Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers
I know there are plugins than can somewhat do this, but no solutions are universal or great.
Please update all of our browsers so that no automatic video/audio can play without user interaction/permission.
Its getting to be impossible to visit many sites today without being bombarded by video and sound playing by default on the web. In the worst cases such as on mobile browsers like iOS Safari, visiting a site will start playing media that kills whatever you're already listening to in another app.
This is eating up our data and inconveniencing millions of people using your products.
Please help us enable a better web.
329 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 296 ms ] threadOn firefox go to about:config and set media.autoplay.enabled to false.
So far I have not had a bad autoplay problem on iOS. However a growing problem is obnoxious pop up ads that are difficult to escape.
Overall more of my Internet usage is shifting to apps because the Web is just too annoying. Years ago the Web was like a friendly, boisterous marketplace in a safe town. Now it's like the street in "Casablanca" where I must constantly guard against someone picking my pocket. It's not worth using except for a few sites I trust.
Google in particular had better watch out. With Web hostility their search is not as useful. One reaction of theirs has been to pack more information directly into their search result.
However, there seem to be a recent trend in auto-platyng video, in fact this is not only happening on the web but on apps too like Facebook and Twitter.
Really good point -- I have noticed that a lot recently. It's expanded beyond the right side bar, which was already pretty useful (if only a Wikipedia summary). Many times I get what I was looking for by simply searching Google, rather than taking the additional step of clicking into one of the results. This is good for me but bad for someone, I'm sure.
Vimeo's take is that it is a bug in the browser hence it should be fixed. But then Vimeo are the same that told use to use Safari on Linux because Firefox "didn't support HTML5" (it did, just not encumbered H264 codec, but when you are lying, do the extra mile).
Luckily, there's a setting if you can be bothered - and luckily, for many marketing departments around the world many can't...
"Look, how many views our videos have on FB"...
Excuse me.
Also, i don't want to give them _even more_ data about me, even if that is an uphill struggle, more and more seeming sisyphus-like...
Honestly, I strongly believe this should be default for all software.
Look at Mozilla. They claim to be the champion of your rights, yet they enable 3rd party cookies by default and hide the setting to change it. That's just pathetic. They should stop their masquerade and just admit that they are Google's puppet (they are providing the money to keep Mozilla alive) and NOT serving the user's interest.
additionally the dom.audiochannel.mutedByDefault and media.default_volume settings may also be useful if you want slightly different behavior.
If you want a more blunt tool you can also use content blockers to block media content until you opt into it for a particular site.
> I know there are plugins than can somewhat do this, but no solutions are universal or great.
How so? There are about a dozen FF addons covering different use-cases like muting inactive tabs or all tabs but a designated one. If none of them meet your particular expectations that might also indicate that everyone wants something different and it is difficult for browser vendors to cover all expectations. Maybe you should modify an existing addon instead to do what you want.
Not me. I usually open a few tabs at the same time and have to stop every video manually. That's pretty annoying. I wish it didn't have autoplay.
As @ben_bai pointed out above it works that way on Chromium.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/autoplay-togg...
It also automatically doesn't download things you already have, so it can be used periodically to sync the list if you want.
It only really matters if you expect videos to go down, but I also have my small collection of "videos that were obviously going to be taken down".
I think because of its name people also don't realize that youtube-dl works for LOTS of other sites and it's relatively easy to add new sites in as well.
I saw some other post where a guy hand edits tens of thousands of entries in his hosts file... yeah dude what an amazing use of time.
https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
If the current web works well for you then great, but it would be naive to think that it fits everyone's use case (Even more so to label what they need to do as "insane").
[0] https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
As for the hosts file, a hand-edited file works great, and you don't have to do thousands of entries on your own. You can find some great examples all over the web, then tune them to your own needs, saving a lot of time. For example, there are at least two out there for Windows 10 users to block all communication with Microsoft's servers, avoiding any telemetry and tracking by the OS. If your router is smart enough, you can even upload your hosts file to it to block any device on your network from getting ads and being tracked.
Can you specify how? I was doing this when I didn't have enough RAM for the Youtube player with latest Firefox and it's not what I personally felt. The current player has size options (larger or full-screen), annotations and comments can be disabled (e.g. with Adblock lists). In the end it's always having the video canvas in front of your eyes. Maybe integration with a tiling WM?
> I'd imagine it could even be automated trivially, by calling youtube-dl via a browser plugin, or by writing a script to pass YouTube URLs to with a simple GUI thrown together in FLTK or TCL/TK.
Existing means for VLC integration aren't that bad either.
For me it was because Firefox on OpenBSD, even on a modern, fast system (quad core AMD64 with 8GB RAM), is so slow and stuttery with any streaming video it was too painful. Using youtube-dl and playing it via mplayer worked much better, and you can customize mplayer's controls to mimic YouTube's if you like (though I never bothered).
VLC is another great option, it's designed for streaming so yes that would be a great alternative. I personally don't use VLC on non-Windows OSes except on Haiku.
I do this because the YouTube website (when the player is present) is too slow for my device. It adds about 5 seconds, nothing terrible.
Makes life a lot more convenient :)
That doesn't always work. Some videos don't play at all (even when clicked) and some others play automatically anyway (rare, but it happens).
Unfortunately, this isn't available for devices with a monopolized browser. (iOS)
Google's and MS's operating systems don't monopolize the browser. I'm not sure if Mozilla is even making an OS anymore. The only OS in this day and age which doesn't let you implement your own browser engine is iOS.
If you put your repository under some kind of open source licence, I can try the process on a lazy Sunday afternoon, if you like.
My email address is in my profile.
What site does this? You can't (auto)play media on iOS without direct user action for exactly the reason you specified.
iOS 10 changed this slightly to allow silent or muted videos to autoplay when visible on the screen https://webkit.org/blog/6784/new-video-policies-for-ios/
Overriding autoplay can lead to a confusing user experience -- play/pause synchronization issue with embedded YouTube videos: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1217438
The Disable HTML5 Autoplay extension is often suggested for Chrome, and it has 112,213 users, but it's far from perfect: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-html5-auto...
So how about a whitelist/blacklist? Well, since users can't even agree among themselves on which websites belong on which side of the fence, such a list would quickly become a nightmare to maintain, still be based on someone's personal bias, and would still leave small websites at a disadvantage.
Pretty much the only thing that would work is a permissions question to the user, like there is currently for e.g. location access. "Do you want to allow videosite.example.com to automatically play video content? \Allow, \Allow and remember, \*Deny"
I hated Flash. I either avoided installing it or used a Flash blocker. So I always managed to avoid the auto-playing problem when the Internet primarily used Flash for everything annoying.
Now that Flash is about dead and everything is HTML5 now, neither of these techniques work any more to avoid auto-playing.
So, in fact, while e.g. Firefox has a mute button for each tab, I also wish it had an individual mute button for each <video> and <embed> element.
Many videos override the context menu, though, and it won't help with ads that automatically restart themselves. An option to disable an object altogether would be more useful.
A more drastic solution that I sometimes resort to is to nuke the offending part of the page (often an entire sidebar) using the built-in developer tools. Just select the area you want to nuke in the "Inspector" tab, and hit the Delete key.
Which in turn can be overriden by shift-rightclick
Worst thing is that many of these video ads can not be caught by Adblock Plus...
For example, GIFV is a format that uses auto-playing videos to replace the GIF, and by doing so cuts down on Internet bandwidth usage. I'd suggest that's a legitimate use for auto-playing videos.
I only really get annoyed with auto-playing videos when I hear the sound from them, so perhaps the fix should be targeted in this area. It may cause problems for things like YouTube playlists, so I don't think the fix is as simple as 'mute them all by default', but whatever the fix is should rely on some form of user control.
My outsider-looking-in perspective leads me to believe there must be a decent amount of money in the auto-play video ads else the news sites wouldn't bother. Certainly they know they're annoying and frustrating, but if they pay, then I guess they have little reason to care. There's no effective blocking solution at the moment, and people are still coming for the news almost a year into this practice, so it obviously isn't hurting the numbers enough to make an impact.
I do feel that sometimes the anti-advertising commentaries need a more directed focus, since at the core a lot of people want content for free without the annoyance of the ads. I certainly do, but I also respect that this content creation and the providing of the content costs money - if a site has an anti-ad blocker and they ask me to turn it off to proceed, I respect their wishes by just not continuing. I have yet to come to an article that I felt was worth it, and if the provider's position is "ads or nothing", then I'll respect that. I just ask that they respect my wishes (Do not track, ad blocking, etc). I'm well aware that sites and advertisers don't do this, but I do feel it's important to show the respect. My not going to the site is more than likely logged as a non-click-through, and I hope this makes the intended impact of showing them my preferences.
For example, perhaps whitelists for domains that are permitted to have audio content could be a good solution. These whitelists could be controlled by the user. You would then only opt-in to sites that had content you wanted to listen to.
1) Autoplaying videos, especially ads.
2) Pop-ups / overlays.
3) Loading lots of extra elements causing text to jump around.
Especially true if I'm just browsing around and click on something that looks interesting, the above will take that thing from "this might be worth 30 seconds" to "not worth it".
Why kill that little dopamine boost someone just got from clicking on a link to your site? If you're wondering why your bounce rate is so high... though maybe these dark patterns bring in enough ad revenue that it's worth it. I don't see how 3 helps that, though, just lazy coding. Or maybe other people are more tolerant and it doesn't really affect the bounce rate.
And you can see that these sites get posted to HN, so at least someone is reading it. Personally though I prefer more pleasant sites.
I block Google Analytics (and many other things), and was surprised that none of my colleagues do the same.
So you are OK with making Google track your users but you don't want to be tracked yourself?
I'd like to use something we host, then we probably wouldn't need to have the EU cookie warning.
But it's all hypothetical, since my ublock takes care of it. Of course, that also means that I am no longer much exerting any selection pressure on the market in that regard.
I was also surprised at how difficult it is to get a modern browser to consistently disable the feature.
Sucks, though. I like having access to high-quality content, and I believe journalists deserve to get paid for their work. Unfortunately, the Internet at large has long since decided that just paying people for their product over the table is not what the norm should be.
Alternatively, if a site does non-aggressive advertising like Dslreports.com, that is quite tolerable. More niche sites are now doing delayed access paywalls too.
The disadvantage will be that sites which require scripts will break on first-access.
The advantages are better overall privacy + security, and that simple static ads won't be blocked and hence those authors will be compensated.
(Edited to better match parent's concerns)
That's the only way to shut them down for good -- make it hurt to abuse your visitors.
There are these developers who just made an awesome webapp or something. It's really great but there is a problem. Noone knows about it. But they have a solution for that problem. They buy some "promotion". It's articles in newsletters or outright spam directed at their target audience. I cannot tell you exactly who their target audience is but I can tell you who it is not. It's not you, me or most readers on hackernews. It's less tech savyy people with more decision power. Old people. Their site is made for old people. And they don't care about you and me or any other passer-by who won't pay a dime. They care about conversion rates and that is what they monitor all day long.
It's a bit like in those scam-emails. They are so obvious that anybody with half a brain will click delete. But those who do reply, oh boy, they are so ready to be milked off by that nigerian prince.
Buying recognition is nothing new in tech.
"Our startup spent its entire marketing budget on PR: at a time when we were assembling our own computers to save money, we were paying a PR firm $16,000 a month. And they were worth it."
Read this article, "The Submarine" ~ http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
[edit] dang, can something be done about this? Flagging for format? Maybe a little drastic, but try reading HN in elinks, you'll see that a long line breaks the whole page. How about line wrap? Desktop users would be unaffected, and it would be a better compromise for mobile.
You're face to face
With the man who sold the world
Cage the elephant- ain't no rest for the wicked
In case anyone is wondering
I asked him, what if the client wanted a pink unicorn gif in the corner, should we just do that as well? Without telling the client that it doesn't fit the site? He said yes...
The website probably won't cry over your bounce if it means they'll collect an email optin from someone else.
Auto play video is bad for reasons beyond a pop in modal and reasons beyond annoying video ads.
my wife has quit going to several sites altogether, and in other cases can not buy on a website, because of pop-up stuff.
So... if they're measuring for "email signups" then - w00t! - sweet! - numbers are so high! What about actual sales? Or repeat sales? Lifetime value of a customer?
Ask him to ask the client if that's the behaviour the client would find annoying if every other site also did that.
Case in point, circumventing ad blockers. Audience explicitly doesn't want the ad experience, but Facebook wants to make more $. Facebook just announced a record quarter on desktop advertising fueled by successfully circumventing ad blockers.
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/02/add-cash-plus/
"While Facebook appears to have had the last word for now, this, friends, is a long game. That being said, a few other ad blockers have apparently found workarounds to Facebook’s latest circumvention."
Not everybody gets to choose their job.
It's the cancer of Google image search. I don't get how Google's search ranking doesn't massively penalize that behaviour.
I'd rather stomach an advertisement than the "plz register" BS.
In the case of pinterest (and quora), for example, the whole page you are looking for is there, it just gets obscured by an obnoxious overlay that makes it impossible for you to see/interact with it all from a browser unless you register.
I'm sure what the googlebot gets at the html/css/js level is the same thing the user gets. The difference being the bot doesn't care about the semi-transparent blocking overlay because the bot is just parsing text/images/links individually and not trying to interact with the page the way a human does.
Here's the link: https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/
Whether you succeed or not is immaterial: the ad got clicked on, and hey, even if 99.9% of those clicks are accidental ones that will never convert, they still look like "organic" clicks and the ad revenue still gets booked. Expensive consultants like this person ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12944902 ) will chalk it up in the "users engaged" column. Everybody gets what they came for... except you and me.
If you're lucky it loads fast and the x to close is somewhere visible. You're rarely lucky though.
If you're lucky it loads fast and the x to close is somewhere visible. You're rarely lucky though.
If you're lucky it loads fast and the x to close is somewhere visible. You're rarely lucky though.
I agree that browser makers should fix this. It should probably behave like the location API and be remembered by domain or something.
My computer is a little older, and this one is a dealbreaker. Sometimes a page is so heavy that it brings my whole computer to its knees. If I can tell a page is starting to load more than a reasonable amount of elements, I punch out as soon as possible.
E.G Chrome on windows 10 hooked up to a 4K Acer monitor via HDMI
You can harden FF also and remove a few other annoyances like the default PDF reader, etc:
https://github.com/pyllyukko/user.js/
Still, my number 1 is loading the extra content and making elements jump around. A lot of times I: 1) see a link that interests me; 2) hover my finger over a link, ready to tap; 3) wait 1-2 secs, to be sure it's done loading; 4) Ok, it's ready; 5) tap the liContent jumps and I click somewhere else.
Both Facebook's and Twitter's search act like this. It displays recent search for enough time for you to move your finger/mouse to click it, then loads general results, like trending and suggestions. Waiting for the AJAX response to come back before displaying anything should be the norm.
In the past 12 months or so, I am really finding my web browsing experience hitting new shitty lows. Pretty hard to see the content you want these days behind that clutter of Outbrain ads, pop up newsletter subs, auto playing videos and the like...
It all comes back to the difficulty of running non-free software.
Of course, now you have no UI no restart a particular video. But the advertisers would figure this out about 30s after a global pause feature was introduced.
The data issue can be addressed by only having videos play automatically when the user is on a wifi connection. This is the default for mobile devices already, so it's arguably already solved for most users.
The "convenience" issue is something that I strongly suspect is actually something that people think one way but act another - lots of users claim to hate auto-playing videos but then they watch them a lot. Facebook's video engagement statistics are hard to argue with - a well designed video that works without sound (eg something from Buzzfeed) gets a tremendous number of shares, likes and click through engagements.
I strongly suspect that turning off auto-playing video, even by default, would actually make the web worse for the majority of people. For those who prefer them not to autoplay, browser vendors do provide that, but the functionality is usually buried in the equivalent of chrome://flags somewhere.
[1]: http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/cat-4692_M5250.ht...
Inevitably it updates while I'm tethered to my phone (which has a small data allowance).
Anyone who is outside the norm for whatever reason should be able to exert control over their browser, so obviously you should have the option to block videos autoplaying, or downloading at all, in the browser settings. Whether that should be in the settings page or a flags page is what browser vendors should be thinking hard about. Arguably this is a behaviour that enough people want to control that it should be in the settings page.
I see the point tough. It's bad on a limited wifi hotspot
Unfortunately it's relatively easy to circumvent this. I recently implemented an auto-play background video using a canvas element to which I'd render the frames from a video. Sound can't be played, but you could still end up downloading megabytes worth of video without taking any action.
The big toggles that make you wide open for all the shit on the web or just break all the web are no good.
Have a tendency to pop open multiple vids, or have large session restores. Don't need to track down a dozen fucking autoplaying fucking videos.