not break Youtube. I mean it makes sense (you don't want video sites to not work) but it's also such a hacky sort of thing I don't get why they couldn't make this a permission thing like a mic. Ask the website to allow autoplay.

Things are so bad now that I keep my earphones plugged in but not in my ear. It's easier than trying to quickly hit mute when I'm surprised by a site and disruptive blaring starts.

Re: New autoplay policy in Chrome

#162

Post by hammock »

koolba wrote: post #51

> As you browse the web, that list changes as Chrome learns and enables autoplay on sites where you play media with sound during most of your visits, and disables it on sites where you don’t. This way, Chrome gives you a personalized, predictable browsing experience. Predictable in a user application is the same result from the same action every time. UX changing based on opaque logic and heuristics is anything but p…

Get used to it, based on recent communication from Google one of their big new goals is using ML to improve... everything.

Re: New autoplay policy in Chrome

#163

Post by kodablah »

> 1,000 sites where we see that the highest percentage of visitors play media with sound

I hate this shit just like I hate their ads program. Where're all the net neutrality proponents when the popular browser vendor is the offender?

Re: New autoplay policy in Chrome

#164

Post by local_yokel »

hammock wrote: post #162
koolba wrote: post #51

> As you browse the web, that list changes as Chrome learns and enables autoplay on sites where you play media with sound during most of your visits, and disables it on sites where you don’t. This way, Chrome gives you a personalized, predictable browsing experience. Predictable in a user application is the same result from the same action every time. UX changing based on opaque logic and heuristics is anything but p…

Get used to it, based on recent communication from Google one of their big new goals is using ML to improve... everything.

Of course they threw the word "learn" in there to make it sound like advanced new tech, but this seems like something that can be done with simple heuristics (as opposed to machine learning).

Re: New autoplay policy in Chrome

#165

Post by giovannibajo1 »

pryce wrote: post #118
arijun wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Allow this website to automatically play videos in the future" sounds exactly like autoplay to me. Just not the first time.

I have developed an instinctual reaction to automatically deny permissions like remotely that for any website, and I think most people have. Websites asking for permission to send notifications provokes the same irritation. I think - "I am in the middle of doing something, I don't want to stop and think carefully about permissions for some vague and abstract future encounters, I want the annoying dialog to go away an…

That’s because websites developers haven’t learnt the 5-years-old iOS UX pattern of not asking for privacy permissions the moment the user opens the app but later in a more contextual way. Eg: request for contacts permission when the user is explicitly looking for a friend to share something.

Re: New autoplay policy in Chrome

#166

Post by taternuts »

crystaln wrote: post #57
crystaln wrote: post #10

The best way to improve autoplay is to disable it. chrome://flags/#autoplay-policy

Interesting. Setting this to "Document user activation required" eliminated all autoplay for me.

It seems to work intermittently for me at best. Bloomberg is a notable (notably annoying) example that not only autoplays (though at least without sound) but highjacks your first click on the video (usually trying to pause it) and enables sound instead.

Re: New autoplay policy in Chrome

#167

Post by make3 »

kalleboo wrote: post #92
make3 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

saying an advertisement company mostly cares about playing ads doesn't register as cynical to me.

Right. Of the main browser vendors, Safari and Edge's conflict of interest is they'd prefer people make native apps over webapps. Chrome's conflict of interest is they don't want you to block ads. Firefox is the only browser with user-aligned incentives (as long as they ignore who pays a lot of their income...)

Hmm I guess this analysis explains why IE has sucked for so long

Re: New autoplay policy in Chrome

#168

Post by jrochkind1 »

Aardwolf wrote: post #127
rtpg wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, this seems like such an intense thing to do My bet is that they did this to not break Youtube. I mean it makes sense (you don't want video sites to not work) but it's also such a hacky sort of thing I don't get why they couldn't make this a permission thing like a mic. Ask the website to allow autoplay.

> My bet is that they did this to not break Youtube. Which is fine to me. If I go to a website specifically for videos, I want it to autoplay, having to press play is a pointless action. If I go to a website to read articles, I do not want autoplay, and I definitely don't want the video to even follow me around as a tiny minimized window when I scroll down and yes I will close the tab or press back pretty quick if th…

> and I definitely don't want the video to even follow me around as a tiny minimized window

Why the hell did this become a standard pattern on news sites anyway? It's the WORST.

Re: New autoplay policy in Chrome

#169

Post by gcb0 »

kbenson wrote: post #70
dannyw wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The browser ships with a pre-whitelisted list. Those sites can autoplay videos from the beginning with no user interaction, which has dramatically less friction than unwhitelisted sites which must get you to interact across 20 different visits. That is a lot of friction. Imagine if someone makes a YouTube competitor. They won't have autoplay for an user's first 20 sessions at minimum! That's significant

I understand. That's a valid point. It's not a valid summary of the post, when only the whitelist portion is mentioned by itself.

all youtube domains are whitelisted, and there's no way to remove. only add. summary is very relevant still.

Re: New autoplay policy in Chrome

#170

Post by kbenson »

gcb0 wrote: post #169
kbenson wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand. That's a valid point. It's not a valid summary of the post, when only the whitelist portion is mentioned by itself.

all youtube domains are whitelisted, and there's no way to remove. only add. summary is very relevant still.

I repeat, it's not a summary if you don't even mention the subject of the submission, which is the system to auto whitelist. It's a criticism, or a counterpoint, or even just a useful addendum, but not a summary.

Your point is valid. It deserves to be said. It's still not a summary of the submission, and presenting it as such is not appropriate, IMO. For example, the following would have been a possible way to summarize the submission and also express the additional information you presented:

Summary: Chrome will not auto-whitelist auto-play for domains based on learning your preferences. What Google isn't noting is that they allow 800 of the international youtube domains to autoplay, plus some 200 other publishers to pretend they are neutral.

Post reply on HN