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New autoplay policy in Chrome

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Re: New autoplay policy in Chrome

#31

Post by azakai »

geofft wrote: post #14
panic wrote: post #12

Bret Victor's response: https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/993167096992288771

I genuinely do not understand the artist in the replies who says this has destroyed their work. Can't the website require you to click/tap once to start its thing, without negative impact? I feel like I must be missing something. (There's a mention about not updating code for existing work, which might be it?)

Adding a "click to start the experience" button changes the experience. In particular, some users might not see the button if it's subtle, and be unimpressed or think the site is broken. And if the button is not subtle that's bad too.

It's also annoying to have to do such a change to your art for a single browser.

Overall I think the artist's frustration is understandable, but I agree "destroyed" is perhaps too strong a word.

Re: New autoplay policy in Chrome

#32

Post by jasonkostempski »

rocqua wrote: post #16

Why does this system 'learn'. I wouldn't mind a prompt much like desktop-notifications are now. Ask me if a site can auto-play. If google want this on-by-default on youtube, I wouldn't mind. As an upside, this would make it obvious they favor their own product.

A site-wide setting isn't good enough, every media element needs to require user action. It is ridiculous that isn't a working option, Chrome can't be taken seriously as a user agent.

Re: New autoplay policy in Chrome

#33

Post by zamalek »

sanxiyn wrote: post #18

> Chrome does this by learning your preferences... This way, Chrome gives you a personalized, predictable browsing experience. In my experience, "learning" and "predictable" do not go together.

Agreed, it should just be a permission like any other. If I'm on a website where I expect to play media I can remember the preference.

They probably don't want to break websites (as autoplay has no permissions model), but breaking the most annoying feature on the web right now is a good thing.

Re: New autoplay policy in Chrome

#34

Post by quadrature »

nightcracker wrote: post #22

> This way, Chrome gives you a personalized, predictable browsing experience. > predictable What could possibly be more predictable than disabling autoplay altogether? Google says it enabled autoplay for 'over 1000 sites', but we all know Google only cares about one thing and that is playing more ads on YouTube.

If you do this less computer savvy people will wonder why deezer/soundcloud/spotify suddenly stopped working.

Re: New autoplay policy in Chrome

#35

Post by dang »

thefifthsetpin wrote: post #17
geofft wrote: post #15

The title looks editorialized - can the scare quotes be removed? They don't seem to be in the original.

The original title is also editorialized, just in the other direction. "New autoplay policy in Chrome" sounds reasonably neutral to me.

Ok, we've switched to that. Thanks!

Re: New autoplay policy in Chrome

#36

Post by troydavis »

crystaln wrote: post #10

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

This flag doesn't do what it sounds like it does (and what it should). From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16367457#16370471:

> Alas, this flag only prevents video that has sound from auto-playing. It’s the inadequate option that my earlier comment was referring to.

>

> Here’s more: https://www.chromium.org/audio-video/autoplay

> https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-p...

>

> Quoting the blog post, Google’s decision that ”Muted autoplay is always allowed” is the problem. If any other Chrome users wondered why videos now auto-play without sound (even with this option set), at least based on the relatively minimal docs about this flag, this is why.

Re: New autoplay policy in Chrome

#37

Post by bastawhiz »

zamalek wrote: post #33
sanxiyn wrote: post #18

> Chrome does this by learning your preferences... This way, Chrome gives you a personalized, predictable browsing experience. In my experience, "learning" and "predictable" do not go together.

Agreed, it should just be a permission like any other. If I'm on a website where I expect to play media I can remember the preference. They probably don't want to break websites (as autoplay has no permissions model), but breaking the most annoying feature on the web right now is a good thing.

This has already been possible. You can disable sound for all websites in chrome://settings/content/sound

Then, you can enable sound manually for each site in the site settings panel.

Re: New autoplay policy in Chrome

#38

Post by jasonkostempski »

_neil wrote: post #20
geofft wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely do not understand the artist in the replies who says this has destroyed their work. Can't the website require you to click/tap once to start its thing, without negative impact? I feel like I must be missing something. (There's a mention about not updating code for existing work, which might be it?)

The artist in question has hundreds of pieces of work, many of which he may not have easy (if any) access to anymore. It would take a non-trivial amount of work to fix. But I think he’s also expressing doubt about creating art/work on the web in the future because of things like this.

It only because of user hostile choices made by browser vendors that it was ever a viable option to begin with and it was a bad bet to think it would last, although Google seems to be doing anything they can to keep things the way they are without directly saying "we'd rather you not be able to stop all media because our business model is to get in your face". No one deserves the unrestrained ability to enter your home and interrupt you in the name of commerce, entertainment, art, or anything else, except maybe emergency.

Re: New autoplay policy in Chrome

#40

Post by chipperyman573 »

bastawhiz wrote: post #37
zamalek wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, it should just be a permission like any other. If I'm on a website where I expect to play media I can remember the preference. They probably don't want to break websites (as autoplay has no permissions model), but breaking the most annoying feature on the web right now is a good thing.

This has already been possible. You can disable sound for all websites in chrome://settings/content/sound Then, you can enable sound manually for each site in the site settings panel.

Wow, I never knew this! I will definitely be doing it now. Does anyone happen to know if this will overwrite this new learning setting?
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