4 ms·

What, Chrome has autoplay on? How can anyone stand that? It reminds me of IE7 with auto-installed toolbars that took 1/3 of the screen.

mancerayder 6y ago
Firefox does... and I can't turn it off. The websites, especially news sites, completely and utterly override the "off" settings for autoplay in firefox. And the dev team keeps changing the way those options are named as well as confusingly having a bunch of similarly named options. I'm confident that they're doing it on purpose because autoplay off hurts ad serving and it also probably pisses off traditional media sites trying to turn our browsers into TV's from the 90's blasting at us. I misworded my original. I wanted to say, I'm considering moving off Firefox, but not to Chrome.
- cpeterso 6y ago
  Firefox currently autoplays video that has no audio. This is a delicate balance. If browsers disable autoplay by default, then advertisers will find other ways to push video ads in users' faces. I read an anecdote that Google tried disabling autoplay on mobile and advertisers started playing video ads using an H.264 video decoder in JavaScript that paints video frames to a canvas. So users still see the video ad, but now using more bandwidth, memory, and CPU.
  - mancerayder 6y ago
    Right. The developers are bad people because of this. Curses to them. Maybe they're <insert some giant ad-oriented corporation here with F or G in the name> employees moonlighting as traitors to the human condition, already suffering from forced information shoved at us, and attention issues? Any other browser recommendations?
  - Kliment 6y ago
    Can we crowdsource home addresses of advertisers who do this, and mail them shit daily until they stop? "People will be absolute dicks if we make the user experience better" is not a good argument for making the user experience worse. If the fuckers keep escalating the badness, more people will use adblockers. And if adblockers are not enough, then it's time to start mailing them shit I guess, and escalating from there.
    - mancerayder 6y ago
      Or using a browser where it's unambiguously blockable. A lot of people I know care less than I do about that sort of thing. That should be enough eyeballs for ad revenue, leaving people like us unmolested by that antisocial advertising behaving.
- forgotpwd16 6y ago
  It's actually where you expected it to be; under the privacy options. Preferences > Privacy > Autoplay Settings... > set "Block Audio" to "Block Audio and Video" Or alternatively about:config > media.autoplay.default > 5
  - mancerayder 6y ago
    That.Option.Does.Not.Work. I'm trying to scream it from the rooftops, but apparently I am not getting through. Go to CNN, Bloomberg, food recipe sites, medical sites, etc. Autoplay is Not Off. Windows 10 and Android, the very latest public releases. You open a page. A big box at the top has something it it. That something is video. The video loads. By the time you scroll down, it starts to play. Oh, and it jumps into a smaller box so you're Forced to observe it and click into it to stop it. Media autoplay is not off. Another way to phrase that is, the media autoplay is On. The option described above Does Not Work. Another way to describe that is, it should not have video playing by itself. Alas, video plays by itself. Apologies in advance for being terse and not explaining myself earlier. In short, autoplay is On and the option says it's Off. Please let me know if I can clarify any part of this.
    - forgotpwd16 6y ago
      Just tried opening a CNN (video on top), Bloomberg (video on top) and Epicurious (video on right) page on a fresh profile (using FF 80.0 on Linux) and modifying this option from the Preferences menu. Thus for: "Allow Audio and Video" video autoplays and audio is sound, "Block Audio" video starts playing and no audio is sound (audio is muted), "Block Audio and Video" video doesn't autoplay. So either a bug on Windows or you haven't modified that option or you've modified something that clashes with that option.
      - mancerayder 6y ago
        I use uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger plugins. This is Windows and Android. I'll try disabling those. But did you try scrolling the page? Sometimes those videos start playing when you scroll down and they become smaller and jump to the bottom right hand corner of the window.

mancerayder 6y ago

Firefox does... and I can't turn it off. The websites, especially news sites, completely and utterly override the "off" settings for autoplay in firefox. And the dev team keeps changing the way those options are named as well as confusingly having a bunch of similarly named options. I'm confident that they're doing it on purpose because autoplay off hurts ad serving and it also probably pisses off traditional media sites trying to turn our browsers into TV's from the 90's blasting at us. I misworded my original. I wanted to say, I'm considering moving off Firefox, but not to Chrome.

cpeterso 6y ago
Firefox currently autoplays video that has no audio. This is a delicate balance. If browsers disable autoplay by default, then advertisers will find other ways to push video ads in users' faces. I read an anecdote that Google tried disabling autoplay on mobile and advertisers started playing video ads using an H.264 video decoder in JavaScript that paints video frames to a canvas. So users still see the video ad, but now using more bandwidth, memory, and CPU.
- mancerayder 6y ago
  Right. The developers are bad people because of this. Curses to them. Maybe they're <insert some giant ad-oriented corporation here with F or G in the name> employees moonlighting as traitors to the human condition, already suffering from forced information shoved at us, and attention issues? Any other browser recommendations?
- Kliment 6y ago
  Can we crowdsource home addresses of advertisers who do this, and mail them shit daily until they stop? "People will be absolute dicks if we make the user experience better" is not a good argument for making the user experience worse. If the fuckers keep escalating the badness, more people will use adblockers. And if adblockers are not enough, then it's time to start mailing them shit I guess, and escalating from there.
  - mancerayder 6y ago
    Or using a browser where it's unambiguously blockable. A lot of people I know care less than I do about that sort of thing. That should be enough eyeballs for ad revenue, leaving people like us unmolested by that antisocial advertising behaving.
forgotpwd16 6y ago
It's actually where you expected it to be; under the privacy options. Preferences > Privacy > Autoplay Settings... > set "Block Audio" to "Block Audio and Video" Or alternatively about:config > media.autoplay.default > 5
- mancerayder 6y ago
  That.Option.Does.Not.Work. I'm trying to scream it from the rooftops, but apparently I am not getting through. Go to CNN, Bloomberg, food recipe sites, medical sites, etc. Autoplay is Not Off. Windows 10 and Android, the very latest public releases. You open a page. A big box at the top has something it it. That something is video. The video loads. By the time you scroll down, it starts to play. Oh, and it jumps into a smaller box so you're Forced to observe it and click into it to stop it. Media autoplay is not off. Another way to phrase that is, the media autoplay is On. The option described above Does Not Work. Another way to describe that is, it should not have video playing by itself. Alas, video plays by itself. Apologies in advance for being terse and not explaining myself earlier. In short, autoplay is On and the option says it's Off. Please let me know if I can clarify any part of this.
  - forgotpwd16 6y ago
    Just tried opening a CNN (video on top), Bloomberg (video on top) and Epicurious (video on right) page on a fresh profile (using FF 80.0 on Linux) and modifying this option from the Preferences menu. Thus for: "Allow Audio and Video" video autoplays and audio is sound, "Block Audio" video starts playing and no audio is sound (audio is muted), "Block Audio and Video" video doesn't autoplay. So either a bug on Windows or you haven't modified that option or you've modified something that clashes with that option.
    - mancerayder 6y ago
      I use uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger plugins. This is Windows and Android. I'll try disabling those. But did you try scrolling the page? Sometimes those videos start playing when you scroll down and they become smaller and jump to the bottom right hand corner of the window.