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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I don’t know if you’ve noticed but most of what we see online isn’t because we like it, it’s because the service provider’s greed to shape their metrics into the most profitable results.
Fucking fextralife wiki took over the Souls games not because they are better (they are significantly worse information wise or just copy pasted than/from the fandom versions).
But they gamed their SEO by having autoplay embedded videos in every fuckdamn page so any time someone went to see some info they were giving the site cross engagement and vastly boosting their pagerank.
Deliberate manipulation that google was warned about and basically said “We don’t care”.
Also boosted stream viewer numbers. Having 10k viewers despite chat being absolutely dead is just sickening.
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.
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_the_cat@lemmy.world for setting me straight.
You can definitely turn that off, or at least I can on my S23. It may be a YouTube Premium feature.
Ok. Show me a screen shot. In the iOS version, the option is called “Playback in feeds” and appears at the bottom of the General section in Settings. This option does not exist in the Android version that I have. As I stated, I am a YouTube subscriber.
Settings -> General -> Playback in feeds. Options are Always on, WiFi Only, and off
v19. 09.38 downloaded from The Play Store
I could kiss you. I’m very sorry that I doubted you, Mr. Cat. I don’t know when they added this but I guess I never saw it bc I expected the options to be in the same order in the iOS version.
No, but ads on them are more profitable than ads in text.
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
Or as soon as you scroll down there’s a full page pop-up asking you to sign up or some other bullshit.
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.
Why are you using chatgpt for that content? Don’t bring that sh* to lemmy please
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
I loathe it deeply.
No, but I also have autoplay of audio and video off by default
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.
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!
Interesting. I use Google News as well, and I have never had audio play. I tend to use it on mobile, and my default browser on mobile is Firefox. Specifically Firefox in private browser mode, so I don’t have to worry about cookies.
I use Firefox on the desktop as well, but not usually in private mode. I also don’t ever have video autoplay that way. I’m not sure why. I don’t think I installed any extensions to turn it off, but I might have tweaked the browser settings shortly after installing.
I meant when I click on any of the articles curated by Google news… a lot of the sites that Google news aggregates are sites that auto play videos.
I think that we’re talking about the same thing. When I read those articles curated by Google news in my mobile browser, I have never, not once, had audio play. Maybe try Firefox mobile?
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.
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.
Haha my brain just automatically skipped those first 2 paragraphs. I had to go back and read them, but they definitely sound like gpt
Short answer is no.
Long answer is definitely no.
Medium answer No.
Extra long answer?
Believe it or not, also no.
Wouldn’t the long answer be nooooooooooo!!!
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. 😡
The following is the worst part.
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.
