19 ms·

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

• r721 10y ago
  At least "Click to play" setting for HTML5 audio/video would be great.
• phobius 10y ago
  Agree this is an annoyance - how would you propose keeping features like YouTube or Netflix autoplay/playlists in this scenario?
  • Belenus 10y ago
    Smart
  • geuis 10y ago
    To be honest, I don't think either should auto-play anyway. I personally prefer to using the Youtube website on my phone vs the app because its a better experience. Given that situation, I am usually looking for the video description and/or comments rather than the video before I start watching it. Unfortunately, Youtube hides the description under a tap icon and you have to scroll past all of the recommended videos to see the comments. Its not an ideal experience.
  • DanBC 10y ago
    Have a setting with allow and deny lists.
  • qbrass 10y ago
    Handle playlists as a stream instead of multiple videos. Then you only have to hit play to start the stream.
  • hub_ 10y ago
    For starter you could restrict the autoplay the next video only if it is the same element.
• Tempest1981 10y ago
  Or at least provide an option for autoplay, so savvy users can turn it off.
  • ffggvv 10y ago
    You are so savvy that you can't even search online? On firefox go to about:config and set media.autoplay.enabled to false.
• ffggvv 10y ago
  Ask this on their bug tracker.
  • dredmorbius 10y ago
    https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=514102 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=514102
• massysett 10y ago
  This behavior is so bad that I have changed my browsing behavior. I visit only selected, trusted news sites, as "free" sites are horrible offenders here. Google is much less useful while on desktops as it is likely to return obnoxious websites. So far I have not had a bad autoplay problem on iOS. However a growing problem is obnoxious pop up ads that are difficult to escape. Overall more of my Internet usage is shifting to apps because the Web is just too annoying. Years ago the Web was like a friendly, boisterous marketplace in a safe town. Now it's like the street in "Casablanca" where I must constantly guard against someone picking my pocket. It's not worth using except for a few sites I trust. Google in particular had better watch out. With Web hostility their search is not as useful. One reaction of theirs has been to pack more information directly into their search result.
  • amasad 10y ago
    You're implying that the web has gotten worse, but in my experience it used to be much worse. Just the memory of the sea of pop-ups that you had to fight when browsing the web makes my stomach turn. However, there seem to be a recent trend in auto-platyng video, in fact this is not only happening on the web but on apps too like Facebook and Twitter.
    • cyberferret 10y ago
      Facebook and Twitter seem to be going for the auto repeat play on videos too, so unless you physically stop them, they just keep playing over and over again. Annoying if you have turned away to do something else or have scrolled down the page a bit more - you have to go back up and find the offending video again to stop it. (NB: I normally play videos with speeches or music clips, so I don't need to SEE the video, but just listen to the audio.)
    • DanBC 10y ago
      At least FB and Twitter give you an option to turn it off. (PLEASE KEEP THAT OPTION FB.)
  • bradleyankrom 10y ago
    > One reaction of theirs has been to pack more information directly into their search result. Really good point -- I have noticed that a lot recently. It's expanded beyond the right side bar, which was already pretty useful (if only a Wikipedia summary). Many times I get what I was looking for by simply searching Google, rather than taking the additional step of clicking into one of the results. This is good for me but bad for someone, I'm sure.
• ianai 10y ago
  I remember you had to click play on flash at one point. It was an option you could turn on in preferences. I'd love to have it back.
• moepstar 10y ago
  Facebook is IMHO the biggest offender in that category, dozens of "in your face" videos no one asked explicitly for... Luckily, there's a setting if you can be bothered - and luckily, for many marketing departments around the world many can't... "Look, how many views our videos have on FB"...
  • chirau 10y ago
    What is the setting?
    • avalexandrov 10y ago
      Facebook -> Settings -> Videos -> Auto-Play Videos -> Off
  • eva1984 10y ago
    I remember they boasted this a carefully thoughted out 'feature', that autoplay with no sound... Excuse me.
  • kccqzy 10y ago
    Or you can use likes and shares to influence the Facebook algorithm so that it never presents videos to you in the timeline. If you always like/share text posts and don't watch any videos, Facebook will stop putting videos on your feed.
    • moepstar 10y ago
      Still, i shouldn't have to do either - neither liking sh*t i don't really dig, nor having to turn off some setting because somebody thought it is acceptable to just change the default behavior... Also, i don't want to give them _even more_ data about me, even if that is an uphill struggle, more and more seeming sisyphus-like...
• FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
  Here is a chrome extension that mutes audio for all tabs except thw selected one: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/smart-tab-mute/dnfbgicfhchdpogmafjifjgbcjdaikgn?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/smart-tab-mute/dnf...
  • hello_there 10y ago
    This is an improvement, but I don't think that sound is always welcome in the selected tab either. With a few exceptions (like YouTube) I'd like sound to be off by default.
• hashtagMERKY 10y ago
  I really dislike auto-playing audio and video as well, for all the reasons you mentioned, but also for a less logical reason: it just makes it feel like the browser isn't on your side. If a site is automatically playing audio or a video advert, its design is not in the user's interest, so in that situation your software has to choose whose side to take. I just want and expect the software I have installed on my computer to take my side, and always act in my interests. It probably sounds silly but I just think software should always be primarily designed for the end user.
  • TeMPOraL 10y ago
    It's not silly. And it's not an accident that browsers identify themselves as "User Agents" - they act on behalf of users. So in a situation where there are three separate parties with separate interests involved - you, your agent, and the website owner - it's natural to expect your agent to favor your interests instead of the interest of third parties. Honestly, I strongly believe this should be default for all software.
  • Tepix 10y ago
    What makes you think the browser is on your side? You are getting it for free, therefore you are paying in some other way. Look at Mozilla. They claim to be the champion of your rights, yet they enable 3rd party cookies by default and hide the setting to change it. That's just pathetic. They should stop their masquerade and just admit that they are Google's puppet (they are providing the money to keep Mozilla alive) and NOT serving the user's interest.
    • mcbits 10y ago
      Unless I've misunderstood something, I don't think Mozilla has received much if any money from Google for a couple of years now. They have search deals with Yahoo, Yandex, and Baidu in their respective markets, which would make me nervous about the future if I worked for Mozilla. Not sure whether those deals might lead them to make decisions against the users' interests.
• the8472 10y ago
  firefox -> about:config -> media.autoplay.enabled = false additionally the dom.audiochannel.mutedByDefault and media.default_volume settings may also be useful if you want slightly different behavior. If you want a more blunt tool you can also use content blockers to block media content until you opt into it for a particular site. > I know there are plugins than can somewhat do this, but no solutions are universal or great. How so? There are about a dozen FF addons covering different use-cases like muting inactive tabs or all tabs but a designated one. If none of them meet your particular expectations that might also indicate that everyone wants something different and it is difficult for browser vendors to cover all expectations. Maybe you should modify an existing addon instead to do what you want.
  • petre 10y ago
    Did that buy youtube is still on autoplay.
    • ivank 10y ago
      https://gist.github.com/ivan/4a5c10930629f1c7b2a05857268c4c21 https://gist.github.com/ivan/4a5c10930629f1c7b2a05857268c4c2... if you want a userscript
    • the8472 10y ago
      I just tried it on nightly and it worksforme(tm).
    • pjc50 10y ago
      Y'know, youtube is one of the few sites where people actually want autoplay to work.
      • kevincox 10y ago
        Yeah, if I know I'm going to a YT link I'm prepared for it. Unfortunately with the rise of URL shorteners I often don't know I'm going to a video site so I'm still undecided about whether I want the video to autoplay or not.
      • 10y ago
• ivank 10y ago
  I wrote https://github.com/ludios/mute-new-tabs https://github.com/ludios/mute-new-tabs and I am now happier with a quiet Chrome. The idea is to mute all new tabs and unmute them only when you interact with an in-page volume control (or manually unmute via the tab icon/context menu). This solves only the sound problem though, not the data consumption.
  • bigblind 10y ago
    Neat! I'm checking that one out.
  • eru 10y ago
    Awesome, thanks! Any chance you are putting it on the official extension store?
    • ivank 10y ago
      I am open to handing it over to someone I can trust who wants to distribute it there.
      • eru 10y ago
        Cool. I never published an extension for Chrome ever, but following the guide at https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/publish https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/publish looks bearable. If you put your repository under some kind of open source licence, I can try the process on a lazy Sunday afternoon, if you like. My email address is in my profile.
• fgpwd 10y ago
  There should be a media play permission just like there is for accessing your webcam or showing notifications. You give the permission once to a website such as youtube, and from them on videos would play automatically for the domain youtube.com. No videos would play on any website to which you deny this permission.
  • jasonkostempski 10y ago
    Netflix is one of the offenders with their new full screen video ads when you first hit the site.
• madeofpalk 10y ago
  > In the worst cases such as on mobile browsers like iOS Safari What site does this? You can't (auto)play media on iOS without direct user action for exactly the reason you specified. iOS 10 changed this slightly to allow silent or muted videos to autoplay when visible on the screen https://webkit.org/blog/6784/new-video-policies-for-ios/ https://webkit.org/blog/6784/new-video-policies-for-ios/
• fjarlq 10y ago
  There are a couple Chromium bugs filed about this: https://crbug.com/107923 https://crbug.com/107923 and https://crbug.com/514102 https://crbug.com/514102 Overriding autoplay can lead to a confusing user experience -- play/pause synchronization issue with embedded YouTube videos: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1217438 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1217438 The Disable HTML5 Autoplay extension is often suggested for Chrome, and it has 112,213 users, but it's far from perfect: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-html5-autoplay/efdhoaajjjgckpbkoglidkeendpkolai https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-html5-auto...
  • Eridrus 10y ago
    The extension has issues, mostly around embedded YouTube videos, but it causes far fewer issues than uBlock, so I'd recommend ever who gets annoyed by this to try it out.
  • hub_ 10y ago
    But then Chrome and Youtube come from the same company. Maybe they should coordinate.
    • vurpo 10y ago
      How could they? They can't just disable autoplay but make an exception for YouTube, that would be wrong in so many ways. You can't make that into a web standard, so it would promote browser fragmentation, for example. So how about a whitelist/blacklist? Well, since users can't even agree among themselves on which websites belong on which side of the fence, such a list would quickly become a nightmare to maintain, still be based on someone's personal bias, and would still leave small websites at a disadvantage. Pretty much the only thing that would work is a permissions question to the user, like there is currently for e.g. location access. "Do you want to allow videosite.example.com to automatically play video content? \Allow, \Allow and remember, \*Deny"
• forgettableuser 10y ago
  I am now a victim of the adage, "Be careful what you wish for because you might just get it". I hated Flash. I either avoided installing it or used a Flash blocker. So I always managed to avoid the auto-playing problem when the Internet primarily used Flash for everything annoying. Now that Flash is about dead and everything is HTML5 now, neither of these techniques work any more to avoid auto-playing.
  • username223 10y ago
    I too long for the good old days, when web garbage was mostly confined to Flash and popups (and punch-the-monkey GIFs). Now it's all an HTML5 wasteland full of warring JavaScript. Good job, W3C!
• glandium 10y ago
  My "favorite" case is a site that sometimes embeds videos, and also has autoplaying videos for advertising. You can't listen to anything from the former because of the latter. Even worse, when you pause the advertising video, it autorestarts after a while. So if the embedded video is long enough, you just can't watch it entirely. So, in fact, while e.g. Firefox has a mute button for each tab, I also wish it had an individual mute button for each <video> and <embed> element.
  • kijin 10y ago
    You can actually mute or pause individual videos by right-clicking on them and using the context menu. Many videos override the context menu, though, and it won't help with ads that automatically restart themselves. An option to disable an object altogether would be more useful. A more drastic solution that I sometimes resort to is to nuke the offending part of the page (often an entire sidebar) using the built-in developer tools. Just select the area you want to nuke in the "Inspector" tab, and hit the Delete key.
    • the8472 10y ago
      > Many videos override the context menu, though Which in turn can be overriden by shift-rightclick
      • marmaduke 10y ago
        Ah great tip.
  • bradleyankrom 10y ago
    Not to mention that it's often difficult to find where exactly the auto-playing ad is located on the page. It's like a treasure hunt, but with clandestine advertisements and instead of treasure, your reward is a little piece of your soul dying.
• mschuster91 10y ago
  News sites are the worst offenders here. Especially those who put an un-pauseable, unskippable, un-muteable ad in front. I want to read the damn article, not listen to a fucking ad that drones over my Spotify music - so I can't even Fn F10 to get rid of the ad. Worst thing is that many of these video ads can not be caught by Adblock Plus...
• ZenoArrow 10y ago
  In my opinion, the problem isn't with auto-playing videos per se, but rather the audio that comes along with it. For example, GIFV is a format that uses auto-playing videos to replace the GIF, and by doing so cuts down on Internet bandwidth usage. I'd suggest that's a legitimate use for auto-playing videos. I only really get annoyed with auto-playing videos when I hear the sound from them, so perhaps the fix should be targeted in this area. It may cause problems for things like YouTube playlists, so I don't think the fix is as simple as 'mute them all by default', but whatever the fix is should rely on some form of user control.
  • csydas 10y ago
    Well, part of the issue is the audio is part of what they want you to hear because it's considered more effective than just text moving. Animated ads were tried, and I'm going to assume that they weren't considered as effective given the fact that we have video ads instead of Gifv ads. My outsider-looking-in perspective leads me to believe there must be a decent amount of money in the auto-play video ads else the news sites wouldn't bother. Certainly they know they're annoying and frustrating, but if they pay, then I guess they have little reason to care. There's no effective blocking solution at the moment, and people are still coming for the news almost a year into this practice, so it obviously isn't hurting the numbers enough to make an impact. I do feel that sometimes the anti-advertising commentaries need a more directed focus, since at the core a lot of people want content for free without the annoyance of the ads. I certainly do, but I also respect that this content creation and the providing of the content costs money - if a site has an anti-ad blocker and they ask me to turn it off to proceed, I respect their wishes by just not continuing. I have yet to come to an article that I felt was worth it, and if the provider's position is "ads or nothing", then I'll respect that. I just ask that they respect my wishes (Do not track, ad blocking, etc). I'm well aware that sites and advertisers don't do this, but I do feel it's important to show the respect. My not going to the site is more than likely logged as a non-click-through, and I hope this makes the intended impact of showing them my preferences.
    • ZenoArrow 10y ago
      Perhaps I wasn't clear enough before. I'm not expecting advertisers to respect the wishes of individuals. I am suggesting that there should be some form of user control over video auto-plays. The question is what form this user control should take. For example, perhaps whitelists for domains that are permitted to have audio content could be a good solution. These whitelists could be controlled by the user. You would then only opt-in to sites that had content you wanted to listen to.
• necessity 10y ago
  You should be using NoScript anyway so just use it.
• therealmarv 10y ago
  There are use cases where this useful. Not that I like that but autoplaying video (without sound) is e.g. needed for some splash backgrounds (like AirBnB is using) and many ads use that feature too. I would like only sound automatically muted (like Instagram and FB is doing with their videos).
• tfgg 10y ago
  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 clicking on a link to your site? If you're wondering why your bounce rate is so high... though maybe these dark patterns bring in enough ad revenue that it's worth it. I don't see how 3 helps that, though, just lazy coding. Or maybe other people are more tolerant and it doesn't really affect the bounce rate.
  • kevincox 10y ago
    I'm the same way. If there is an overlay or autoplaying video I just leave. However apparently most people aren't like us otherwise no sites would do it. And you can see that these sites get posted to HN, so at least someone is reading it. Personally though I prefer more pleasant sites.
    • DanBC 10y ago
      I think that maybe the submitters are running a variety of ad-etc-blocking software, and so they're not seeing it.
      • Symbiote 10y ago
        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.
        • deleted 10y ago
          [deleted]
        • tastythrowaway2 10y ago
          you mean you block collection of Google analytics as an end-user? how does one go about that?
• cyberferret 10y ago
  Another suggestion - enable pausing on video. ANY video. Keep seeing more and more advertising videos that don't even give you the ability to pause. In the past 12 months or so, I am really finding my web browsing experience hitting new shitty lows. Pretty hard to see the content you want these days behind that clutter of Outbrain ads, pop up newsletter subs, auto playing videos and the like...
  • kevincox 10y ago
    This is actually quite difficult because even though they are using the browsers video pipeline the browser doesn't know anything about the UI of the page so it is very hard to expose a way for the user to pause/disable any video across all sites. I guess a hotkey that puts buttons on all videos might be good but I'm sure some sites would find ways to layer fake videos that would defeat this. It all comes back to the difficulty of running non-free software.
    • ygra 10y ago
      After all you can just use the video element off-screen and render into a canvas element. And the browser has no idea at all anymore where to display a UI for pausing video (unless they want to do something like the full-screen notification).
    • brassic 10y ago
      You don't need a pause button on all the videos. You just need a single button that pauses all the videos. I would be delighted if the escape key on my laptop served this purpose. Of course, now you have no UI no restart a particular video. But the advertisers would figure this out about 30s after a global pause feature was introduced.
      • mikro2nd 10y ago
        Look at your keyboard, up there, top row, right hand side. You might just be the person who has found an actual use for that button labelled "Pause". Congrats! ;)
• onion2k 10y ago
  This is eating up our data and inconveniencing millions of people using your products. The data issue can be addressed by only having videos play automatically when the user is on a wifi connection. This is the default for mobile devices already, so it's arguably already solved for most users. The "convenience" issue is something that I strongly suspect is actually something that people think one way but act another - lots of users claim to hate auto-playing videos but then they watch them a lot. Facebook's video engagement statistics are hard to argue with - a well designed video that works without sound (eg something from Buzzfeed) gets a tremendous number of shares, likes and click through engagements. I strongly suspect that turning off auto-playing video, even by default, would actually make the web worse for the majority of people. For those who prefer them not to autoplay, browser vendors do provide that, but the functionality is usually buried in the equivalent of chrome://flags somewhere.
  • frankzinger 10y ago
    The data issue can be addressed by only having videos play automatically when the user is on a wifi connection. This is the default for mobile devices already, so it's arguably already solved for most users. Not all WiFi connections equate to an infinite amount of data. Due to circumstances I am on a connection for which I pay per GB and it's shared through a WiFi router. I do not want my browser to download videos unless I asked it to.
    • egeozcan 10y ago
      I have a 3G Mobile Wireless Modem/Router (TP-Link M5250[1], heavily recommended btw) and this "if wireless connection present, download all the things" attitude really annoys me. Android is a big offender. Why on earth I don't get a "download updates automatically only on this particular network" setting... Whatsapp, Google Maps and many other apps too make the same false assumption. [1]: http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/cat-4692_M5250.html http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/cat-4692_M5250.ht...
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
• Belenus 10y ago
  There are some sites that display not ads but fake virus alerts. When I visited one of these sites, I got a message blaring out of my computer to call a phone number or to reinstall my computer to get rid of a "virus." (Hopefully it was not.) Every time I closed out of the message box a new one would appear, and I finally managed to close out of the site. It's happened a few times. This may not entirely relate to the topic you were speaking about. :)
• cmdrfred 10y ago
  The only problem is I want YouTube videos to do this when on that website.
  • clarry 10y ago
    Whitelists & blacklists should really be a default feature in browsers. The big toggles that make you wide open for all the shit on the web or just break all the web are no good.
  • dredmorbius 10y ago
    I don't. Have a tendency to pop open multiple vids, or have large session restores. Don't need to track down a dozen fucking autoplaying fucking videos.
• Broken_Hippo 10y ago
  This - so much this. A common scenario in my house: The spouse or I muttering obscenities over the autoplay ads, along with a comment of, "Use your powers for good, dammit! For good!" I find these intrusive. So much so that I occasionally browse with the computer muted - especially if the source of entertaining sound is coming from the spouse's computer or if I'm looking at cooking sites. Most times, I'm just wanting text.
  • clarry 10y ago
    Give all your monies to the advertisers. Maybe, just maybe they will stop bothering you once you have no more money to buy whatever crap they are advertising?
    • qbrass 10y ago
      They'll just advertise ways to earn more money.
• Houshalter 10y ago
  How can they stop it without breaking lots of things? Javascript has the ability to play sounds and videos without going through the standard video player. If you disable it, wouldn't it break various web apps and games?
  • eru 10y ago
    Why? You can make the javascript believe that it's playing, but not actually output anything. Just like when I am setting my computer on mute and turn off the screen---but in the browser instead.
    • Houshalter 10y ago
      But that still affects legitimate uses, like games and web apps that want audio.
• wfunction 10y ago
  CNN especially gets on my nerves. They seem to have gone out of their way to do everything they can to make sure all plugins/extensions that try to block it fail.
  • aorth 10y ago
    CNET too. Makes me close the page immediately.
  • curiouscats 10y ago
    I stopped using si.com (CNN's sports site) because of the incredible user hostile actions on that site - as you say not only autoplaying but intentionally coding around users expressed desires to stop autoplay.
    • protomyth 10y ago
      si.com seems to have been redesigned so it doesn't do that stuff. Time Inc. was spun off in 2014.
  • codingdave 10y ago
    I have edited my hosts file so anything from cdn.turner.com is routed to 127.0.0.1. Works like a charm for CNN.com. All the text, none of the media.
    • wfunction 10y ago
      The problem is sometimes I DO want to watch the video. I just don't want it to always autoplay.
  • rspeer 10y ago
    Bloomberg (linked here a lot) insists on loading HUGE high-resolution videos, where someone starts talking loudly immediately. They take forever to load but they give you no UI for "pausing" or just choosing not to load the video until it's loaded and playing. I try to make Ublock Origin rules that block that video element, but the element name keeps changing, it seems.
• skaplun 10y ago
  I think you are reacting like this because you're over using the medium(the web). For the average person its nice that their family's videos autoplay and autoloop without having to do something. Video and sound are big parts of the experience, which happens to not fit a certain advanced user group like you. So a browser setting would work but not disable for all
• boubiyeah 10y ago
  Can't agree more.
• chenzhekl 10y ago
  Autoplay is a feature specified in the W3C standard. Thus it's not the browser makers but websites should be blamed for abusing autoplay.
  • lewiseason 10y ago
    Another commenter suggested it should be something your browser prompts you for, similar to location or camera access. This seems to solve the poster's issue, whilst keeping within the spec (I assume?) You're right though, websites shouldn't abuse autoplay.
  • JohnTHaller 10y ago
    Browser makers are under no obligation to support a given part of the standard.
• thomasdd 10y ago
  There are situations when you need to play video on load. (for example, you want a nicely designed content or DIVs.) But Maybe a browser option to enable/disable video playback would solve this. Maybe disabling audio would be as an option, so as webdesigner you can show the relevant visual content but without sound.
  • lucaspiller 10y ago
    > There are situations when you need to play video on load No there really aren't, not on page load [0]. Show a nice still with a big play button on it - people know what that means. It's probably going to load faster too, so people won't be stuck staring at a blank section for 15 seconds. Or even worse, start reading and scrolling the first two paragraphs, then wonder why some audio started playing. And as others have said, you may be costing the user money - there is no way to tell if they have to pay for their data usage, so be kind and minimise how much data you need. [0] I may be able to excuse you if you are building a streaming video service, and want the next episode to play automatically.
    • pdkl95 10y ago
      > [0] That could be handled by allowing the media tag to be changed and restarted with a new URL during (and only during) the "ended" event[1]. That would allow continuing an already playing video with minimal side effects. E.g. only alow something like this: var video = document.getElementsById("current_video_tag"); var play_next_video = function () { video.src = "https://exmple.com/next_video_url"; video.currentTime = 0; video.play(); }); /* this should work */ video.addEventListener("ended", play_next_video); /* but these shouldn't */ video.addEventListener("progress", play_next_video); setTimeout(play_next_video, 1000); [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/Events/Media_events https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/Events/Me...
      • kuschku 10y ago
        And what if you want to support changing the video through remote control? Say, allow the user to open the site on their phone and TV, and the phone shows play/pause/next buttons, the TV shows the episode, and the phone can be used to skip to the next episode? (Data synced because the user is logged in on both, via a standard webbrowser)?
• Esau 10y ago
  This is something that used to be easier - practically everything depended on Flash and you could either not install Flash or install Flash with Flashblock. Now with everything rolled into the browser, the problem has gotten much worse.
• hello_there 10y ago
  Chrome already require webpages to ask permission in order to use resources like camera and microphone. I think it should do the same for speakers.
• thetinman 10y ago
  Turn off flash. 99% of your problem solved plus other benefits.
• ClayM 10y ago
  oh man, auto play on mobile apps that kill what you were listening to, requiring you to switch back the other app makes me want to throw my phone out the window.
• lucaspiller 10y ago
  I'm using the "Disable HTML5 Autoplay" for Chrome which works to block it, but it does break some sites. Notable Amazon Prime Video doesn't automatically start playing the next episode, and Facebook videos (and GIFs) won't play even when you click play. I would suggest at least making it opt-in through the browser-popup. However that's another annoyance - the number of sites I now visit which ask to send me notifications.
• Ruphin 10y ago
  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 visit. Are their usecases and desires not legitimate? Your argument is in the line of "I don't like going to Starbucks, so legislators should get together and ban Starbucks stores for everyone". Even if you have a legitimate reason for not liking Starbucks, the solution is for you to just stop going there. If you don't like websites that use autoplaying media, then stop visiting them. Or, like some others in this thread suggested, install some plugin or other software that makes sites behave the way you want to. A call for browser vendors to implement some opt-in setting that does what you want would be much more realistic suggestion. (As some other comments pointed out, for some browsers this setting already exists)
  • LamaOfRuin 10y ago
    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-play and ridiculously large animated gifs the way they've been going, I suspect it's only a matter of time before this potentially useful feature also defaults to off.
    • JadeNB 10y ago
      > > 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?
• quakephil 10y ago
  Step 1. Install adblock. Step 2. ? Step 3. Profit
• mproud 10y ago
  Apple has been going so far as to automatically disable Flash, which really helps.
• hd4 10y ago
  1. Use a predefined adblocking hosts file on your system, if you have Linux, just replace your existing /etc/hosts file with this https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts This will kill 90% of popups and autoloading, for the others.. 2. If you use Chrome, use the option that stops plug-ins autoloading (search for plugins in the Settings search-box) 3. If you use Firefox, remove or simply don't install Flash. For HTML5 you should look for controls that stop autoplaying.
• Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  If auto playing videos is a bandwidth concern, perhaps gif's should be treated similarly.
• inian 10y ago
  It is not as simple as that. Even if videos are prevented from being auto-playing, people resort to much much worse techniques. For example, GIFs - which are much bigger that the corresponding video, worse for battery life etc. To combat this, Chrome recently enabled autoplaying of videos if the video is muted on mobile browser. Hopefully this gets the number of people using GIFs down. Or who knows, people might start animating images on canvas or something. Allowing auto play in some conditions seems to be lesser of two evils according to me..
  • bunderbunder 10y ago
    Heck, I'll happily accept not auto-displaying GIFs, too. For non-animated content everyone is using PNG or SVG nowadays, so I doubt there'd be much collateral damage.
• msinclair 10y ago
  Another problem that Facebook has (and I'm sure others have as well) is attempting to fetch dozens and dozens of videos. At once. This generally locks up even desktop browsers as they try to preload the content. I've seen it trying to grab 130 videos before. Pretty ridiculous.
• oftenwrong 10y ago
  I wrote a small extension for personal use that can set various <video> preferences on a site-by-site basis. One of the main things I wanted to be able to do is disabled autoplay. However, I found that a lot of sites just start the video from js instead of setting the 'autoplay' attribute. I was able to put in some stronger defense by using MutationObserver to stop a video that was played without the user clicking play, but then I found that some sites have code that will force a video to be playing, so even a manual pause would be overridden, and the site's js would contend with my extension's js. There's no way to stop autoplay if we allow free, programmatic access to videos (without blocking js too, which I use noscript for). I had the same problem with the 'loop' attribute. I wanted videos to not loop. I found that some sites loop videos without using the 'loop' attribute. I would disable 'loop' on the <video>, but the <video> would be replaced by a new autoplaying <video> when the original video ended. This is about the point that I gave up on my extension.
• rebootit 10y ago
  I found most addons for chrome were broken so I made a less broken userscript for Tampermonkey: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/24811-html5-stop-autoplay/code https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/24811-html5-stop-autoplay/... Here's Tampermonkey: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgffkkebhmkfjojejmpbldmpobfkfo?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgf...
• ricardobeat 10y ago
  Actually iOS didn't have auto play until recently. Back then the outcry from developers was the opposite - "y won't you implement the standard!"
  • ricardobeat 10y ago
    Restrictions were lifted in iOS10 less than four months ago: https://webkit.org/blog/6784/new-video-policies-for-ios/ https://webkit.org/blog/6784/new-video-policies-for-ios/
• jarnix 10y ago
  It's not up to the software developer but to the developer of the site, I don't understand your post!
• TheCoreh 10y ago
  Dear browser makers: Please don't. There are legitimate uses for this feature. If websites are abusing it, simply stop visiting them, or install an ad/content blocker. What maybe browser makers could introduce is a "switch" to disable autoplay and audio, and manually enable it per tab. But this feature should be not active by default. Also, we should be complaining with the ISPs and Carriers about their data caps, not at sites for using data
• tobyhinloopen 10y ago
  No. Browsers should not interfere with autoplay. It is still a tool. Don't drop features because some abuse it.
• timdeneau 10y ago
  Agreed. The default behavior for the web audio/video autoplay attribute should depend on a permission request for whitelisting.
• untog 10y ago
  I'd be more content with autoplaying videos, but muted. I was glad when iOS 10 introduced autoplaying video because it means people will stop converting every damn thing to GIFs, which are far more bandwidth intensive than videos.
• pinsard 10y ago
  Maybe it's about time we start to use the internet less as an entertainment source (web) and more as only a medium to reach what we need, be it business or pleasure. Less is more should help us adjust the industry behavior.
• FloNeu 10y ago
  https://67.media.tumblr.com/03f93a2d2df4f6b4c23afafb0f81d8f4/tumblr_n3aw70b7Tl1r1mpi1o1_500.jpg https://67.media.tumblr.com/03f93a2d2df4f6b4c23afafb0f81d8f4...
  • JadeNB 10y ago
    I love a well placed reaction GIF / JPG, but I think that the consensus is that Hacker News is not the place for them.
• FloNeu 10y ago
  https://67.media.tumblr.com/03f93a2d2df4f6b4c23afafb0f81d8f4/tumblr_n3aw70b7Tl1r1mpi1o1_500.jpg https://67.media.tumblr.com/03f93a2d2df4f6b4c23afafb0f81d8f4...
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• nekdev 10y ago
  That's stupid. Many apps really need vidéo autoplay: - YouTube - video usages (webrtc) - some apps for people with disabilities... You may ask for an option of disabling it by default (which will make some apps not working) but not impose your choice and "insult" developers choices that have a far better pov than you. :/
• martin-adams 10y ago
  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.
• IvanK_net 10y ago
  I completely disagree with this proposal. All websites should be allowed to play sounds any time they want to. Without it, webapps can not reasonably compete the native apps. I am a developer of web games and being able to play the sound from the beginning, without any interaction from the user, is one of the most essential parts of the game experience. If you visit a website which unexpectedly plays a sound, you should stop visiting it / downvote it / ask the authors to stop doing it. When you are surprised by the sound, the problem is not in browsers, the problem is in authors of webpages / webapps.
  • Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago
    They could at the very least require a dialog asking for permission to play sound. I think this wouldn't be a problem for web game developers like you because anyone who wants to play a game would say yes without a second thought, but it would be a massive quality of life improvement for the average Internet user. It would be great if every web administrator behaved nicely to users but that just doesn't happen, especially when ads are involved.
  • AndrewUnmuted 10y ago
    > Without it, webapps can not reasonably compete the native apps. This point, on its own, sounds rather nice to me. After all, the various implementations of modern HTML and Javascript that allow these 'webapps' to function are the same ones being abused ad nauseum by news organizations and other media entities. I don't deny the usefulness of these modern web development features. I also recognize that because most of the world is on Google Chrome, this makes cross-platform support easier for developers. However, I also realize that web apps are popular because of how much easier it is to track, monitor, and collect users' data and behaviors when they are forced to access your application from the browser. My observation has been that auto-playing media in browsers is a common strategy to artificially inflate a site's media engagement figures. The strategy is cheap, prays on users' media illiteracy, and is incredibly dishonest. Worst of all, it allows media companies to sidestep the more expensive problem of producing engaging, high-quality content in favor of dumb little gimmicks to keep inflating their engagement figures. I don't know about everyone else here, but if the content is interesting to me, I'm willing for my right hand to leave the keyboard for about 0.5 seconds in order to click the 'play' button with my mouse.
• amelius 10y ago
  Imho, a better solution would be to be able to disable sound by default, and then allow sound to be turned on per-tab.
  • antocv 10y ago
    Exactly, I dont even let the "web-browsing" user access anything in /dev aside from null, zero and {}urandom. The browser doesnt have flash or mp4 or other "video-plaything things", webgl or webrtc enabled. On android (without google), WebApps sandbox to browse "web apps". youtube-dl if I want to watch a movie, simple.
• amelius 10y ago
  It's not really possible to robustly implement this, because a browser cannot possibly know if you are hitting a "play" button. So somebody who would like to trick the system (e.g. advertisers) could just make e.g. a menu item behave the same way as a play button.
• hartator 10y ago
  Or bear a world where ad-blocking will be 100%.
• dustinmoorenet 10y ago
  As an old Javascript developer, I don't see how the browser could do this without making legitimate websites suffer. You have the freedom to run JS code at any point in the DOM load, after an amount of time (setInterval or setTimeout) or after user interaction. And you can start and stop audio and/or video through JS. So you can't restrict automatically playing media without also restricting the ability to programmatically control the media for legitimate reasons, like media control buttons and hot-keys. I think it is best to avoid shitty websites. My short list: Facebook, and TV network websites and their affiliates. There are lots of websites that do the right thing.
• izak30 10y ago
  I make art installations and UI/UX research. A modern browser is one of the best technical canvases. If you are working on browsers and you turn things off, please always allow me a backdoor for my own browsers to turn them back on. Complex software control of multimedia and the whole browser experience gives me the ability to develop new ways of interacting with computers.
• ccvannorman 10y ago
  Last night I watched episode 8 of Cosmos (I highly recommend Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson) and learned that for 2+ decades (from 1920s to 1940s), oil industry knowingly propagated bad science that poisoned millions of people in pursuit of profits. Sadly, pop-ups and auto-play videos lead to more profits, at least perceived/short term. No amount of whining by us will change a board meeting at a medium-large company result. "We need to do X that will piss off Y customers but result in Z more profits." Companies always choose profits. I'm on board with getting these things changed but appealing to big corporations because "it sucks" is never going to amount to "but it makes us more money." We need a different strategy.
• intrasight 10y ago
  In my opinion it isn't the browser vendors who should decide what content gets displayed. On mobile, I browse with JavaScript disabled. Pages load fast and I don't get anything but HTML.
  • atom058 10y ago
    Second this! I too have resorted to disabling Javascript as a solution to the annoying/user-unfriendly mobile web. Fortunately, most sites still fail with a fair degree of grace, i.e. making it possible to read the content of the page with JS disabled. The fact that most news sites load approximately 10x faster is a nice bonus as well. On Android, there are plugins for Firefox and Chrome. The plugin I use for FF comes with a handy quick-setting in the address bar. Makes enabling JS again easier on the rare occasion where it is actually necessary. Furthermore, disabling JS on my Kindle is the only way to make the experimental browser reasonable to use. Oh, on a side note: if devs would please stop loading article text over JS, that would be great. Same goes for styling elements with JS without reverting to something reasonable if the browser has it disabled.
• hashhar 10y ago
  For Firefox: For Flash, change the Flash Plugin setting to Ask to Activate. For HTML5, switch `media.autoplay.enabled` preference `about:config` to `false`. Or try out FlashStopper [1] to stop both HTML5 and Flash. [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/flashstopper/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/flashstopper/
• emidln 10y ago
  In the past, I was responsible for analytics around a decision to autoplay or not autoplay videos on a media site. The site did both mobile and desktop videos. * voluntary customer feedback was universally negative * bounce rate decreased substantially (around 40%) * total interactions with the page increased almost 3x (clicks on significant UX elements such as like/subscibe/additional video plays) * interactions for those using some form of adblock stayed the same (presumably these people also had an autoplay off plugin) In summary, what users say they like and what they actually like are wildly different. The average user seemed to engage more when we removed the burden of first interaction. *We did eventually kill autoplay, but only so we could have a consistent experience between YouTube and non YouTube videos (YouTube took efforts to stop counting autoplayed videos for advertising purposes).
  • CamperBob2 10y ago
    In summary, what users say they like and what they actually like are wildly different. The average user seemed to engage more when we removed the burden of first interaction. They're clicking by mistake, trying to make the overlay go away!
    • emidln 10y ago
      No, they're clicking visually distinct, non-overlapping UX down the page.
  • wott 10y ago
    The number of times I have to click a bit everywhere at random in a panic because some shit autoplay sound or video started yelling and I can't figure which one it is and where it is :-[]
    • emidln 10y ago
      Presumably you don't click on a button that says share and then click facebook, and then complete the share action in a panic. If you do, I love you and would love to find out how to induce your kind of panic in more people.
• _RPM 10y ago
  Who decides this? I imagine it's much more than a developer's decision. It may be a higher up decision based on business goals.
• dredmorbius 10y ago
  Yes, absoutely, and please. I filed this bug myself July 2015, though I believe others have existed for years. https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=514102 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=514102 In the meantime, I've taken to blocking hosts and/or domains which are used to serve autoplay media. A small list generates exceptionally high mileage. http://pastebin.com/FzAgkRnB http://pastebin.com/FzAgkRnB I implement this on the router via DDWRT, which protects the entire LAN. You can also add this to your own /etc/hosts file(s) on individual machines, or go further and have a local DNS server be authoritative for these services. The block is intentionally global, and encouraged, as media providers themselves will find that they cannot reach anyone, anywhere so long as autoplay is a default. Again: the Internet and Web are ultimately a user-determines-policy system. And if servers say "fuck you" loudly enough to users, then users can say "fuck you" back. And win. DD-WRT instructions: https://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Ad_blocking https://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Ad_blocking
• sdfjkl 10y ago
  Yes please. In fact, let it be a preference if I even wish to buffer that stuff, rather than just not autoplay it. Because, being mostly on low-bandwidth, metered or very crappy connections, I almost certainly do not want several dozen MB of completely unwanted garbage shoved down my (metered) pipe.
• dawnerd 10y ago
  I can't way I want this default. I do find it annoying though when sites decide to put a very small 100x100 auto playing video at the bottom of the page. Cnet is one of the bigger offenders
• codecamper 10y ago
  agreed! investing websites are terrible for this. cnbc starts a video playing for every article. there goes my bandwidth.
• zetafunction 10y ago
  Chrome for Android blocks autoplaying videos. To get around this, sites now use JS to decode and render video into a canvas. For example: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=178297#c73 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=178297.... As one might imagine, this is not so great for power usage…
• Joyfield 10y ago
  And Firefox, please remember the sound volume i set on your HTML5 player for a specific site.
• eridius 10y ago
  iOS safari has always blocked auto playing video, so I'm not sure what you're complaining about there. Very recently they've finally started allowing it for video that has no audio track (or that has the audio track muted), which seems to match what you want.
• greggman 10y ago
  YC's AirBNB autoplays video on the front page. Drives me crazy since while traveling I'm often on a bandwidth restricted connection
• jfoutz 10y ago
  how about a :obnoxious selector for links? autoplay video, please register, and messing with history would be lovely. I guess it's because there's no good way to populate the selector without visiting the link target.
• timothyh2ster 10y ago
  I simply leave when it happens; what could they possibly have to interest me when they are dumb enough to auto-feed their stuff.
• hobarrera 10y ago
  Video: Arguable, since a lot of times is part of the basic design and very lightweight. Audio: MUST be muted be default. There's nothing that I hate more than opening something in a new tab for later, and a few seconds later, having to track down there that damn noise is coming from. Always, always, mute tabs be default!
• jaredsohn 10y ago
  Recent versions of the MuteTab Chrome extension (that I wrote) allow muting all tabs by default, along with a lot of other muting-related behaviors. http://www.mutetab.com http://www.mutetab.com
• gkya 10y ago
  Nowadays I find I can't use the WWW without JS blocked except on a select whitelist of websites. I can't stand downloading 10-15 megabytes for <=1KiB of actual substance. I can't stand the amount of amateurish design decisions I need to fight using websites, some unfortunately unavoidable like my university's web services, or the stupid Edmodo app imposed to us by our professors, etc. And I detest icons, because each and every app / website have different opinions on icons and a different set of cryptic icons which I fear clicking. Also webfonts in many cases are an abomination as many times they are used where a simple stupid half-a-meg PNG would do the job. "Share" buttons that come with some kilobytes of JS, floating headers that leave me five pixels to see the text I'm reading, well, this is an endless list. I'll spare a separate sentence for history-fiddling, I am disgusted when when I hit back unexpected things happen. Google, Youtube, Github, these fiddle with history and replicate browser's things (page loading, history keeping ...) in JS. And as the user I don't have the chance to affect the actual website makers, so blocking JS / cookies / media is the only option.
• nextos 10y ago
  media.autoplay.enabled=false does the trick in Firefox about:config.
• ams6110 10y ago
  I've disabled all media players in my browsers. Problem solved.
• ibekinq 10y ago
  Copy
• ibekinq 10y ago
  Copy by 3rd
• Reverberb 10y ago
  AI will indeed kill humanity.not by going renegade but doing exactly what we tell. Soon enough we gona lose all capability of doing the most simple tasks
• oriettaxx 10y ago
  yes, absolutely This summer in Greece we had to pay about 500$ f.... penalty for over using our 3G internet access (we just forgot a laptop & brower open for a night).
• Traubenfuchs 10y ago
  Try out the Bloomberg Website. There is an autoplay video on every page and it moves to a fixed position if you scroll away. Someone should be slapped for this.