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Comment by bhhaskin | Hacker News Reader

For anyone who is asking why sites are pushing auto playing videos, this is why. Google is actively pushing video to "increase engagement". All of those "news" sites have a Google Ads rep that tells them increase engagement equals more ad revenue, so they maximize it to the hilt. It becomes the overriding force UX be damned.

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This was fraud perpetrated by Facebook. https://twitter.com/ConroyForReal/status/1052403439613829120 Not saying Google didn't do it too, but I know for sure Facebook was lying.

Oh no doubt.

Nothing repels my engagement more than a video on a news site, following my scrolling while I'm reading.

Aren't auto playing videos blocked by default in Chrome now? https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-p...

No. The Autoplay chrome flag was added but then removed/scrapped sometime in early 2019. You can only stop autoplay videos by using extensions now. The only extension that is actively maintained (and actually works) is called "AutoplayStopper" https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autoplaystopper/ej...

There's no flag; it's on by default. Do you have a link to an article talking about the autoplay policy being reverted?

No, I am speaking by my own use of Chrome only. Go to YouTube or any large news site, and the videos still autoplay, regardless of whatever chrome settings/flags are now supposedly default.

That's not actually what's going on. You can find an explanation here: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/11/web-audio-...

It is blocked only if the video has sound. Muted videos can be played automatically.

No, but I can confirm that in FF69 it's finally blocking those banal CNN videos that seem to accompany every. single. article.

They've switched to checking an "mei" score to see if a video is allowed to autoplay on a site:

https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-p...

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