They're incentivized to do this by ad networks. Auto-play means the auto-playing of ads, thus money in their pocket. They know its annoying and user-hostile, bu

They're incentivized to do this by ad networks. Auto-play means the auto-playing of ads, thus money in their pocket. They know its annoying and user-hostile, but those extra ad impression revenue is worth it somehow. I have click-to-play in Chrome set for Flash. I think its a nice middle ground between ad blocking and just accepting everything the web throws at you. HTML5 video autostart is also a problem and disabling that should be an easy to find option in browsers once that becomes the norm for ads.