
Firefox banning noisy video from autoplaying - rayraegah
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/02/firefox-to-block-noisy-autoplaying-video-in-next-release/
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zrobotics
>>Firefox will also allow muted video to play back automatically.

Good lord, they didn't go far enough with this. IME, muted video is almost
always a waste of bandwidth that I don't care to see anyway. Local news sites
seem to be the worst with this, where they will autoplay the video muted on
the same page as the article. As someone who occasionally operates off of a
limited-bandwith connection, I get more-and-more frustrated with the modern
web every day. If I'm clicking on a local news site's article, I expect to
just read the article. 9 times out of 10, I scroll past a muted video that has
tried to play advertisements, and I will be finished reading the article where
the video is 30% finished. I'm sure this option is changeable in about:config
(which, besides preventing chrome monopoly is why I use FireFox), but most
users will never adjust any of those settings. How much power globally is
wasted burning CPU cycles to render this garbage content?

~~~
roca
The problem is, there is no way to block silent video without disabling JS
completely.

Block the <video> element? Sites will use GIFs. Block GIF animation? Sites
will present a slideshow of still images. Alternatively sites can implement
video decoding in JS and render to a <canvas>. This isn't just theoretical,
these have all been observed in practice. And these are all worse for users in
every way than letting sites use <video> with a decent video codec.

~~~
dredmorbius
Then start from a blacklist-fucking-eveything-approach, and hand off elements
to sites (or frameworks, or individual pages) based by what they can and will
use responsibly, starting with charactersets and linefeeds.

Emphasis, lists, links, colours, headings (pages all in <h4>, yes, I'm looking
at you), asides, headers, footers, graphics, audio, video, fonts, sticky
elements, scripts, cookies, notifications? Earn that shit. And lose it fast.

If this sounds like a paranoid defensive stance from being under persistent
attack, it is and we are.

~~~
roca
It's not worth putting effort into creating a browser that a negligible number
of people will ever use.

~~~
dredmorbius
[https://getpocket.com](https://getpocket.com)

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musicale
Autoplay is a monstrosity and it seems like a shocking design flaw that it
can't easily be stopped.

For example, Safari's "Never Auto-Play" setting simply doesn't work.

It seems like <canvas> animation should be blockable (e.g. make it so that
canvas pixels can't be altered without permission) and even old-school html
animation should be blockable.

Perhaps web sites with utter contempt for their users will decide to render
all of their text into a canvas so they can trick you into watching video ads;
"in order to view the New York Times, you must enable canvas animation and
webassembly so that we can violate your video autoplay setting" \- at which
point I guess browsers will have to include an AI system that uses some sort
of image processing and recognition to block stuff that doesn't look like text
or static images.

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commoner
To block all video (both noisy and silent) from autoplaying on Firefox 66 or
later:

1) Go to about:config

2) Set media.autoplay.default to 1

3) Set media.autoplay.allow-muted to false

4) Set media.autoplay.enabled.user-gestures-needed to false

This works on both the desktop and Android versions.

------
low_key
Now if we could just block the autoplaying Netflix menu video...

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jimjimjim
In my opinion, Firefox has regained the crown as the best browser. There
really arn't that many disadvantages to it while having many benefits.

------
reneberlin
Autoplaying videos is the new: 'midi-music blarring at you' from the 90s.

Everytime this happens to me on mobile i can't decide to chuckle or cry.

Without proper adjusted settings and addons no one can surf the web unharmed
anymore.

The web has become a hostile place.

I mean silently playing videos in the background to gain profits from
advertisers while costing you your data plan is burning real money. A kind of
money transfer, but: unpretty.

------
carmate383
Am I the only one to feel that autoplay video should be disabled by default,
ESPECIALLY if the video isn't even being rendered inside the visible portion
of the viewport when it begins playing? I am _sick to death_ of random noise
coming from web pages (namely, news articles) and having to try and find the
source of it.

~~~
notatoad
Autoplay video with no audio track is being used as a lower-bandwidth
alternative to gifs, and it's great for that.

Firefox's solution is a good one - don't ban autoplaying video, ban
autoplaying video that includes sound, unless it is specifically allowed for
that site.

~~~
carmate383
But why should a video automatically _begin_ playing if I can't see it?

~~~
moreira
The same reason a GIF begins playing if you can't see it. As mentioned, video
without audio is being used as a GIF replacement; it makes sense for it to
behave the same way.

~~~
darkpuma
Why should a gif begin playing if you can't see it?

~~~
moreira
I didn't say that it should, only that no-audio videos behaving like GIFs
seems like a good idea for bandwidth. Otherwise people will just use GIFs.

