4 ms·
this is tangentially related but what are mozilla's plans for autoplay in Firefox? Chrome just effectively broke net neutrality in Chrome by whitelisting a bun
by tokyodude 8y ago
this is tangentially related but what are mozilla's plans for autoplay in Firefox?
Chrome just effectively broke net neutrality in Chrome by whitelisting a bunch of websites. They claim chrome will learn your preferences and auto-magically whitelist others sites you run videos on but that hardly seems fair. Why did the other sites not have to pass that hurdle? Worse, it only works if you're logged in where as whitelisted sites work always. Use a public computer or an incognito window and non-whitelisted sites stop autoplaying.
Consider youtubecompetitor.com trying to autoplay videos like youtube. Users have a bad experience because the videos don't autoplay so they are unlikely to ever do as well as youtube.
Isn't that exactly the kind of thing that net neutrality is trying to avoid, picking winners and losers. I want to make youtubecompetitor.com do I now have to pay off Chrome (and Firefox, and Safari, and Edge) to get them to whitelist my site for autoplay? Why does youtube get a pass? Similarly if Firefox doesn't use a whitelist then users will have a worse experience on may sites vs chrome so there's certainly an incentive for Firefox to use the same or similar whitelist to Google.
I don't know what the best solution would be. Off the top of my head I'd prefer browser disallow autoplay by default and let me manually give sites permission to autoplay via a butterbar or other prompt "Can this site autoplay? Yes/No". One click and youtube gets whitelisted. One click and youtubecompetitor gets whitelisted. That seems far more "neutral"
In any case I'm curious what Mozilla's response is to Chrome's whitelisting winners.
- wmeredith 8y agoChrome != The Net. Huge difference here. People have a choice when it comes to browser, social network, news, search engine, ecommerce... As long as what's coming down the pipe is equal. Net neutrality is about the pipe, which is a layer above Chrome.
- brynjolf 8y agoThat is one strange whataboutism. Why would you ask that here unless you want to change the conversation to something else, something that suits the corporations more? Net neutrality is more important than autoplaying videos, without it you won't be able to decide what you autoplay.
- jchw 8y agoNet neutrality is about the plumbing, not the sink.
- daleharvey 8y agoI am one of a few people currently working on this feature and while a whitelist was on the table, very much trying to push against it, especially after seeing the reaction to chromes implementation landing. I think comparisons to net neutrality are fair, I have made the same argument however it is worth mentioning it isnt equivalent, obviously we wouldnt be crippling peoples experience unless they paid us money
- CrendKing 8y agoI voted https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215843 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215843