Ask HN: How do you like the trend of auto-playing videos on mainstream sites? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you like the trend of auto-playing videos on mainstream sites?

6 pointshellofunk8 comments

It seems that today's Internet is full of major sites, news, tutorial, entertainment, and others, that all play videos automatically as soon as you hit the page. This has aggravated me for some time. It is an annoying game I must play with my computer's mute button -- the only easy way I've found to stop the madness, rather than hunting for the Pause button.

Even when paused, the videos typically still buffer. If you are not interested in the video content, you must still waste the bandwidth to load it, despite having never told the page you wanted it (never pressed any Play buttons).

Is it me who stands alone with this grievance? Or are others bothered by this too? I feel like the net is becoming no better than basic network television.

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The net in places is much worse than television. I might open several tabs when researching something or making sure that I read something of interest. Then all of a sudden I hear voices or sounds and have to go hunting them down. I use unlock origin to block ads but now some sites are calling ads within their domain so that ad blocking does not work.

Do the advertisers really think this behavior makes me want to buy their product?

Sorry about the typo. UBlock Origin. Not unlock origin. Darn autocorrect on my phone.

It's worse. YouTube will autoplay "next", "next", "next" videos once you stopped watching the video of interest and didn't bother the close the browser's tab.

This way youtube will suck your bandwidth and resources to force-run dozens to hundreds videos through your computer and internet connection.

This will allow Youtube to inflate actual view count numbers and defraud both the publishers and the advertisers.

Hate is not a strong enough word to describe my feelings.

In Firefox, you can disable media.autoplay.enabled (false) for html5 video. Flash should be disabled by default I think but you can make it dependent to click-to-play.

I agree with everybody, it's such a lack a respect for the user. People using that trick (like youtube gesman pointed out) don't think of you as individual but as receiver/consumer/goods/idiot. If it uses sound, it can even be dangerous if you are using headphones.

Chrome also has options in "Content settings" for "Images" and "Plugins", but there is none for HTML5 video. I think the time has come for introducing one.

I absolutely hate it, especially that I use an 8 years old computer and these videos are just eating my meager resources. Then the comes the commercials that you cannot stop, and sometimes I have my speakers turned on and it just a great distraction. Hate it, hate it, hate it!

It's trash.

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