this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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In today’s fast-paced digital world, we often rely on various online platforms to quench our thirst for knowledge, information, and entertainment. Among these platforms, news websites hold a significant position as they allow us to stay updated about current events across the globe. However, despite their essential role in delivering crucial content, many of these sites have resorted to irritating tactics that negatively impact user experience. One such tactic is the automatic playback of videos accompanied by full audio when one opens their webpage.

This practice has become increasingly common among news sites due to the belief that users prefer a multimedia experience over plain text articles. However, there is no empirical evidence to support this assumption. On the contrary, many have raised concerns over these autoplaying videos. These concerns range from audio intrusion into private spaces, lack of control over sound output, to the consumption of data and battery life on mobile devices. The most prominent criticism against this practice stems from the mismatch between the video’s subject matter and the article itself. In other words, these videos are unrelated to the content of the page and often serve solely as advertisements, disruptive interfaces, or attempts at misleading engagement metrics.

Does ANYONE actually like these videos? I typically scramble to find the close and/or mute button as soon as I can. Infuriating.

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

It's the sort of thing that gets decided in a weekly meeting where some dipshit in middle management says "Guys, we need more engagement. Can we force them to watch a video? Is that possible? Seems like that should be possible." Then some long-suffering coder has to admit that yeah, it's possible. Then the coder then mumbles that it's also a bad idea and very obnoxious, and that most users will just mute it or leave the page...but the manager douchebag doesn't even hear it, because he's already patting himself on the back for his 'brilliant innovation'.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Meanwhile the real question is why major browsers don't seem to have a "do not ever fucking make a noise unless I explicitly tell you to" setting. I swear, Chrome and IE look like they do, but it never seems to actually work. And then there's "this setting is managed by your administrator" bullshit on top of that...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I feel this way about the "This website would like to send you notifications" popup. I will never, ever click accept on that. Why are you still asking. It's not even embedded in the website, it would be so easy to build a toggle into the browser to blanket reject those requests. Why is this even a """feature""" at all ffs, after email and push notifications and junk mail why do these shitty companies need yet another way to freely spam unwilling consumers. You did not under any circumstances have to hand this to them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I'm definitely with you on that one.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I think firefox's version works properly? At least, I've not noticed it as an issue since switching back to it from Chrome

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Not specifically browser settings, but in Windows and Linux you should have access to a per application mixer and can reduce / mute the volume of your browser to zero.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Yeah but that mutes sound even if you want it (and toggling it back isn't exactly one click). I don't want to remove the ability to play sounds, I want to disable autoplay of anything that makes sounds (except perhaps if I white-list a site?). Or mute/unmute on a per-tab basis with the default being muted. As mentioned there are settings that you'd think would do this thing, but they're either bugged or deliberately crippled because I still seem to get plenty of autoplay video with sound that finds its way through on my work pc.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Nope. I uBlock element zap them if they happen to slip through the annoyance filter.

You pause/mute/close it at the top, and the damn thing has the audacity to follow you down as you scroll and resume playing. 😡

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

The following is the worst part.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Short answer is no.

Long answer is definitely no.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Wouldn't the long answer be nooooooooooo!!!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

Extra long answer?

Believe it or not, also no.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago

I hate it so much infact that I actually remember which sites do it and don't click their links.

Fucking tragedy that "comedy news" websites like the onion and wonkette are actually head and shoulders above "respected" news sites in terms of professionalism.

I could actually see a complete reversal where they become the actual "Paper of record" and people refuse to even wipe their ass with a rag like the times or wapo.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago

I HATE THAT SHIT

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago

Their advertisers do

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago

It was precisely this crap that got me to switch from AdBlock Plus or other "fair" adblockers that let some unintrusive ads through to support the website, to uBlock origin, because it can remove those stupid auto playing videos.

I didn't like the scorched earth approach of uBO then (and still sometimes now), but any text and/or image based website shoving autoplaying videos down my throat doesn't deserve any support.

P.S. I'd like an optional way to allow unintrusive ads through in uBlock origin per site while still blocking any trackers that are not useless if the ad didn't exist.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago

I appreciate it in the same way I'd enjoy having an entire cactus jammed up my ass.

Which is to say, no.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago

Why are you using chatgpt for that content? Don't bring that sh* to lemmy please

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

No (except on pages that are specifically for a video), and I don’t think the “news” sites autoplay the videos because they think users want it; I think they do it because video ads pay more and it’s an easy way to slip a video ad in, especially as a pre-roll ad.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

I loathe it deeply.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I don’t normally comment on anything but I literally have to know: did you use ChatGPT to write the first two paragraphs of your post? I skimmed your last couple posts and I don’t think you’re a bot, but this one and what looks like a battle rap(?) from the perspective of trump just give me major ChatGPT vibes. No judgement either way, I’m just curious if ChatGPT’s out here passing the Turing test lol.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Haha my brain just automatically skipped those first 2 paragraphs. I had to go back and read them, but they definitely sound like gpt

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

No one, ever:

News sites: Let’s autoplay a video when they hit the page!

No one, ever: . . .

News sites: Let’s put more ads in!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

And the volume is always at least the double of whatever i was listening to

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

No, that’s why they autoplay.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (6 children)

Google news is my go to… I’m sure someone can tell me why that’s bad and that I’m stupid ):

I am in the habit of right click, open in new tab… then as that tab is loading, right click the tab and ‘mute tab’.

I’m using Firefox but I’m sure the other browsers have a mute tab function.

I seriously just want to read articles. I don’t want some loud bullshit screaming at me every time I open an article.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

You can actually set a thing on the tab so it mutes that particular site automatically. It's very cool.

I happen to use it for the very nerdy purpose of muting the fucking ads after I finish a puzzle on sudoku.net or so, but you may have a more lofty purpose. Hope it works for you as well as it works for me!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You can set Firefox to block auto-play, even if you open the tab in the foreground, put uBlock origin on top of it and you get rid of most of those annoying videos.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

If I am looking to know about a particular goings on, I will go through the news sites I trust to find the text article. I do not like video on news sites.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Don't like it. However, my phone and notebook are muted at all times. I never get a surprise blast of audio.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Any site that does it will not get a second visit from me. It’s really, REALLY fucking annoying when they do it. Especially for people who keep their volume up in general.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Ugh the only worse thing than that is the popups that beg for your email address the microsecond your mouse leaves the page area.

Whoever figures out how to block that shit would become king of all england

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Or as soon as you scroll down there's a full page pop-up asking you to sign up or some other bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I hate them too.

I come to news sites to read articles, not watch videos. If I wanted to watch videos I would go to YouTube. It's as simple as that.
Making them autoplay is just adding insult to injury (as well as wasting bandwidth for literally no reason).

Let's do some napkin maths while we think how much energy has been wasted by autoplaying a video for every visitor.
If I were to guess, the video player pre-caches a few seconds of content, maybe up to 10. That's a fair few MB worth of reasonable quality video/audio data. Now multiply that for every single visitor. That's a lot of wasted energy. The page itself is likely ~1MB in size (at least you'd hope), so they're potentially increasing their costs by an order of magnitude by having the videos autoplay.

It's monumentally stupid.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

No, but I also have autoplay of audio and video off by default

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I have heard others complain about it but as long as I have used Firefox videos haven't autoplayed on anything so I would hate if they did that but currently I'm good

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Not here, that's for sure, but keep in mind the community you're asking.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I especially hate the auto-play in feed thing in the Android YouTube app. Threre's no audio but it makes me feel jumpy and irritable bc I'm not in control. The iOS version has an option to turn it off, which must be an Apple requirement. It makes no sense not to offer the option to YouTube subscribers since we don't see ads. Google is just wasting their bandwidth. Workaround is to start a video and pause it, but that's stupid. Just let me turn the shit off.

Edit: I'm a dumbass and possibly a jackass. They added this at some point. Thanks @pete_[email protected] for setting me straight.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (4 children)

You can definitely turn that off, or at least I can on my S23. It may be a YouTube Premium feature.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

On a related subject, who the fuck signs up for newsletters when that popup blocks your ability to use the website? Who really wants newsletters in the first place? It's all just spam.

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