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Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

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Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#191

Post by mcbits »

matt_morgan wrote: post #150
t64wdrk wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my last job at a web agency, I was told to make a newsletter popup that opened on first page load. I said to my project manager (he was a web developer before) that it was bad design and everyone finds it annoying. He said that the client wanted it, and I should just do it. I asked him, what if the client wanted a pink unicorn gif in the corner, should we just do that as well? Without telling the client that it do…

Don't tell them yes or tell them no. Test, monitor, and promote the path that leads to the best success rates, acknowledging that user growth may drive success in the longer term. Take the long view, basically.

Individual sites can't measure how much their combined spam costs them due to the ever more aggressive use of ad blockers. In the short term, a newsletter popup probably does increase revenue, but acquiring new users in the future will be more expensive as a result because the cheap and simple ads will fail to reach most of the market. Unfortunately, nobody has incentive to stop, as they'll just give up the short-term revenue and still suffer the future consquences from all of the other bad actors.

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#192

Post by JadeNB »

LamaOfRuin wrote: post #134
Ruphin wrote: post #115

What you are really asking is for Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS to make a better web _for you_. Because you don't want media to autoplay does not mean it is a good solution to just block it outright for everyone. Some websites have legitimate use for autoplaying media. Some users (believe it or not) actually _like_ their videos autoplaying when they scroll through their Facebook feed or whatever media site they visi…

This was also true of popups. It still is. Yet it became such a scourge from people misusing it that browsers interested in providing their users the best experience provided an option to disable them (where we are now with auto-play) and eventually turned on that option by default. Pop-up blocking became a feature users would switch browsers for, forcing all vendors to add it. If advertisers continue to use auto-pla…

> > Some websites have legitimate use for autoplaying media. Some users (believe it or not) actually _like_ their videos autoplaying when they scroll through their Facebook feed or whatever media site they visit.

> This was also true of popups. It still is.

Is this analogy really correct, in the sense that there are legitimate, user-focussed cases for pop-ups? I know lots of web-sites want me to see pop-ups, and some (cough PeopleSoft cough) even think that it's the best way to display certain status notifications, but does any user like them?

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#193

Post by baddox »

johnnydoebk wrote: post #126
pjc50 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y'know, youtube is one of the few sites where people actually want autoplay to work.

>> youtube is one of the few sites where people actually want autoplay Not me. I usually open a few tabs at the same time and have to stop every video manually. That's pretty annoying. I wish it didn't have autoplay.

YouTube doesn't start playing a video until you focus the tab.

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#194

Post by rtpg »

JadeNB wrote: post #192
LamaOfRuin wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was also true of popups. It still is. Yet it became such a scourge from people misusing it that browsers interested in providing their users the best experience provided an option to disable them (where we are now with auto-play) and eventually turned on that option by default. Pop-up blocking became a feature users would switch browsers for, forcing all vendors to add it. If advertisers continue to use auto-pla…

> > Some websites have legitimate use for autoplaying media. Some users (believe it or not) actually _like_ their videos autoplaying when they scroll through their Facebook feed or whatever media site they visit. > This was also true of popups. It still is. Is this analogy really correct, in the sense that there are legitimate , user-focussed cases for pop-ups? I know lots of web-sites want me to see pop-ups, and som…

A good use case is linking to a FAQ item in a form. You don't want to navigate away, but the item is usually small, so a pop-up in a small window is good.

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#195

Post by ben_bai »

johnnydoebk wrote: post #126
pjc50 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y'know, youtube is one of the few sites where people actually want autoplay to work.

>> youtube is one of the few sites where people actually want autoplay Not me. I usually open a few tabs at the same time and have to stop every video manually. That's pretty annoying. I wish it didn't have autoplay.

Chromium is the Browser you want. You can load a bunch of tabs an it only starts autoplay when you finally switch to the tab you want to watch.

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#196

Post by codazoda »

tfgg wrote: post #37

Things that make me just close tabs straight away: 1) Autoplaying videos, especially ads. 2) Pop-ups / overlays. 3) Loading lots of extra elements causing text to jump around. Especially true if I'm just browsing around and click on something that looks interesting, the above will take that thing from "this might be worth 30 seconds" to "not worth it". Why kill that little dopamine boost someone just got from clickin…

At my company we created an auto loading video that all the devs agreed was terrible. It was compared, statistically, to one that didn't auto play. Sure, 10% of users left immediately, killing traffic, but revenue increased more than the traffic dipped. It's still auto playing on that page.

I agree that browser makers should fix this. It should probably behave like the location API and be remembered by domain or something.

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#197

Post by martin-adams »

This happened to Flash in IE I think about 10 years ago. Every flash animation on the page had a some form of 'click to play' cta.

I find that pages that have sound more annoying than video, but isn't a major problem for me as I have headphones plugged in permanently.

I think I would prefer such a feature request as a user option, like a permission request. This is how popup windows, full screen, taking control of the cursor behaves.

I do worry about the data usage on mobile though with autoplaying videos. Even pausing them doesn't stop it from fetching more in the buffer.

I suspect there may be some valid use cases for autoplaying (such as background looping videos, YouTube, etc), particularly when run in some type of kiosk mode on a TV. It's another example of where some spoil the experience and the behaviour of the web ends up getting locked down to stop them.

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#198

Post by hota_mazi »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #52
tfgg wrote: post #37

Things that make me just close tabs straight away: 1) Autoplaying videos, especially ads. 2) Pop-ups / overlays. 3) Loading lots of extra elements causing text to jump around. Especially true if I'm just browsing around and click on something that looks interesting, the above will take that thing from "this might be worth 30 seconds" to "not worth it". Why kill that little dopamine boost someone just got from clickin…

Your know there are HN readers who write this crap. I wonder if they'll chime in on why they do.

Pretty sure the answer is: "pay check".

Not everybody gets to choose their job.

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#199

Post by sangnoir »

Symbiote wrote: post #116
DanBC wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that maybe the submitters are running a variety of ad-etc-blocking software, and so they're not seeing it.

Looking at Google Analytics for a website we were about to launch, I was surprised to see hits from others in the development team, tracked by Google. I block Google Analytics (and many other things), and was surprised that none of my colleagues do the same.

> Looking at Google Analytics for a website we were about to launch, I was surprised to see hits from others in the development team, tracked by Google

So you are OK with making Google track your users but you don't want to be tracked yourself?

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#200

Post by mcbits »

Symbiote wrote: post #116
DanBC wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that maybe the submitters are running a variety of ad-etc-blocking software, and so they're not seeing it.

Looking at Google Analytics for a website we were about to launch, I was surprised to see hits from others in the development team, tracked by Google. I block Google Analytics (and many other things), and was surprised that none of my colleagues do the same.

They might say they're using a vanilla browser to ensure everything works, but it's worth mentioning it's possible to filter IP addresses in Google Analtyics to stop those hits from being counted.
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