5 ms·

I introduced the change to 0,1,2. Not sure what happened when we first introduced autoplay but the change to 0,1,2 was so we could let users switch between enab

I introduced the change to 0,1,2. Not sure what happened when we first introduced autoplay but the change to 0,1,2 was so we could let users switch between enabled, disabled and ask the user. Original plan was to ask the user by default. We did some user testing with this change and it looks like we will be changing it to block by default based on feedback Not sure what this has to do with any companies ad revenue, or pocket

mancerayder 8y ago
That's good news, and I'm glad to hear that user feedback is considered. Thanks for your efforts and your response!
nothrabannosir 8y ago
Even for YouTube?
- daleharvey 8y ago
  Yes, we dont have any whitelist / blacklist of sites we treat differently
  - nothrabannosir 8y ago
    That's.. big. Congratulations on managing to stay true to the numbers, and out of corporate influence. And thank you.
  - halfjoking 8y ago
    I hope there's a bigger backlash to Google blacklisting/whitelisting certain features on websites they deem worthy/unworthy. It's one thing to discriminate against certain sites in Search, where Google owns the webpages and servers. But to discriminate against the open web so that their services have an advantage over startups and smaller publishers is beyond unethical. At this point they're starting to act like a monopolistic ISP and should be called out for it.
dredmorbius 8y ago
Thank you. Video-autoplay-on-reatart is absolutely maddening.
drbawb 8y ago
Block by default, and not ask by default? That seems unfortunate to me, and will definitely break one of my services for Firefox users. I have a site which coordinates watching videos amongst a party of people. To the browser heuristics it looks like "autoplay" (the host starts the video manually, and some scripting on the page kicks it off for everyone else and works w/ the backend to maintain something resembling stream sync.) This is a consensual thing, you click the host's invite only link, you're taken to a landing page that tells you who made the link and briefly describes the service. Presumably you would not have clicked through all that if you didn't want to watch a video w/ the host. I already had to deal w/ increased complaints from users due to scripts no longer being able to start the video in Chrome when the user hasn't interacted with the DOM yet. The only warning was an error in the development console. Users would get incredibly confused because they'd join the room and "lurk", i.e not interact w/ chat or the site, and then they'd be left wondering why everyone is commenting on the video when their's hasn't started playing. I realize autoplay gets a lot of flak due to large corporations using it to further their aggressive marketing campaigns, but there are legitimate use cases out there which you will be breaking w/ a block-by-default policy. I'd urge you to reconsider ask-by-default, or at least allow scripts to have some sort of API whereby they can ask the user for permission ahead of time. This just really sucks, because it's hard to communicate these sorts of things to my userbase which has wildly varying degrees of technical competency. It's also unfortunate to, essentially, need relay the message "some organizations (ab|mis)used this useragent functionality, so now nobody gets to use it."
- daleharvey 8y ago
  It sucks when you want to use feature that arent available however users wishes always trump site authors, we tested ask by default and it turned out more users wanted them blocked "Click here to play video" is also clear and easy to understand, not sure why you would think your users could not handle that. In future https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Permissions_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Permissions... may help
  - drbawb 8y ago
    >We tested ask by default and it turned out more users wanted them blocked. I was one of those users, as I have Nightly installed. I hope you don't seriously think me clicking "no" on the majority of those popups in any way equates to me saying "videos should never autoplay." -- Hell I used my own service and approved one of those dialogs for it. You should be careful how you read into statistics: there is a huge difference between "90+% of users said no to the autoplay prompt" and "90+% of users think autoplay should be off by default." >Not sure why you would think your users could not handle that. I don't think, I know, because I've fielded the numerous reports from users who thought my service was broken when Google[1] decided their "media engagement index" was too low and the videos weren't starting automatically for them. It is objectively a bad experience for my users if they all have to manually click play and their streams are randomly offset from the host and they see people "spoiling" things in chat. The reality is that many of my users would sit on the page, looking at a play button (that wasn't there before), wondering why people are already talking about the video in chat. "Has it started yet?" "When does it start?" "I think I'm buffering", etc. [1]: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-policy-changes https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-p...
exodust 8y ago
I'm confused about what this means when for example I want the video to play via javascript external to the embedded player. For example, when user clicks text link on page that opens a lightbox (such as fancybox) containing an embedded video. I (and the user) would want the video to begin playing immediately upon opening the lightbox. But it sounds ilke the user will now need to additionally press play on the embedded video? Anyone know? I really hope this is not the case. I'm hoping the clicking of the initial text link that opens lightbox is enough to authorize video playback with sound on all devices.

mancerayder 8y ago

That's good news, and I'm glad to hear that user feedback is considered. Thanks for your efforts and your response!

nothrabannosir 8y ago

Even for YouTube?

daleharvey 8y ago
Yes, we dont have any whitelist / blacklist of sites we treat differently
- nothrabannosir 8y ago
  That's.. big. Congratulations on managing to stay true to the numbers, and out of corporate influence. And thank you.
- halfjoking 8y ago
  I hope there's a bigger backlash to Google blacklisting/whitelisting certain features on websites they deem worthy/unworthy. It's one thing to discriminate against certain sites in Search, where Google owns the webpages and servers. But to discriminate against the open web so that their services have an advantage over startups and smaller publishers is beyond unethical. At this point they're starting to act like a monopolistic ISP and should be called out for it.

dredmorbius 8y ago

Thank you. Video-autoplay-on-reatart is absolutely maddening.

drbawb 8y ago

Block by default, and not ask by default? That seems unfortunate to me, and will definitely break one of my services for Firefox users. I have a site which coordinates watching videos amongst a party of people. To the browser heuristics it looks like "autoplay" (the host starts the video manually, and some scripting on the page kicks it off for everyone else and works w/ the backend to maintain something resembling stream sync.) This is a consensual thing, you click the host's invite only link, you're taken to a landing page that tells you who made the link and briefly describes the service. Presumably you would not have clicked through all that if you didn't want to watch a video w/ the host. I already had to deal w/ increased complaints from users due to scripts no longer being able to start the video in Chrome when the user hasn't interacted with the DOM yet. The only warning was an error in the development console. Users would get incredibly confused because they'd join the room and "lurk", i.e not interact w/ chat or the site, and then they'd be left wondering why everyone is commenting on the video when their's hasn't started playing. I realize autoplay gets a lot of flak due to large corporations using it to further their aggressive marketing campaigns, but there are legitimate use cases out there which you will be breaking w/ a block-by-default policy. I'd urge you to reconsider ask-by-default, or at least allow scripts to have some sort of API whereby they can ask the user for permission ahead of time. This just really sucks, because it's hard to communicate these sorts of things to my userbase which has wildly varying degrees of technical competency. It's also unfortunate to, essentially, need relay the message "some organizations (ab|mis)used this useragent functionality, so now nobody gets to use it."

daleharvey 8y ago
It sucks when you want to use feature that arent available however users wishes always trump site authors, we tested ask by default and it turned out more users wanted them blocked "Click here to play video" is also clear and easy to understand, not sure why you would think your users could not handle that. In future https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Permissions_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Permissions... may help
- drbawb 8y ago
  >We tested ask by default and it turned out more users wanted them blocked. I was one of those users, as I have Nightly installed. I hope you don't seriously think me clicking "no" on the majority of those popups in any way equates to me saying "videos should never autoplay." -- Hell I used my own service and approved one of those dialogs for it. You should be careful how you read into statistics: there is a huge difference between "90+% of users said no to the autoplay prompt" and "90+% of users think autoplay should be off by default." >Not sure why you would think your users could not handle that. I don't think, I know, because I've fielded the numerous reports from users who thought my service was broken when Google[1] decided their "media engagement index" was too low and the videos weren't starting automatically for them. It is objectively a bad experience for my users if they all have to manually click play and their streams are randomly offset from the host and they see people "spoiling" things in chat. The reality is that many of my users would sit on the page, looking at a play button (that wasn't there before), wondering why people are already talking about the video in chat. "Has it started yet?" "When does it start?" "I think I'm buffering", etc. [1]: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-policy-changes https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-p...

exodust 8y ago

I'm confused about what this means when for example I want the video to play via javascript external to the embedded player. For example, when user clicks text link on page that opens a lightbox (such as fancybox) containing an embedded video. I (and the user) would want the video to begin playing immediately upon opening the lightbox. But it sounds ilke the user will now need to additionally press play on the embedded video? Anyone know? I really hope this is not the case. I'm hoping the clicking of the initial text link that opens lightbox is enough to authorize video playback with sound on all devices.