
Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers - geuis
I know there are plugins than can somewhat do this, but no solutions are universal or great.<p>Please update all of our browsers so that no automatic video&#x2F;audio can play without user interaction&#x2F;permission.<p>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&#x27;re already listening to in another app.<p>This is eating up our data and inconveniencing millions of people using your products.<p>Please help us enable a better web.
======
tfgg
Things that make me just close tabs straight away:

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.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Your know there are HN readers who write this crap. I wonder if they'll chime
in on why they do.

~~~
TeMPOraL

      So the other day I met the guy who makes all that crap on-line
      I told him you can have my cash
      But first you know I've got to ask
      What made you want to live this kind of life?
    
      He said there ain't no rest for the wicked, money don't grow on trees
      I got bills to pay, I got mouths to feed; ain't nothing in this world for free
      I know I can't slow down
      I can't hold back though you know I wish I could
      Oh no there ain't no rest for the wicked
      Until we close the shop for good...

~~~
Gracana
Formatting text this way makes it hard to read on mobile and in text browsers.
I couldn't even reply just now, my text wouldn't show up as I typed it, I had
to click "edit" so I could view and edit my post by itself.

[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.

~~~
peeja
Wouldn't it be easier to just fix the CSS?

~~~
CamperBob2
Or get a browser that works?

~~~
Gracana
The web would be a lot more accessible if so many designers didn't think like
you.

------
Ruphin
What you are really asking is for Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS to make a
better web _for you_. Because you don't want media to autoplay does not mean
it is a good solution to just block it outright for everyone.

Some websites have legitimate use for autoplaying media. Some users (believe
it or not) actually _like_ their videos autoplaying when they scroll through
their Facebook feed or whatever media site they visit. Are their usecases and
desires not legitimate?

Your argument is in the line of "I don't like going to Starbucks, so
legislators should get together and ban Starbucks stores for everyone". Even
if you have a legitimate reason for not liking Starbucks, the solution is for
you to just stop going there. If you don't like websites that use autoplaying
media, then stop visiting them. Or, like some others in this thread suggested,
install some plugin or other software that makes sites behave the way you want
to.

A call for browser vendors to implement some opt-in setting that does what you
want would be much more realistic suggestion. (As some other comments pointed
out, for some browsers this setting already exists)

~~~
morganvachon
Your Starbucks example is flawed. Starbucks employees don't barge into your
office with a boombox playing at full volume and screaming at you about their
latest drinks, then make you pay for the taxi that brought them there, simply
because you opened an article about their new store in your area.

That's what autoplaying ads and videos on the web do: They catch you off guard
with loud, annoying audio that you can't always just turn off, and if you're
on mobile you're paying for the privilege with your data allowance. You didn't
ask for it, it attacked you without warning.

> _A call for browser vendors to implement some opt-in setting that does what
> you want would be much more realistic suggestion._

On this I agree with you entirely, and I think that's what the OP is actually
asking for.

~~~
RyanOD
"barge into your office"? Seems to me when you visit someone's website, you're
in their office, not the other way around.

I'm no fan of the auto-everything web, but I don't think your analogy here is
sound.

~~~
morganvachon
Only if "their office" is out on the street in full view of the public, just
like the rest of the web.

Since we're ripping this analogy to shreds anyway, let's take a different
view: You call up Starbucks on the phone (i.e. visit their website) and
request that they read you their new menu and describe to you their new store
location (read: you click on the link with the info you wanted). Before they
do as you asked, without warning they turn on a megaphone, point it to the
receiver, and start playing a looping advertisement for a new Harry Potter
line of toys. You didn't ask for that Potter nonsense, you're now deaf in that
ear, everyone around you is looking at you funny, and you hang up the phone in
disgust rather than wait through three iterations of toy pimping just to find
out some simple information they claimed to have on their info line (website).
Then, on your next phone bill you see a per-minute charge for that call (as
in, they used your metered data to spam you).

------
the8472
firefox -> about:config -> media.autoplay.enabled = false

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.

~~~
ynak
I'm taking a more drastic way; turning media.{mp4, webm, ...}.enabled into
False never let YouTube and other media autoplay(even play nomally) without
any addons. When I want to watch videos, download them by youtube-dl and watch
locally.

~~~
Exuma
You download YT videos before watching them? Seriously? Sometimes the
suggestions on HN are literally insane in the amount of effort people go
through to avoid things that wouldn't be a problem in the first place if you
did something simple like use adblock software.

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.

~~~
morganvachon
Watching later with youtube-dl is actually the recommended way to do YouTube
on OpenBSD; various "OpenBSD as a desktop OS" tutorials mention it, and in
practice it works very well. On that particular OS it is due to the lack of a
native Flash plugin, but even with YouTube offering most of their videos via
HTML5 it actually makes for a better experience to download and then view
them. 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.

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.

~~~
kalden_
> actually makes for a better experience to download and then view them.

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.

~~~
morganvachon
> _Can you specify how?_

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.

------
massysett
This behavior is so bad that I have changed my browsing behavior. I visit only
selected, trusted news sites, as "free" sites are horrible offenders here.
Google is much less useful while on desktops as it is likely to return
obnoxious websites.

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.

~~~
amasad
You're implying that the web has gotten worse, but in my experience it used to
be much worse. Just the memory of the sea of pop-ups that you had to fight
when browsing the web makes my stomach turn.

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.

~~~
cyberferret
Facebook and Twitter seem to be going for the auto repeat play on videos too,
so unless you physically stop them, they just keep playing over and over
again. Annoying if you have turned away to do something else or have scrolled
down the page a bit more - you have to go back up and find the offending video
again to stop it. (NB: I normally play videos with speeches or music clips, so
I don't need to SEE the video, but just listen to the audio.)

------
hashtagMERKY
I really dislike auto-playing audio and video as well, for all the reasons you
mentioned, but also for a less logical reason: it just makes it feel like the
browser isn't on your side. If a site is automatically playing audio or a
video advert, its design is not in the user's interest, so in that situation
your software has to choose whose side to take. I just want and expect the
software I have installed on my computer to take my side, and always act in my
interests. It probably sounds silly but I just think software should always be
primarily designed for the end user.

~~~
Tepix
What makes you think the browser is on your side? You are getting it for free,
therefore you are paying in some other way.

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.

~~~
mcbits
Unless I've misunderstood something, I don't think Mozilla has received much
if any money from Google for a couple of years now. They have search deals
with Yahoo, Yandex, and Baidu in their respective markets, which would make me
nervous about the future if I worked for Mozilla. Not sure whether those deals
might lead them to make decisions against the users' interests.

------
fjarlq
There are a couple Chromium bugs filed about this:
[https://crbug.com/107923](https://crbug.com/107923) and
[https://crbug.com/514102](https://crbug.com/514102)

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](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...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-
html5-autoplay/efdhoaajjjgckpbkoglidkeendpkolai)

~~~
hub_
But then Chrome and Youtube come from the same company. Maybe they should
coordinate.

~~~
vurpo
How could they? They can't just disable autoplay but make an exception for
YouTube, that would be wrong in so many ways. You can't make that into a web
standard, so it would promote browser fragmentation, for example.

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"

------
fgpwd
There should be a media play permission just like there is for accessing your
webcam or showing notifications. You give the permission once to a website
such as youtube, and from them on videos would play automatically for the
domain youtube.com. No videos would play on any website to which you deny this
permission.

~~~
jasonkostempski
Netflix is one of the offenders with their new full screen video ads when you
first hit the site.

------
glandium
My "favorite" case is a site that sometimes embeds videos, and also has
autoplaying videos for advertising. You can't listen to anything from the
former because of the latter. Even worse, when you pause the advertising
video, it autorestarts after a while. So if the embedded video is long enough,
you just can't watch it entirely.

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.

~~~
kijin
You can actually mute or pause individual videos by right-clicking on them and
using the context menu.

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.

~~~
the8472
> Many videos override the context menu, though

Which in turn can be overriden by shift-rightclick

~~~
marmaduke
Ah great tip.

------
cyberferret
Another suggestion - enable pausing on video. ANY video. Keep seeing more and
more advertising videos that don't even give you the ability to pause.

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...

~~~
kevincox
This is actually quite difficult because even though they are using the
browsers video pipeline the browser doesn't know anything about the UI of the
page so it is very hard to expose a way for the user to pause/disable any
video across all sites. I guess a hotkey that puts buttons on all videos might
be good but I'm sure some sites would find ways to layer fake videos that
would defeat this.

It all comes back to the difficulty of running non-free software.

~~~
brassic
You don't need a pause button on all the videos. You just need a single button
that pauses all the videos. I would be delighted if the escape key on my
laptop served this purpose.

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.

~~~
mikro2nd
Look at your keyboard, up there, top row, right hand side. You might just be
the person who has found an actual use for that button labelled "Pause".
Congrats! ;)

------
ivank
I wrote [https://github.com/ludios/mute-new-
tabs](https://github.com/ludios/mute-new-tabs) and I am now happier with a
quiet Chrome. The idea is to mute all new tabs and unmute them only when you
interact with an in-page volume control (or manually unmute via the tab
icon/context menu). This solves only the sound problem though, not the data
consumption.

~~~
eru
Awesome, thanks! Any chance you are putting it on the official extension
store?

~~~
ivank
I am open to handing it over to someone I can trust who wants to distribute it
there.

~~~
eru
Cool. I never published an extension for Chrome ever, but following the guide
at
[https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/publish](https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/publish)
looks bearable.

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.

------
emidln
In the past, I was responsible for analytics around a decision to autoplay or
not autoplay videos on a media site. The site did both mobile and desktop
videos.

    
    
        * voluntary customer feedback was universally negative
        * bounce rate decreased substantially (around 40%)
        * total interactions with the page increased almost 3x (clicks on significant  UX elements such as like/subscibe/additional video plays)
        * interactions for those using some form of adblock stayed the same (presumably these people also had an autoplay off plugin)
    

In summary, what users say they like and what they actually like are wildly
different. The average user seemed to engage more when we removed the burden
of first interaction.

*We did eventually kill autoplay, but only so we could have a consistent experience between YouTube and non YouTube videos (YouTube took efforts to stop counting autoplayed videos for advertising purposes).

~~~
wott
The number of times I have to click a bit everywhere at random in a panic
because some shit autoplay sound or video started yelling and I can't figure
which one it is and where it is :-[]

~~~
emidln
Presumably you don't click on a button that says share and then click
facebook, and then complete the share action in a panic. If you do, I love you
and would love to find out how to induce your kind of panic in more people.

------
gkya
Nowadays I find I can't use the WWW without JS blocked except on a select
whitelist of websites. I can't stand downloading 10-15 megabytes for <=1KiB of
actual substance. I can't stand the amount of amateurish design decisions I
need to fight using websites, some unfortunately unavoidable like my
university's web services, or the stupid Edmodo app imposed to us by our
professors, etc. And I detest icons, because each and every app / website have
different opinions on icons and a different set of cryptic icons which I fear
clicking. Also webfonts in many cases are an abomination as many times they
are used where a simple stupid half-a-meg PNG would do the job. "Share"
buttons that come with some kilobytes of JS, floating headers that leave me
five pixels to see the text I'm reading, well, this is an endless list. I'll
spare a separate sentence for history-fiddling, I am disgusted when when I hit
back unexpected things happen. Google, Youtube, Github, these fiddle with
history and replicate browser's things (page loading, history keeping ...) in
JS. And as the user I don't have the chance to affect the actual website
makers, so blocking JS / cookies / media is the only option.

------
madeofpalk
> In the worst cases such as on mobile browsers like iOS Safari

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/](https://webkit.org/blog/6784/new-video-policies-for-ios/)

------
forgettableuser
I am now a victim of the adage, "Be careful what you wish for because you
might just get it".

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.

~~~
username223
I too long for the good old days, when web garbage was mostly confined to
Flash and popups (and punch-the-monkey GIFs). Now it's all an HTML5 wasteland
full of warring JavaScript. Good job, W3C!

------
izak30
I make art installations and UI/UX research. A modern browser is one of the
best technical canvases. If you are working on browsers and you turn things
off, please always allow me a backdoor for my own browsers to turn them back
on.

Complex software control of multimedia and the whole browser experience gives
me the ability to develop new ways of interacting with computers.

------
ZenoArrow
In my opinion, the problem isn't with auto-playing videos per se, but rather
the audio that comes along with it.

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.

~~~
csydas
Well, part of the issue is the audio is part of what they want you to hear
because it's considered more effective than just text moving. Animated ads
were tried, and I'm going to assume that they weren't considered as effective
given the fact that we have video ads instead of Gifv ads.

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.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough before. I'm not expecting advertisers to respect
the wishes of individuals. I am suggesting that there should be some form of
user control over video auto-plays. The question is what form this user
control should take.

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.

------
onion2k
_This is eating up our data and inconveniencing millions of people using your
products._

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.

~~~
frankzinger

        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.
    

Not all WiFi connections equate to an infinite amount of data. Due to
circumstances I am on a connection for which I pay per GB and it's shared
through a WiFi router. I do not want my browser to download videos unless I
asked it to.

~~~
egeozcan
I have a 3G Mobile Wireless Modem/Router (TP-Link M5250[1], heavily
recommended btw) and this "if wireless connection present, download all the
things" attitude really annoys me. Android is a big offender. Why on earth I
don't get a "download updates automatically only on this particular network"
setting... Whatsapp, Google Maps and many other apps too make the same false
assumption.

[1]: [http://www.tp-
link.com/en/products/details/cat-4692_M5250.ht...](http://www.tp-
link.com/en/products/details/cat-4692_M5250.html)

~~~
kpozin
You can configure Android to treat any specific WiFi network as metered, so
apps that care will treat it the same as a mobile network. Look in Settings >
Data usage > Wi-Fi > Network restrictions (might be in an overflow menu).

------
IvanK_net
I completely disagree with this proposal.

All websites should be allowed to play sounds any time they want to. Without
it, webapps can not reasonably compete the native apps.

I am a developer of web games and being able to play the sound from the
beginning, without any interaction from the user, is one of the most essential
parts of the game experience.

If you visit a website which unexpectedly plays a sound, you should stop
visiting it / downvote it / ask the authors to stop doing it. When you are
surprised by the sound, the problem is not in browsers, the problem is in
authors of webpages / webapps.

~~~
AndrewUnmuted
> Without it, webapps can not reasonably compete the native apps.

This point, on its own, sounds rather nice to me. After all, the various
implementations of modern HTML and Javascript that allow these 'webapps' to
function are the same ones being abused ad nauseum by news organizations and
other media entities.

I don't deny the usefulness of these modern web development features. I also
recognize that because most of the world is on Google Chrome, this makes
cross-platform support easier for developers. However, I also realize that web
apps are popular because of how much easier it is to track, monitor, and
collect users' data and behaviors when they are forced to access your
application from the browser.

My observation has been that auto-playing media in browsers is a common
strategy to artificially inflate a site's media engagement figures. The
strategy is cheap, prays on users' media illiteracy, and is incredibly
dishonest. Worst of all, it allows media companies to sidestep the more
expensive problem of producing engaging, high-quality content in favor of dumb
little gimmicks to keep inflating their engagement figures. I don't know about
everyone else here, but if the content is interesting to me, I'm willing for
my right hand to leave the keyboard for about 0.5 seconds in order to click
the 'play' button with my mouse.

------
wfunction
CNN especially gets on my nerves. They seem to have gone out of their way to
do everything they can to make sure all plugins/extensions that try to block
it fail.

~~~
codingdave
I have edited my hosts file so anything from cdn.turner.com is routed to
127.0.0.1. Works like a charm for CNN.com. All the text, none of the media.

~~~
wfunction
The problem is sometimes I DO want to watch the video. I just don't want it to
always autoplay.

------
inian
It is not as simple as that. Even if videos are prevented from being auto-
playing, people resort to much much worse techniques. For example, GIFs -
which are much bigger that the corresponding video, worse for battery life
etc. To combat this, Chrome recently enabled autoplaying of videos if the
video is muted on mobile browser. Hopefully this gets the number of people
using GIFs down.

Or who knows, people might start animating images on canvas or something.
Allowing auto play in some conditions seems to be lesser of two evils
according to me..

~~~
bunderbunder
Heck, I'll happily accept not auto-displaying GIFs, too. For non-animated
content everyone is using PNG or SVG nowadays, so I doubt there'd be much
collateral damage.

------
moepstar
Facebook is IMHO the biggest offender in that category, dozens of "in your
face" videos no one asked explicitly for...

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"...

~~~
kccqzy
Or you can use likes and shares to influence the Facebook algorithm so that it
never presents videos to you in the timeline. If you always like/share text
posts and don't watch any videos, Facebook will stop putting videos on your
feed.

~~~
moepstar
Still, i shouldn't have to do either - neither liking sh*t i don't really dig,
nor having to turn off some setting because somebody thought it is acceptable
to just change the default behavior...

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...

------
dredmorbius
Yes, absoutely, and please.

I filed this bug myself July 2015, though I believe others have existed for
years.

[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=514102](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=514102)

In the meantime, I've taken to blocking hosts and/or domains which are used to
serve autoplay media. A small list generates exceptionally high mileage.

[http://pastebin.com/FzAgkRnB](http://pastebin.com/FzAgkRnB)

I implement this on the router via DDWRT, which protects the entire LAN. You
can also add this to your own /etc/hosts file(s) on individual machines, or go
further and have a local DNS server be authoritative for these services.

The block is intentionally global, and encouraged, as _media providers
themselves will find that they cannot reach anyone, anywhere_ so long as
autoplay is a default.

Again: the Internet and Web are ultimately a user-determines-policy system.
And if servers say "fuck you" loudly enough to users, then users can say "fuck
you" back. And win.

DD-WRT instructions: [https://www.dd-
wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Ad_blocking](https://www.dd-
wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Ad_blocking)

------
oftenwrong
I wrote a small extension for personal use that can set various <video>
preferences on a site-by-site basis. One of the main things I wanted to be
able to do is disabled autoplay. However, I found that a lot of sites just
start the video from js instead of setting the 'autoplay' attribute. I was
able to put in some stronger defense by using MutationObserver to stop a video
that was played without the user clicking play, but then I found that some
sites have code that will force a video to be playing, so even a manual pause
would be overridden, and the site's js would contend with my extension's js.

There's no way to stop autoplay if we allow free, programmatic access to
videos (without blocking js too, which I use noscript for).

I had the same problem with the 'loop' attribute. I wanted videos to not loop.
I found that some sites loop videos without using the 'loop' attribute. I
would disable 'loop' on the <video>, but the <video> would be replaced by a
new autoplaying <video> when the original video ended.

This is about the point that I gave up on my extension.

------
r721
At least "Click to play" setting for HTML5 audio/video would be great.

------
chenzhekl
Autoplay is a feature specified in the W3C standard. Thus it's not the browser
makers but websites should be blamed for abusing autoplay.

~~~
lewiseason
Another commenter suggested it should be something your browser prompts you
for, similar to location or camera access. This seems to solve the poster's
issue, whilst keeping within the spec (I assume?)

You're right though, websites shouldn't abuse autoplay.

------
ianai
I remember you had to click play on flash at one point. It was an option you
could turn on in preferences. I'd love to have it back.

------
Belenus
There are some sites that display not ads but fake virus alerts. When I
visited one of these sites, I got a message blaring out of my computer to call
a phone number or to reinstall my computer to get rid of a "virus." (Hopefully
it was not.) Every time I closed out of the message box a new one would
appear, and I finally managed to close out of the site. It's happened a few
times. This may not entirely relate to the topic you were speaking about. :)

------
hashhar
For __Firefox __:

For Flash, change the Flash Plugin setting to Ask to Activate. For HTML5,
switch `media.autoplay.enabled` preference `about:config` to `false`.

Or try out FlashStopper [1] to stop both HTML5 and Flash.

[1]:
[https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/flashstopper/](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/flashstopper/)

------
phobius
Agree this is an annoyance - how would you propose keeping features like
YouTube or Netflix autoplay/playlists in this scenario?

~~~
geuis
To be honest, I don't think either should auto-play anyway. I personally
prefer to using the Youtube website on my phone vs the app because its a
better experience. Given that situation, I am usually looking for the video
description and/or comments rather than the video before I start watching it.
Unfortunately, Youtube hides the description under a tap icon and you have to
scroll past all of the recommended videos to see the comments. Its not an
ideal experience.

------
FullMtlAlcoholc
Here is a chrome extension that mutes audio for all tabs except thw selected
one: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/smart-tab-
mute/dnf...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/smart-tab-
mute/dnfbgicfhchdpogmafjifjgbcjdaikgn?hl=en)

~~~
hello_there
This is an improvement, but I don't think that sound is always welcome in the
selected tab either. With a few exceptions (like YouTube) I'd like sound to be
off by default.

------
mschuster91
News sites are the worst offenders here. Especially those who put an un-
pauseable, unskippable, un-muteable ad in front. I want to read the damn
article, not listen to a fucking ad that drones over my Spotify music - so I
can't even Fn F10 to get rid of the ad.

Worst thing is that many of these video ads can not be caught by Adblock
Plus...

------
thomasdd
There are situations when you need to play video on load. (for example, you
want a nicely designed content or DIVs.) But Maybe a browser option to
enable/disable video playback would solve this. Maybe disabling audio would be
as an option, so as webdesigner you can show the relevant visual content but
without sound.

~~~
lucaspiller
> There are situations when you need to play video on load

No there really aren't, not on page load [0]. Show a nice still with a big
play button on it - people know what that means. It's probably going to load
faster too, so people won't be stuck staring at a blank section for 15
seconds. Or even worse, start reading and scrolling the first two paragraphs,
then wonder why some audio started playing.

And as others have said, you may be costing the user money - there is no way
to tell if they have to pay for their data usage, so be kind and minimise how
much data you need.

[0] I may be able to excuse you if you are building a streaming video service,
and want the next episode to play automatically.

~~~
pdkl95
> [0]

That could be handled by allowing the media tag to be changed and restarted
with a new URL during (and _only_ during) the "ended" event[1]. That would
allow continuing an already playing video with minimal side effects. E.g. only
alow something like this:

    
    
        var video = document.getElementsById("current_video_tag");
        var play_next_video = function () {
            video.src = "https://exmple.com/next_video_url";
            video.currentTime = 0;
            video.play();
        });
    
        /* this should work */
        video.addEventListener("ended", play_next_video);
    
        /* but these shouldn't */
        video.addEventListener("progress", play_next_video);
        setTimeout(play_next_video, 1000);
    

[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/Guide/Events/Me...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/Guide/Events/Media_events)

~~~
kuschku
And what if you want to support changing the video through remote control?

Say, allow the user to open the site on their phone and TV, and the phone
shows play/pause/next buttons, the TV shows the episode, and the phone can be
used to skip to the next episode?

(Data synced because the user is logged in on both, via a standard
webbrowser)?

------
martin-adams
This happened to Flash in IE I think about 10 years ago. Every flash animation
on the page had a some form of 'click to play' cta.

I find that pages that have sound more annoying than video, but isn't a major
problem for me as I have headphones plugged in permanently.

I think I would prefer such a feature request as a user option, like a
permission request. This is how popup windows, full screen, taking control of
the cursor behaves.

I do worry about the data usage on mobile though with autoplaying videos. Even
pausing them doesn't stop it from fetching more in the buffer.

I suspect there may be some valid use cases for autoplaying (such as
background looping videos, YouTube, etc), particularly when run in some type
of kiosk mode on a TV. It's another example of where some spoil the experience
and the behaviour of the web ends up getting locked down to stop them.

------
therealmarv
There are use cases where this useful. Not that I like that but autoplaying
video (without sound) is e.g. needed for some splash backgrounds (like AirBnB
is using) and many ads use that feature too. I would like only sound
automatically muted (like Instagram and FB is doing with their videos).

------
hobarrera
Video: Arguable, since a lot of times is part of the basic design and very
lightweight.

Audio: MUST be muted be default. There's nothing that I hate more than opening
something in a new tab for later, and a few seconds later, having to track
down there that damn noise is coming from.

Always, always, mute tabs be default!

------
msinclair
Another problem that Facebook has (and I'm sure others have as well) is
attempting to fetch dozens and dozens of videos. At once. This generally locks
up even desktop browsers as they try to preload the content. I've seen it
trying to grab 130 videos before. Pretty ridiculous.

------
ccvannorman
Last night I watched episode 8 of Cosmos (I highly recommend Cosmos with Neil
deGrasse Tyson) and learned that for 2+ decades (from 1920s to 1940s), oil
industry knowingly propagated bad science that poisoned millions of people in
pursuit of profits.

Sadly, pop-ups and auto-play videos lead to more profits, at least
perceived/short term. No amount of whining by us will change a board meeting
at a medium-large company result. "We need to do X that will piss off Y
customers but result in Z more profits." Companies always choose profits.

I'm on board with getting these things changed but appealing to big
corporations because "it sucks" is never going to amount to "but it makes us
more money." We need a different strategy.

------
dustinmoorenet
As an old Javascript developer, I don't see how the browser could do this
without making legitimate websites suffer. You have the freedom to run JS code
at any point in the DOM load, after an amount of time (setInterval or
setTimeout) or after user interaction. And you can start and stop audio and/or
video through JS. So you can't restrict automatically playing media without
also restricting the ability to programmatically control the media for
legitimate reasons, like media control buttons and hot-keys.

I think it is best to avoid shitty websites. My short list: Facebook, and TV
network websites and their affiliates. There are lots of websites that do the
right thing.

------
Houshalter
How can they stop it without breaking lots of things? Javascript has the
ability to play sounds and videos without going through the standard video
player. If you disable it, wouldn't it break various web apps and games?

~~~
eru
Why? You can make the javascript believe that it's playing, but not actually
output anything. Just like when I am setting my computer on mute and turn off
the screen---but in the browser instead.

~~~
Houshalter
But that still affects legitimate uses, like games and web apps that want
audio.

------
Esau
This is something that used to be easier - practically everything depended on
Flash and you could either not install Flash or install Flash with Flashblock.

Now with everything rolled into the browser, the problem has gotten much
worse.

------
rebootit
I found most addons for chrome were broken so I made a less broken userscript
for Tampermonkey: [https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/24811-html5-stop-
autoplay/...](https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/24811-html5-stop-
autoplay/code)

Here's Tampermonkey:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgf...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgffkkebhmkfjojejmpbldmpobfkfo?hl=en)

------
intrasight
In my opinion it isn't the browser vendors who should decide what content gets
displayed.

On mobile, I browse with JavaScript disabled. Pages load fast and I don't get
anything but HTML.

~~~
atom058
Second this!

I too have resorted to disabling Javascript as a solution to the
annoying/user-unfriendly mobile web. Fortunately, most sites still fail with a
fair degree of grace, i.e. making it possible to read the content of the page
with JS disabled. The fact that most news sites load approximately 10x faster
is a nice bonus as well.

On Android, there are plugins for Firefox and Chrome. The plugin I use for FF
comes with a handy quick-setting in the address bar. Makes enabling JS again
easier on the rare occasion where it is actually necessary.

Furthermore, disabling JS on my Kindle is the only way to make the
experimental browser reasonable to use.

Oh, on a side note: if devs would please stop loading article text over JS,
that would be great. Same goes for styling elements with JS without reverting
to something reasonable if the browser has it disabled.

------
lucaspiller
I'm using the "Disable HTML5 Autoplay" for Chrome which works to block it, but
it does break some sites. Notable Amazon Prime Video doesn't automatically
start playing the next episode, and Facebook videos (and GIFs) won't play even
when you click play.

I would suggest at least making it opt-in through the browser-popup. However
that's another annoyance - the number of sites I now visit which ask to send
me notifications.

------
TheCoreh
Dear browser makers: Please don't. There are legitimate uses for this feature.

If websites are abusing it, simply stop visiting them, or install an
ad/content blocker. What maybe browser makers could introduce is a "switch" to
disable autoplay and audio, and manually enable it per tab. But this feature
should be not active by default.

Also, we should be complaining with the ISPs and Carriers about their data
caps, not at sites for using data

------
Broken_Hippo
This - so much this.

A common scenario in my house: The spouse or I muttering obscenities over the
autoplay ads, along with a comment of, "Use your powers for _good_ , dammit!
For good!"

I find these intrusive. So much so that I occasionally browse with the
computer muted - especially if the source of entertaining sound is coming from
the spouse's computer or if I'm looking at cooking sites. Most times, I'm just
wanting text.

~~~
clarry
Give all your monies to the advertisers. Maybe, just maybe they will stop
bothering you once you have no more money to buy whatever crap they are
advertising?

~~~
qbrass
They'll just advertise ways to earn more money.

------
zetafunction
Chrome for Android blocks autoplaying videos. To get around this, sites now
use JS to decode and render video into a canvas. For example:
[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=178297...](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=178297#c73).
As one might imagine, this is not so great for power usage…

------
hello_there
Chrome already require webpages to ask permission in order to use resources
like camera and microphone. I think it should do the same for speakers.

------
skaplun
I think you are reacting like this because you're over using the medium(the
web). For the average person its nice that their family's videos autoplay and
autoloop without having to do something. Video and sound are big parts of the
experience, which happens to not fit a certain advanced user group like you.

So a browser setting would work but not disable for all

------
amelius
Imho, a better solution would be to be able to disable sound by default, and
then allow sound to be turned on per-tab.

~~~
antocv
Exactly, I dont even let the "web-browsing" user access anything in /dev aside
from null, zero and {}urandom.

The browser doesnt have flash or mp4 or other "video-plaything things", webgl
or webrtc enabled.

On android (without google), WebApps sandbox to browse "web apps".

youtube-dl if I want to watch a movie, simple.

------
tobyhinloopen
No. Browsers should not interfere with autoplay. It is still a tool. Don't
drop features because some abuse it.

------
nekdev
That's stupid. Many apps really need vidéo autoplay:

\- YouTube \- video usages (webrtc) \- some apps for people with
disabilities...

You may ask for an option of disabling it by default (which will make some
apps not working) but not impose your choice and "insult" developers choices
that have a far better pov than you. :/

------
sdfjkl
Yes please. In fact, let it be a preference if I even wish to buffer that
stuff, rather than just not autoplay it. Because, being mostly on low-
bandwidth, metered or very crappy connections, I almost certainly do not want
several dozen MB of completely unwanted garbage shoved down my (metered) pipe.

------
amelius
It's not really possible to robustly implement this, because a browser cannot
possibly know if you are hitting a "play" button.

So somebody who would like to trick the system (e.g. advertisers) could just
make e.g. a menu item behave the same way as a play button.

------
jaredsohn
Recent versions of the MuteTab Chrome extension (that I wrote) allow muting
all tabs by default, along with a lot of other muting-related behaviors.
[http://www.mutetab.com](http://www.mutetab.com)

------
untog
I'd be more content with autoplaying videos, but muted. I was glad when iOS 10
introduced autoplaying video because it means people will stop converting
every damn thing to GIFs, which are far more bandwidth intensive than videos.

------
pinsard
Maybe it's about time we start to use the internet less as an entertainment
source (web) and more as only a medium to reach what we need, be it business
or pleasure. Less is more should help us adjust the industry behavior.

------
dawnerd
I can't way I want this default. I do find it annoying though when sites
decide to put a very small 100x100 auto playing video at the bottom of the
page. Cnet is one of the bigger offenders

------
ClayM
oh man, auto play on mobile apps that kill what you were listening to,
requiring you to switch back the other app makes me want to throw my phone out
the window.

------
Traubenfuchs
Try out the Bloomberg Website. There is an autoplay video on every page and it
moves to a fixed position if you scroll away. Someone should be slapped for
this.

------
Reverberb
AI will indeed kill humanity.not by going renegade but doing exactly what we
tell. Soon enough we gona lose all capability of doing the most simple tasks

------
hd4
1\. Use a predefined adblocking hosts file on your system, if you have Linux,
just replace your existing /etc/hosts file with this
[https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts](https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts)
This will kill 90% of popups and autoloading, for the others..

2\. If you use Chrome, use the option that stops plug-ins autoloading (search
for plugins in the Settings search-box)

3\. If you use Firefox, remove or simply don't install Flash. For HTML5 you
should look for controls that stop autoplaying.

------
greggman
YC's AirBNB autoplays video on the front page. Drives me crazy since while
traveling I'm often on a bandwidth restricted connection

------
_RPM
Who decides this? I imagine it's much more than a developer's decision. It may
be a higher up decision based on business goals.

------
timdeneau
Agreed. The default behavior for the web audio/video autoplay attribute should
depend on a permission request for whitelisting.

------
timothyh2ster
I simply leave when it happens; what could they possibly have to interest me
when they are dumb enough to auto-feed their stuff.

------
jarnix
It's not up to the software developer but to the developer of the site, I
don't understand your post!

------
eridius
iOS safari has always blocked auto playing video, so I'm not sure what you're
complaining about there. Very recently they've finally started allowing it for
video that has no audio track (or that has the audio track muted), which seems
to match what you want.

------
Scirra_Tom
If auto playing videos is a bandwidth concern, perhaps gif's should be treated
similarly.

------
Joyfield
And Firefox, please remember the sound volume i set on your HTML5 player for a
specific site.

------
Tempest1981
Or at least provide an option for autoplay, so savvy users can turn it off.

~~~
ffggvv
You are so savvy that you can't even search online?

On firefox go to about:config and set media.autoplay.enabled to false.

------
cmdrfred
The only problem is I want YouTube videos to do this when on that website.

~~~
clarry
Whitelists & blacklists should really be a default feature in browsers.

The big toggles that make you wide open for all the shit on the web or just
break all the web are no good.

------
jfoutz
how about a :obnoxious selector for links?

autoplay video, please register, and messing with history would be lovely.

I guess it's because there's no good way to populate the selector without
visiting the link target.

------
ams6110
I've disabled all media players in my browsers. Problem solved.

------
oriettaxx
yes, absolutely

This summer in Greece we had to pay about 500$ f.... penalty for over using
our 3G internet access (we just forgot a laptop & brower open for a night).

------
hartator
Or bear a world where ad-blocking will be 100%.

------
codecamper
agreed! investing websites are terrible for this. cnbc starts a video playing
for every article. there goes my bandwidth.

------
ricardobeat
Actually iOS didn't have auto play until recently. Back then the outcry from
developers was the opposite - "y won't you implement the standard!"

~~~
ricardobeat
Restrictions were lifted in iOS10 less than four months ago:
[https://webkit.org/blog/6784/new-video-policies-for-
ios/](https://webkit.org/blog/6784/new-video-policies-for-ios/)

------
nextos
media.autoplay.enabled=false does the trick in Firefox about:config.

------
mproud
Apple has been going so far as to automatically disable Flash, which really
helps.

------
ffggvv
Ask this on their bug tracker.

~~~
dredmorbius
[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=514102](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=514102)

------
quakephil
Step 1. Install adblock.

Step 2. ?

Step 3. Profit

------
necessity
You should be using NoScript anyway so just use it.

------
boubiyeah
Can't agree more.

------
thetinman
Turn off flash. 99% of your problem solved plus other benefits.

