8 ms·

Google show signs of reconsidering auto mute after developer critique

39 points by Theodeus 8y ago

tonysdg 8y ago
I'm not sure I saw any signs that they're "reconsidering" on this ticket -- just that they're now aware of how many corner cases they have. I can easily see Google saying, "eh, that's your problem, learn to whitelist your site with us."
- SquareWheel 8y ago
  That's not my interpretation of their comments at all. #55 "Chrome Product Manager for desktop here. Thank you for posting these examples, they're superful helpful to the team. We didn't intend to break all this awesome existing content that relies on webaudio, and we are investigating paths forward now. More updates will follow on this bug."
  - gray_-_wolf 8y ago
    that's corporate talk for "we don't care, let's stall and come with even more fucked up solution"
    - Theodeus 8y ago
      That's overly synical. They broke tons of their own stuff too, so my bet is on this being genuine.
cm2187 8y ago
What I don't understand is why they went this convoluted route of trying to assess what's legitimate or not, what's a user interaction or not. Does anyone know why they didn't go the route of other permissions like notifications or location, with a discrete popup that says the page is attempting to play some audio (or video), do you want to allow? If it is legitimate, the user clicks allow once and the site works forever.
- SquareWheel 8y ago
  They probably wanted to avoid "breaking" major sites like Youtube, Spotify, and Soundcloud, and tried to create a smarter whitelist system.
- krisdol 8y ago
  Because they sell ads, some of them video ads.
- Klathmon 8y ago
  How often do you see the "want to allow X to display notifications?" or "want to allow X to access your location?" It's a shitty UX for everyone involved. It's shitty for the user because they get asked it on SO MANY sites. I see friends/family browsing the web and they will go to a news site, click "no" to notifications, need to click away the fullscreen "want to subscribe to our newsletter" modal, then scroll down to the content. Adding a "want to allow this to display video" is just another step you need before being able to use the site. And it sucks for site owners because those that legitimately need the ability to display video will have a pretty large percentage of their users react-click "no" on the dialog, meaning the site is broken until that user goes into settings and changes that one manually (and unsurprisingly, just about 0 do that). Now I don't necessarily agree with the choice they've made here, but I do agree that a permissions dialog isn't the right UX.
  - cm2187 8y ago
    Well it creates a disincentive for websites to use unnecessary audio. I don't think any user will be surprised or annoyed by seeing youtube or pluralsight asking them permission to play audio/video. For some random website where audio is unsolicited, it creates an incentive to not even ask. Like you don't want to necessary access the location of your users if you don't want to piss them off. I am actually happy when I can press no on some random website trying to access my location. I think it probably is the right UX.
    - Klathmon 8y ago
      It's not about being surprised, it's about not reading the dialogue at all. I make a barcode scanning app in the browser. Our users know that the app scans barcodes using the camera, they receive training on the app before using it, and yet about ~15%~ (Edit: it's closer to 8% now) of our users click "no" when asked to allow camera permissions to scan barcodes. It was causing so many support calls that we ended up doing a 2-stage permissions prompt. First we display a javascript dialog telling the user that they need to click "yes" for the app to work, then we show the native permissions request after they have clicked yes, because if the user selects "no" the first time, we can't ask again, and 99% of users don't know how to go into the settings and re-enable it (hell, even I don't know where it is from memory, and would need to hunt around to find where it is) And it doesn't create an incentive not to ask at all. At worst the website is where they would be if they didn't ask, at best they are able to display notifications, play audio, play video, get location, etc... It's a no-lose situation in 99% of cases for the website owner, unless they actually really need that permission to function, then they have a LOT to lose. It's a situation where the incentives are misaligned terribly. And don't get me wrong, i'm also very VERY happy that I can prevent notifications or location access, but I also think that more could be done to prevent spamming of the permissions prompt itself.
ChrisSD 8y ago
Usually when a major web browser decides to do something that has the potential to break existing websites they do extensive testing and put the call out for dev feedback before they release. Why didn't that happen here? Also it's odd that Chrome decided to explicitly whitelist some sites. Surely that's an admission that their automated workflow doesn't actually work well?
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  Google is starting to show a pattern of addressing the concerns of the large players (which themselves are a part of), and ignoring or degrading everyone else's experience. Good luck trying to get predicable deliverability to gmail without your mail being put in the spam box as a small mail sender. Google refuses to even tell you anything about why or why not mail is being delivered unless you send hundreds of messages a day. This is a small personal mailserver, compliant fully with DMARC/DKIM/SPF, has RDNS, reasonably old domain (a few years), IP not and never has been on any blacklist, reputable server provider, has been sending mail to gmail for a few years, is not sending anything except personal mail under my direct control, nothing that could even vaugely be considered commerical or spam of any kind. Google still classifies it as spam, even with repeated clicking of "this is not spam" button by my recepients, after a while it just goes back in the spam folder, and has absolutely no hint at why, or how to change it. To top it off im hearing reports that signing up for google suite for your domain immediately seems to remove this mysterious "fuck you filter", and you no longer get deliverability issues. Ive heard similar rumours about placement in google search results, aswell as stuff like youtube recommendations, if you aren't already in the accepted list of stuff we wanna show you, dont bother even trying. Its a very concerning thing because the outcry about shitty practices targeting the things 95% of people dont see, will be by definition limited, and yet it is these very things that are essential to remaining out under the thumb of parties like Facebook or Google.
  - some_account 8y ago
    Why don't you move away from Google? It's like intentionally sticking to one of the worst companies and then complaining about it. Try fastmail, it's really great.
eurticket 8y ago
I would suggest just having the tab muted by default, and maybe an easier button to toggle on/off, than current right-click, to unmute/solo. Perhaps, a limited notification for the first 100 times your tab is muted and it detects sound being played in the tab, so you're not wondering why no sound is playing.
- oftenwrong 8y ago
  Something like this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mute-sites-by-default/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mute-sites-by...
amelius 8y ago
Since JavaScript can generate moving imagery, and animated GIFs can as well, the only sensible thing is to consider the video as something conceptually different from audio. I wouldn't mind if they always allow videos to play, except I want full control over the audio at all times.
mr_toad 8y ago
I’ll immediately switch to using any browser that blocks auto play by default on all websites without exception.
- lucaspottersky 8y ago
  there's got to be a "Silent Navigation" equivalent to the "Icognito/Private Navigation". Silent Navigation would block videos, audio, notifications, have an adblocker built-in etc. that's the dream browser in 2018 IMO.
- michaelt 8y ago
  Firefox -> about:config -> media.autoplay.enabled -> false Edit: troydavis points out this Chrome option doesn't actually block autoplay: Chrome -> chrome://flags/#autoplay-policy -> Document user activation is required
  - troydavis 8y ago
    The Chrome flag doesn't do what it sounds like it does (and what it should). Essentially everyone logically interprets it as blocking all auto playing videos, audio or not, but that isn’t one of its options. Given the number of people who hate unauthorized autoplaying video (including silent video), it’s sort of amazing that Chrome’s product management team hasn’t added a way to prevent it - at least as a buried config flag and ideally as domain rules (like the “Clear cookies on exit” rules). That wouldn’t preclude using automated heuristics to add and remove sites from the filters, but at least there’d be a reliable way to turn it off and whitelist a few domains. Background from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16367457#16370471 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://www.chromium.org/audio-video/autoplay https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-policy-changes 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.
lucaspottersky 8y ago
isn't the "Allow website to send Notifications" prompt on 99% of mainstream websites irritating enough?
- LoSboccacc 8y ago
  That’s because the api is badly defined, the javascript call to ask for notification is syncronous so the browser need that annoying blocking popup insteas of something less invasive like the popup notification
  - Klathmon 8y ago
    The javascript call to request notification permissions is async (returning a promise in newer browsers, callback in older ones). https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Notification/requestPermission https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Notificatio...
kartan 8y ago
The Issue report is not very well done. > Autoplay restrictions on the web have long been inconsistent and served only to impede legitimate use cases. This is judgmental, and it is not backed up with any data. Has it really "served only" to impede the legitimate uses? > I've described this in detail in the following blog Blog promotion. > What is the expected behavior? Allow audio playback on page load without any user interaction. Definitively this is not the expected behavior. Chromium team has defined that no audio will be allowed until there is user interaction. > Abusive content will just blare out audio at the first opportunity. Yes. This is a red queen race. But doesn't means that it is not worth pursuing. I think that the point is valid. But the premise of the report, it is not. With the goal of minimizing sound SPAM in the web, Chromium has imposed some drastic measures that require changes in the interfaces of a large unknown amount of Javascript code. > "These restrictions require special coding to handle them. Instead, the browser could simply allow all playback attempts to succeed, but mute the master audio output. Then the browser can automatically unmute the master audio output the first time the user touches the screen (or whenever else it deems the user is OK with audio)." The proposed solution is quite good. Let the browser show a button to enable sound like they did with pop-ups. So all the affected companies and individuals don't need to repeat the checks all over the internet, to create a unified experience and to keep legacy games and applications that have no chance of being updated. But as another post says, there is a lot of corner cases. I can imagine a blind user wanting to have sound without having to read some text. The company I work for was affected by this change. And there was a lot of problems in production. To fix it, people had to work the weekend. I know that should not be like that, that we need to improve beta browser testing, and such. But sometimes the realities of companies make this kind of behavioral changes difficult. I hope that Chromium finds a good way of keeping ads muted, while not breaking the Internet.
gpmcadam 8y ago
Wouldn't this be easily resolved by giving the user the option upon visiting the site: "This website would like your permission to play audio. You can revoke this at any time." Similar to how storing files or sending push notifications works?
- 7Z7 8y ago
  Those are both already horrible UXs that are abused in the same way the "subscribe to our newsletter" is. I won't ever do any of those three for 99.9% of websites I visit, and yet 70% are requesting it. They've become user-hostile ways to give websites a way to force interaction from me that I don't ever want, and if I did I could chose the option in the account preferences (if I cared enough to make one).
  - gpmcadam 8y ago
    The way that browsers typically handle this though is that your interaction isn't blocked by the prompt. There's a default state ('disallow'), the website can ask you for permission, and you can choose to either: 1. Allow 2. Deny 3. Do nothing at all The website then must take all three into consideration so your experience isn't ruined as a result of a blocking-state. I agree that the permissions system isn't ideal, and I would hope that the way we handle this interchange in the future can improve to a point where it's less invasive in terms of screen space. But at least for now, it shouldn't invade your ability to continue using the site.
    - 7Z7 8y ago
      Its not about being blocked from continuing, it's about having to answer questions (or click away the dialogues) to peruse content. And the "subscribe to our newsletter" overlay often does block progress without hunting for the often obfuscated "no thanks" link.
mdip 8y ago
As my mom always said, "This is why we can't have nice things." I deeply miss the days when all it took was installing something akin to "Flask Block" and this problem was solved. I've been using Firefox with their built-in autoplay blocking feature (hidden in about:config) for a while now on my desktop and on mobile -- mainly because of idiotic news sites that seem to think I want to listen/watch the article I clicked in to (with the included pre-roll commercial, I assume[0]) and that my coworkers/wife want to listen to it, too. The solution offered by the original bug report sounds practical, but the thing of it is, the solution that Chrome has implemented, in my opinion, doesn't go far enough[1]. I don't just want the audio muted, I want the whole video prevented from even starting to download (on my mobile device) -- it wastes limited data and costs me money. It's sad that a "fix" to workaround a misuse of a feature is breaking legitimate uses. Having done a few years on the security side of the house at a telecom, I've tried to push developers in the direction of thinking about solutions from these sorts of angles. It's important when designing something to think about not just how your creation will be used, but how it can be misused and while the latter shouldn't necessarily prevent a feature from being implemented, it's important to weigh the two against each other and think about ways that problems might be mitigated. This might result in the adjustment of a feature, or it might be nothing more than a contingency plan should nefarious use eclipse legitimate use. [0] I run uBlock Origin so I'm not entirely sure that there's a commercial -- I can only assume because the quality of the video, which is often nothing more than a man or woman reading the article, verbatim, in near-monotone voice is so poor that I can't imagine this being a feature added because of user demand. [1] Though, muting audio is certainly a good start. I remember in the 2000s when people would pass around e-mails with links to important sounding things that, when clicked, would open a browser that screamed a message out of your speakers "Hey, everybody! I'm looking at porn!". Haven't seen that in a long time, but it'll come around again -- everything that's old is new again at some point.
thrownaway954 8y ago
It might be just me, but I cannot (for the life me) understand what the issue is here. Maybe it's because I'm not a mobile game developer or content creator where audio and video is my life. I think people like me would benefit with an actual side-by-side demonstration of what the issue is now vs the resolution the author is proposing.
- catbird 8y ago
  This new Chrome "feature" mutes audio from many browser games and interactive audiovisual websites, offering no indication that audio is muted, and no way for the user to restore the audio. By trying to silence autoplaying video ads, they have thrown the baby out with the bathwater (except for certain specially whitelisted domains, like youtube).
bookofjoe 8y ago
Until I read this entry's title, I'd never thought about whether Google is singular or plural—is "Google show..." an acceptable variant of "Google shows...?"
- Angostura 8y ago
  In general, style-guides say "companies are singular"
- jzwinck 8y ago
  In American English it's "Group does X" but in British English it's "Group do X."
- CrazedGeek 8y ago
  Both are fine. American English tends to treat collective nouns as singular, while British English treats them as plural. (http://www.dictionary.com/e/collective-nouns/ http://www.dictionary.com/e/collective-nouns/)
vidanay 8y ago
Now I know I've been reading too much Reddit. I was really impressed by the well articulated, grammatically correct, and properly spelled postings in that bug thread. My standards have been lowered too far.
captainbland 8y ago
Is MySpace going to make a comeback here or what?

39 points by Theodeus 8y ago

I'm not sure I saw any signs that they're "reconsidering" on this ticket -- just that they're now aware of how many corner cases they have. I can easily see Google saying, "eh, that's your problem, learn to whitelist your site with us."

SquareWheel 8y ago
That's not my interpretation of their comments at all. #55 "Chrome Product Manager for desktop here. Thank you for posting these examples, they're superful helpful to the team. We didn't intend to break all this awesome existing content that relies on webaudio, and we are investigating paths forward now. More updates will follow on this bug."
- gray_-_wolf 8y ago
  that's corporate talk for "we don't care, let's stall and come with even more fucked up solution"
  - Theodeus 8y ago
    That's overly synical. They broke tons of their own stuff too, so my bet is on this being genuine.

cm2187 8y ago

What I don't understand is why they went this convoluted route of trying to assess what's legitimate or not, what's a user interaction or not. Does anyone know why they didn't go the route of other permissions like notifications or location, with a discrete popup that says the page is attempting to play some audio (or video), do you want to allow? If it is legitimate, the user clicks allow once and the site works forever.

SquareWheel 8y ago
They probably wanted to avoid "breaking" major sites like Youtube, Spotify, and Soundcloud, and tried to create a smarter whitelist system.
krisdol 8y ago
Because they sell ads, some of them video ads.
Klathmon 8y ago
How often do you see the "want to allow X to display notifications?" or "want to allow X to access your location?" It's a shitty UX for everyone involved. It's shitty for the user because they get asked it on SO MANY sites. I see friends/family browsing the web and they will go to a news site, click "no" to notifications, need to click away the fullscreen "want to subscribe to our newsletter" modal, then scroll down to the content. Adding a "want to allow this to display video" is just another step you need before being able to use the site. And it sucks for site owners because those that legitimately need the ability to display video will have a pretty large percentage of their users react-click "no" on the dialog, meaning the site is broken until that user goes into settings and changes that one manually (and unsurprisingly, just about 0 do that). Now I don't necessarily agree with the choice they've made here, but I do agree that a permissions dialog isn't the right UX.
- cm2187 8y ago
  Well it creates a disincentive for websites to use unnecessary audio. I don't think any user will be surprised or annoyed by seeing youtube or pluralsight asking them permission to play audio/video. For some random website where audio is unsolicited, it creates an incentive to not even ask. Like you don't want to necessary access the location of your users if you don't want to piss them off. I am actually happy when I can press no on some random website trying to access my location. I think it probably is the right UX.
  - Klathmon 8y ago
    It's not about being surprised, it's about not reading the dialogue at all. I make a barcode scanning app in the browser. Our users know that the app scans barcodes using the camera, they receive training on the app before using it, and yet about ~15%~ (Edit: it's closer to 8% now) of our users click "no" when asked to allow camera permissions to scan barcodes. It was causing so many support calls that we ended up doing a 2-stage permissions prompt. First we display a javascript dialog telling the user that they need to click "yes" for the app to work, then we show the native permissions request after they have clicked yes, because if the user selects "no" the first time, we can't ask again, and 99% of users don't know how to go into the settings and re-enable it (hell, even I don't know where it is from memory, and would need to hunt around to find where it is) And it doesn't create an incentive not to ask at all. At worst the website is where they would be if they didn't ask, at best they are able to display notifications, play audio, play video, get location, etc... It's a no-lose situation in 99% of cases for the website owner, unless they actually really need that permission to function, then they have a LOT to lose. It's a situation where the incentives are misaligned terribly. And don't get me wrong, i'm also very VERY happy that I can prevent notifications or location access, but I also think that more could be done to prevent spamming of the permissions prompt itself.

ChrisSD 8y ago

Usually when a major web browser decides to do something that has the potential to break existing websites they do extensive testing and put the call out for dev feedback before they release. Why didn't that happen here? Also it's odd that Chrome decided to explicitly whitelist some sites. Surely that's an admission that their automated workflow doesn't actually work well?

throwaway2048 8y ago
Google is starting to show a pattern of addressing the concerns of the large players (which themselves are a part of), and ignoring or degrading everyone else's experience. Good luck trying to get predicable deliverability to gmail without your mail being put in the spam box as a small mail sender. Google refuses to even tell you anything about why or why not mail is being delivered unless you send hundreds of messages a day. This is a small personal mailserver, compliant fully with DMARC/DKIM/SPF, has RDNS, reasonably old domain (a few years), IP not and never has been on any blacklist, reputable server provider, has been sending mail to gmail for a few years, is not sending anything except personal mail under my direct control, nothing that could even vaugely be considered commerical or spam of any kind. Google still classifies it as spam, even with repeated clicking of "this is not spam" button by my recepients, after a while it just goes back in the spam folder, and has absolutely no hint at why, or how to change it. To top it off im hearing reports that signing up for google suite for your domain immediately seems to remove this mysterious "fuck you filter", and you no longer get deliverability issues. Ive heard similar rumours about placement in google search results, aswell as stuff like youtube recommendations, if you aren't already in the accepted list of stuff we wanna show you, dont bother even trying. Its a very concerning thing because the outcry about shitty practices targeting the things 95% of people dont see, will be by definition limited, and yet it is these very things that are essential to remaining out under the thumb of parties like Facebook or Google.
- some_account 8y ago
  Why don't you move away from Google? It's like intentionally sticking to one of the worst companies and then complaining about it. Try fastmail, it's really great.

eurticket 8y ago

I would suggest just having the tab muted by default, and maybe an easier button to toggle on/off, than current right-click, to unmute/solo. Perhaps, a limited notification for the first 100 times your tab is muted and it detects sound being played in the tab, so you're not wondering why no sound is playing.

oftenwrong 8y ago
Something like this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mute-sites-by-default/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mute-sites-by...

amelius 8y ago

Since JavaScript can generate moving imagery, and animated GIFs can as well, the only sensible thing is to consider the video as something conceptually different from audio. I wouldn't mind if they always allow videos to play, except I want full control over the audio at all times.

mr_toad 8y ago

I’ll immediately switch to using any browser that blocks auto play by default on all websites without exception.

lucaspottersky 8y ago
there's got to be a "Silent Navigation" equivalent to the "Icognito/Private Navigation". Silent Navigation would block videos, audio, notifications, have an adblocker built-in etc. that's the dream browser in 2018 IMO.
michaelt 8y ago
Firefox -> about:config -> media.autoplay.enabled -> false Edit: troydavis points out this Chrome option doesn't actually block autoplay: Chrome -> chrome://flags/#autoplay-policy -> Document user activation is required
- troydavis 8y ago
  The Chrome flag doesn't do what it sounds like it does (and what it should). Essentially everyone logically interprets it as blocking all auto playing videos, audio or not, but that isn’t one of its options. Given the number of people who hate unauthorized autoplaying video (including silent video), it’s sort of amazing that Chrome’s product management team hasn’t added a way to prevent it - at least as a buried config flag and ideally as domain rules (like the “Clear cookies on exit” rules). That wouldn’t preclude using automated heuristics to add and remove sites from the filters, but at least there’d be a reliable way to turn it off and whitelist a few domains. Background from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16367457#16370471 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://www.chromium.org/audio-video/autoplay https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-policy-changes 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.

lucaspottersky 8y ago

isn't the "Allow website to send Notifications" prompt on 99% of mainstream websites irritating enough?

LoSboccacc 8y ago
That’s because the api is badly defined, the javascript call to ask for notification is syncronous so the browser need that annoying blocking popup insteas of something less invasive like the popup notification
- Klathmon 8y ago
  The javascript call to request notification permissions is async (returning a promise in newer browsers, callback in older ones). https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Notification/requestPermission https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Notificatio...

kartan 8y ago

The Issue report is not very well done. > Autoplay restrictions on the web have long been inconsistent and served only to impede legitimate use cases. This is judgmental, and it is not backed up with any data. Has it really "served only" to impede the legitimate uses? > I've described this in detail in the following blog Blog promotion. > What is the expected behavior? Allow audio playback on page load without any user interaction. Definitively this is not the expected behavior. Chromium team has defined that no audio will be allowed until there is user interaction. > Abusive content will just blare out audio at the first opportunity. Yes. This is a red queen race. But doesn't means that it is not worth pursuing. I think that the point is valid. But the premise of the report, it is not. With the goal of minimizing sound SPAM in the web, Chromium has imposed some drastic measures that require changes in the interfaces of a large unknown amount of Javascript code. > "These restrictions require special coding to handle them. Instead, the browser could simply allow all playback attempts to succeed, but mute the master audio output. Then the browser can automatically unmute the master audio output the first time the user touches the screen (or whenever else it deems the user is OK with audio)." The proposed solution is quite good. Let the browser show a button to enable sound like they did with pop-ups. So all the affected companies and individuals don't need to repeat the checks all over the internet, to create a unified experience and to keep legacy games and applications that have no chance of being updated. But as another post says, there is a lot of corner cases. I can imagine a blind user wanting to have sound without having to read some text. The company I work for was affected by this change. And there was a lot of problems in production. To fix it, people had to work the weekend. I know that should not be like that, that we need to improve beta browser testing, and such. But sometimes the realities of companies make this kind of behavioral changes difficult. I hope that Chromium finds a good way of keeping ads muted, while not breaking the Internet.

gpmcadam 8y ago

Wouldn't this be easily resolved by giving the user the option upon visiting the site: "This website would like your permission to play audio. You can revoke this at any time." Similar to how storing files or sending push notifications works?

7Z7 8y ago
Those are both already horrible UXs that are abused in the same way the "subscribe to our newsletter" is. I won't ever do any of those three for 99.9% of websites I visit, and yet 70% are requesting it. They've become user-hostile ways to give websites a way to force interaction from me that I don't ever want, and if I did I could chose the option in the account preferences (if I cared enough to make one).
- gpmcadam 8y ago
  The way that browsers typically handle this though is that your interaction isn't blocked by the prompt. There's a default state ('disallow'), the website can ask you for permission, and you can choose to either: 1. Allow 2. Deny 3. Do nothing at all The website then must take all three into consideration so your experience isn't ruined as a result of a blocking-state. I agree that the permissions system isn't ideal, and I would hope that the way we handle this interchange in the future can improve to a point where it's less invasive in terms of screen space. But at least for now, it shouldn't invade your ability to continue using the site.
  - 7Z7 8y ago
    Its not about being blocked from continuing, it's about having to answer questions (or click away the dialogues) to peruse content. And the "subscribe to our newsletter" overlay often does block progress without hunting for the often obfuscated "no thanks" link.

mdip 8y ago

As my mom always said, "This is why we can't have nice things." I deeply miss the days when all it took was installing something akin to "Flask Block" and this problem was solved. I've been using Firefox with their built-in autoplay blocking feature (hidden in about:config) for a while now on my desktop and on mobile -- mainly because of idiotic news sites that seem to think I want to listen/watch the article I clicked in to (with the included pre-roll commercial, I assume[0]) and that my coworkers/wife want to listen to it, too. The solution offered by the original bug report sounds practical, but the thing of it is, the solution that Chrome has implemented, in my opinion, doesn't go far enough[1]. I don't just want the audio muted, I want the whole video prevented from even starting to download (on my mobile device) -- it wastes limited data and costs me money. It's sad that a "fix" to workaround a misuse of a feature is breaking legitimate uses. Having done a few years on the security side of the house at a telecom, I've tried to push developers in the direction of thinking about solutions from these sorts of angles. It's important when designing something to think about not just how your creation will be used, but how it can be misused and while the latter shouldn't necessarily prevent a feature from being implemented, it's important to weigh the two against each other and think about ways that problems might be mitigated. This might result in the adjustment of a feature, or it might be nothing more than a contingency plan should nefarious use eclipse legitimate use. [0] I run uBlock Origin so I'm not entirely sure that there's a commercial -- I can only assume because the quality of the video, which is often nothing more than a man or woman reading the article, verbatim, in near-monotone voice is so poor that I can't imagine this being a feature added because of user demand. [1] Though, muting audio is certainly a good start. I remember in the 2000s when people would pass around e-mails with links to important sounding things that, when clicked, would open a browser that screamed a message out of your speakers "Hey, everybody! I'm looking at porn!". Haven't seen that in a long time, but it'll come around again -- everything that's old is new again at some point.

thrownaway954 8y ago

It might be just me, but I cannot (for the life me) understand what the issue is here. Maybe it's because I'm not a mobile game developer or content creator where audio and video is my life. I think people like me would benefit with an actual side-by-side demonstration of what the issue is now vs the resolution the author is proposing.

catbird 8y ago
This new Chrome "feature" mutes audio from many browser games and interactive audiovisual websites, offering no indication that audio is muted, and no way for the user to restore the audio. By trying to silence autoplaying video ads, they have thrown the baby out with the bathwater (except for certain specially whitelisted domains, like youtube).

bookofjoe 8y ago

Until I read this entry's title, I'd never thought about whether Google is singular or plural—is "Google show..." an acceptable variant of "Google shows...?"

Angostura 8y ago
In general, style-guides say "companies are singular"
jzwinck 8y ago
In American English it's "Group does X" but in British English it's "Group do X."
CrazedGeek 8y ago
Both are fine. American English tends to treat collective nouns as singular, while British English treats them as plural. (http://www.dictionary.com/e/collective-nouns/ http://www.dictionary.com/e/collective-nouns/)

vidanay 8y ago

Now I know I've been reading too much Reddit. I was really impressed by the well articulated, grammatically correct, and properly spelled postings in that bug thread. My standards have been lowered too far.

captainbland 8y ago

Is MySpace going to make a comeback here or what?