9 ms·

Things like requiring accept and decline checkboxes to be the same font seem somewhat reasonable, even if I disagree with it, but banning autoplay videos and en

• zbrozek 7y ago
  While I agree that it's hard to support legislation that's likely to have a lot of unintended consequences, it's also important to realize what's driving folks to introduce a bill like this. It's also worth pointing out that (in particular with Netflix) your example is its own counter-argument. You can't turn off autoplay, and that's the opposite of letting me make choices for myself. There's also plenty of other examples of government regulating or banning things which exploit human weakness. Ponzi schemes, meth, gambling, and more are all controlled. It's pretty clear that a lot of tech-company design is (intentionally or not) probably scratching a lot of the same itches. It's reasonable to expect regulation.
  • 12elephant 7y ago
    You turn off autoplay by exiting netflix.
    • dmcclurg 7y ago
      That makes it a zero sum game--all or nothing. Not good enough.
      • SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
        Or you could just press the "back" button on the remote.
      • bityard 7y ago
        That's not what zero sum game means... you probably meant false dichotomy.
        • dmcclurg 7y ago
          Lol, indeed
  • GhostVII 7y ago
    I think the choice is to just leave Netflix when you are done an episode. Maybe it's just me but I've never felt like the autoplay makes me much more likely to keep watching, it is just convenient so I don't have to go through all of the menus again. If we ban autoplay on Netflix, we should also ban cable I suppose (not a big loss, really), since cable will autoplay indefinitely.
    • lloeki 7y ago
      I find autoplay on Netflix highly inconvenient. Disable it and you can continue to watch the next episode with just one button press. There is no need for navigating around. Also super useful when you happen to fall asleep in front of the TV so that it doesn't keep pumping all the way through the night. Autoplay on Netflix is IMHO a dark pattern to feed on attention and FOMO.
      • modoc 7y ago
        Is it any different than traditional TV?
        • lloeki 7y ago
          I don’t find traditional TV to be any good. Having no autoplay is an improvement.
        • tedunangst 7y ago
          Traditional TV usually switches shows, indicating I'm done. Netflix skips credits and openers, turning an entire season into one 20 hour episode.
          • beatgammit 7y ago
            I personally love that about it. I can watch more episodes in less time with Netflix, whereas I have to sit through the openers and credits for TV. I also like watching shows while doing something else (e.g. folding laundry), so autoplay makes it so I don't have to worry about engaging with the service between episodes. Afaik, you can disable it in the settings.
  • mFixman 7y ago
    > You can't turn off autoplay I'm pretty sure you can turn it off for all devices from desktop Netflix's settings. I somehow don't have autoplay enabled when I watch any series.
    • jschwartzi 7y ago
      It doesn't work if you're on PS4, which is where I watch. No matter what those settings are it always auto-plays the next episode and also the really annoying trailers. It's actually driven me to consume most of my content from Amazon instead.
      • magduf 7y ago
        Are you watching Netflix on your PS4 in a web browser, or a Netflix app? Personally, I'd love to ban autoplay videos, but I'm really concerned about web pages here. A custom app, to me, doesn't fall under this purview. Netflix can do just about whatever they want in their own app AFAIC. For websites that have a legitimate use for autoplay, but are still websites and not custom apps, I would support making it a user-controlled preference that only works for logged-in users. Usually, people view YouTube as a logged-in Google user, so that can be used to allow them to turn on autoplay for that.
    • floatrock 7y ago
      > from desktop Netflix's settings Isn't that an indicator that something's wrong when the company says "technically you can turn this off, it's just buried in the form of the product that people use the least. But technically you can turn it off."
      • Fjolsvith 7y ago
        Definitely something is wrong because offering the ability to turn it off seems to be the way to fix the problem.
    • waitwut2 7y ago
      What do you mean "desktop Netflix"? You mean the web site? Please let me know where this setting is! I would love to turn this off but have never found a way.
  • moate 7y ago
    This is it. You want autoplay? Make it opt in. Problem solved. Make more features opt in. I'm not sorry that this makes things harder for companies to make money. When they keep failing at self regulating shit behaviors that consumers don't want, this is what happens.
  • gregmac 7y ago
    You can turn off autoplay from the website, under Playback Settings: https://i.imgur.com/gctaiHK.png https://i.imgur.com/gctaiHK.png https://www.netflix.com/HdToggle https://www.netflix.com/HdToggle
  • dantheman 7y ago
    What's driving bills like this is simple - people need things to campaign on and instead of addressing real problems they're busy trying to 'solve' easy ones.
• gsich 7y ago
  Your examples are from video sites. So having an autoplay there makes sense. There is no need for it to be the default setting.
• adventured 7y ago
  Once the regulate everything people aggressively invited the government in, there was no going back. It's going to get extremely bad over the coming decade. Laughably bad. Politicians will regulate every possible inch of the Internet. And they rarely remove stupid regulations, so it will all pile-up deep. It will mirror the physical world, every click and every feature will involve breaking numerous laws. There is nothing that can stop this outcome now, the fox is in the hen house. The result will inevitably be stagnation, as creating anything online will be very burdensome in all possible regards. Most simply won't do it, they'll just work for a bigger corporation that can deal with the regulatory mess. Want to launch a simple service? Hire a lawyer, do a six month review before you write the first line of code, spend tens of thousands of dollars, and you're still going to be breaking some stray law if you dare to launch. Compliance requirements stacked up to your ears, placating every special interest group that wants their cause accounted for in regulations. And that's before we get deep into the big corporations buying/bribing/lobbying thousands of new regulations for their own protection.
• LoSboccacc 7y ago
  > legitimate uses for autoplay videos also saving bandwidth on gifs
• mc32 7y ago
  I’m torn about endless scrolling. I wholeheartedly agree with a ban on auto playing sound or video. It’s gratingly irritating. It’s rather anti-human, experience wise.
  • SaltyBackendGuy 7y ago
    > It’s gratingly irritating. Right. But just because something is irritating does that mean it should be illegal? This seems like something that we don't need to waste taxpayer money on IMO. I feel like there's bigger fish to fry so to speak.
    • magduf 7y ago
      It doesn't waste taxpayer money for Congresscritters to write a law and pass it. They're paid a salary anyway, so it's just a bit of their time, and something like this shouldn't take long to debate and pass. Plus, they could make money on it by levying enormous fines on websites that break the law. I'd love to see various news websites get slapped with $100M fines for having autoplay videos. >I feel like there's bigger fish to fry so to speak. Like what? Fixing our utterly broken healthcare system? That isn't realistic at all because they can't get enough agreement in Congress to pass such legislation. So they need to focus on things they can get done, like banning autoplay.
  • castis 7y ago
    Irritation is not a valid reason for the government to step in and assert their power.
    • jjulius 7y ago
      I agree, irritation isn't a valid reason. Addiction, on the other hand, is valid. Endless scrolling is designed to help keep people glued to their phones, continuously triggering a dopamine response that makes them keep scrolling, liking, and following. The purpose of it is to keep you hooked.
      • 7y ago
• nix0n 7y ago
  The bill as written[0] is limited to social media sites and has an exception for music playlists, so both your examples would be allowed. [0]https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2019-07/Social-Media-Addiction-Reduction-Technology-Act.pdf https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2019-07/So...
  • GhostVII 7y ago
    For YouTube I don't use a playlist, I just let it pick the next recommendation, so that would still be banned. They added an exception for advertisements, which is too bad since that is the only kind of autoplay video I would really be excited about getting rid of. The definition of autoplay in the bill is "The use of a process that automatically plays music or videos (other than advertisements) without an express, separate prompt by the user." If you are going to get rid of autoplay videos, don't have exceptions for advertisers, that just gives them more power.
    • magduf 7y ago
      Autoplaying advertisements are one of the main reason autoplay is so annoying. WhyTF would they make an exception for this? This seems like obvious corruption.
      • telotortium 7y ago
        Yeah, but they kind of have to autoplay ads. Would you find it less annoying to (1) manually click to start playing an ad, and then (2) manually click after the ad is done to play the video? I hope it would be violation of the regulation to play ads ad infinitum after playing a video.
        • magduf 7y ago
          Yes, I'd find it much less annoying to have to manually click to play an ad, because then I can just not click at all, and read the article without having to listen to some stupid video.
• Nullabillity 7y ago
  > I think people should have the freedom to consume content how they want Absolutely! That doesn't mean corporations should have a right to decide for people how they should consume their content.
• thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
  Yes! Instead of coming up with insane laws, the government can point people towards tools that will help them. For example, the govt could simply point people towards a chrome plugin that prevents those features from working, or a plugin that removes the links of any sites that have those features.
• floatrock 7y ago
  I was with you until > the government shouldn't compensate for their lack of self control. Quite frankly, I don't believe in complete self-autonomy. I think it's a great trait to strive towards, but the rise of behavioral psychology by itself shows that we can be poked, prodded, and nudged to do things that we otherwise wouldn't do, because "what we want to do" is a muddy non-singular fuzzy idea that can be tipped in whatever way the environment happens to be arranged or designed. It's not about regulating people's lack of self-control, it's about acknowledging there are proven techniques that influence behavior and figuring out when those techniques are being taken advantage of in a socially detrimental way. We can discuss whether continuous scrolling really is socially detrimental, but calling it "government compensation for lack of an individual's self control" is flat-out dishonest given that half of us here are about to go evaluate our latest adwords optimization spend or look at our next A/B test results.
• dredmorbius 7y ago
  The text of the bill specifically allows this: "REFILL.—The use of a process that automatically loads and displays additional content, other than music or video content that the user has prompted to play" https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2019-07/Social-Media-Addiction-Reduction-Technology-Act.pdf https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2019-07/So... (pp. 3-4)
• tjoff 7y ago
  I can't think of a single situation where autoplay is remotely acceptable for anything but opt in. I guess endless scrolling doesn't have to be bad. But I've yet to experience an implementation that isn't awful. I don't think legislation is a good way to make developers behave. But I also don't know how to break the mess we are in.