HN Explorer

Ask HN: Are auto-playing videos now the norm?

16 points by gt565k ↗ HN
Seriously, wtf?

Forbes, TheHill, LinkedIn, and various other sites now just auto-play videos following right in facebook's footsteps.

I started instantly closing browser tabs for articles I'm trying to read, as the video would just start blasting through my speakers and on-top of that begin with a noisy and annoying ad.

I can't be alone here to think that these sites will be losing a lot of viewers due to auto-playing videos?

Anyone else feel the same way?

11 comments

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MichaelBurge
An ad blocker will take care of that problem. Disabling media is a good first step, and you might want to disable Javascript too.
Raphmedia
Studies show that autoplaying videos will increase the amount of videos that are being played by 100%!
gue5t
User-hostile behavior by for-profit websites is the norm; any particular offense is just the fad of the day.
ahussain
I've seen autoplaying videos that have muted audio. Those don't feel as invasive as the autoplaying audio.
no_protocol
> I can't be alone here to think that these sites will be losing a lot of viewers due to auto-playing videos?

Don't forget that the vast, vast majority of computer users are not like you or anyone that posts on this site. They probably respond differently to these types of videos.

zzzcpan
They respond the same. From a UX perspective auto-playing videos, animations, sounds were never the norm and web browsers should have never allowed for this to happen. But they belong to the industry that makes money by annoying users and here we are.
justboxing
> Forbes, TheHill, LinkedIn, and various other sites now just auto-play videos following right in facebook's footsteps.

Yes. And I believe these companies are trying out the Facebook recipe for Advertizing -- which leads to monetization and profits -- success.

It's been widely reported (you can search HN archivesa and you'll see) that Facebook counts as little as 3 seconds of any video play time as a "View". And it takes the average user about that much time to scroll down or up, at which point the currently playing ad stops playing, and the next one in the viewport is now playing on autoplay. So a single user could potentially be scrolling up and down his/her page / feed, and contribute 10 to 20 Video views.

Scale that to it's millions of users, and Facebook now presents the video views as "Reach" and can charge advertisers a lot more.

From an end user perspective, it's annoying, but from the publisher point of view, it's in the interest of all these sites to auto-play their videos, and count a few seconds as "Views" and tout their reach eventually leading to increased ad sales...

mgreenly
I started using the AutoMute extension to automatically mute newly opened tabs and very rarely notice auto play videos. I guess I don't find the video as distracting as the audio.
balazsdavid987
I have seen worse than auto-playing videos: auto-stopping videos. I have the habit of starting a video and quickly scrolling through the site while listening. Check that for an example: https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Testing-Mattress... Playback is stopped even when you scroll just one pixel and it does not resume when you return. I find that a very bad ux design.
neurobot
I have two browsers, where my Firefox as my main browser, I completely tweak it. I also disable for video playing, but still can play youtube videos.

when something video I cant watch on Firefox due to this settings, I just change my browser to chrome.